Using Twilio with SurveyCTO to securely record phone calls only with consent

To ensure the quality of an interview, it is often very useful to record interviews. This is why SurveyCTO includes an audio audit feature, which works well for face-to-face interviews. However, because of security restrictions with Android and iOS, you cannot record phone interviews natively on many modern devices. Luckily, there are many other services you can use to record calls. One of the most popular calling services that works in most countries is Twilio.

We have developed several resources you can use to help you use Twilio with SurveyCTO. Using these resources, you'll be able to:

1. Record calls using Twilio
2. Stop, delete, or start call recordings during the interview depending on consent
3. Securely store the path to the recording in encrypted form
4. Easily export and decrypt that audio for review

Click on the link in bold to go to the full documentation for that tool.

Starting Twilio-powered calls inside your form

The most important of the tools is the twilio-call field plug-in, since it is the one that actually creates the call. You can even encrypt those recordings using the same encryption key you use to encrypt your SurveyCTO form; to learn more, check out the Twilio documentation.

Only record calls where the respondent gives consent

With the twilio-control field plug-in, if a call recording has been started, you can stop or delete that recording, even if you are in the middle of a call. That way, if the respondent does not give consent to be recorded, you can delete the recording if it has already been started. You can even start a recording if recording has not yet been started.

Automatically download and decrypt Twilio recordings whenever you run a data export

With the Twilio audio download script, whenever SurveyCTO Desktop runs a data export, your computer will automatically download all Twilio audio recordings for that form. It will even decrypt them if any of the recordings are encrypted. That way, not only will all of the downloaded form data be on your computer, but you will also have all phone call recordings. Full steps on how to set it up are in the documentation. To learn more about how SurveyCTO Desktop automatically runs scripts and other processes, check out our documentation on automatically executing outside processes.

For developers

Even if you are not using Twilio, feel free to fork these repositories so you can create your tools for your own service. Check out the documentation for each tool to learn how to use them.

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