Call Recording
The capture and retention of agent-prospect phone conversations — required for Medicare sales (10-year retention) and heavily used for QA and TCPA defense.
Full Definition
Call recording is the capture and storage of agent-consumer phone conversations. Under CMS 2024 Final Rule TPMO requirements, all Medicare marketing, sales, and enrollment calls must be recorded in their entirety and retained for 10 years. Other use cases include TCPA litigation defense (recording the consumer confirming consent at the start of the call), QA and agent coaching, dispute resolution on replacements and chargebacks, and verbal verification ("tape recorded verification" or TRV) for signature-on-voice enrollment. Recording consent laws vary by state: federal and 38 states are one-party-consent; 11 states plus D.C. are two-party-consent (CA, CT, FL, IL, MD, MA, MT, NV, NH, PA, WA) — agents calling into those states must announce recording at the start of the call. CRMs increasingly embed AI transcription and redact PCI/PHI on-the-fly.
Example
A Medicare agency's dialer records every call, stores audio in AWS S3 with 10-year retention, transcribes via AWS Transcribe, and flags calls for compliance review when keyword detection catches phrases that suggest off-SOA product discussion.
Related Terms
- MCMG (Medicare Communications & Marketing Guidelines) — The CMS rulebook that governs how Medicare Advantage and Part D plans, FMOs, TPMOs, and agents may market and communicate with beneficiaries.
- TPMO (Third-Party Marketing Organization) — Any entity that markets Medicare Advantage or Part D plans but is not the plan sponsor — including lead vendors, call centers, FMOs, and independent agents.
- SOA (Scope of Appointment) — A CMS-required document capturing which Medicare product types a beneficiary has agreed to discuss with an agent, collected at least 48 hours before the sales meeting.
- TCPA (Telephone Consumer Protection Act) — U.S. federal law restricting telemarketing calls, autodialed calls, prerecorded messages, and text messages without prior express written consent.
- Dialer (Predictive / Power / Manual) — Outbound calling software that accelerates agent dial volume — operating in predictive, power, progressive, or manual modes with very different TCPA risk profiles.