5 Ways to Obtain Recording Consent

 **This article does not replace advice from your legal counsel. To better understand a summary of implications, read our article named Guidelines for Recording Business Conversations».

#1: Enable default recording in your web conference / screenshare program

With most major screenshare providers, this will provide a visual notification that the meeting is being recorded (see image below), as well as an audio notification if a participant dials in through a conference line.

#2: Naming Your Chorus.ai Meeting Participant to include the word "Recorder"

Every Chorus user can customize the "Participant Name" that shows up in your meeting as shown below. By default, it displays as your company's name but you can change it to say "Company Recorder" to be more explicit.

In addition, depending on the Web Conferencing tool that your organization uses, you may have the ability to auto-announce that the meeting is being recorded. Below, a screenshot of a meeting facilitated using Zoom shows this functionality.

#3: Provide Notice in Your Calendar Invite

If it's common for your organization to schedule meetings using calendar invites, you may take advantage of including notice in the Description or Notes section.

Below is a screenshot of a Google Calendar originated invite with notice provided in the Description. In this example, the text reads: "This call will be recorded for record-keeping, quality assurance, and training purposes."

#4: Provide Notice in Legal Disclaimer Footer

Most organizations have the ability to control the text block appended as a footer to all external email conversations. This is either called a Legal Disclaimer or Confidentiality Notice. You may have seen such a section starting with: "This message, including any attachments, may contain confidential, proprietary, privileged and/or private information.If you are not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any use, dissemination, copying, or storage of this message or its attachments is strictly prohibited." 

Your legal counsel may want to add the following sentence to the disclaimer: "All calls will be recorded for record-keeping, quality assurance, and training purposes."

#5: Inform Your Audience Verbally

Although this may seem obvious, asking for consent verbally tends to be overlooked since people may find this awkward, especially when the conversation didn't involve a calendar invite.

At RingCentral, sales representatives conducting cold calls have been coached to use this phrase when introducing themselves: "Hi, this is John calling from RingCentral on a recorded line. Is now a good time for us to speak?"

After incorporating this into your workflow, the awkwardness completely subsides. For other ideas on this topic, please read our article called 3 Proven Strategies to Verbally Notify You're Recording».