Phone recording softwares can be divided into external stand-alone systems or internal integrated software. Phone recording softwares today, have CTI-enabled switches and call-processing platforms, which have voice logging as a built-in option, inherent in the system's design and architecture. Phone recording softwares provide for optimal performance and often allow the call record or captured data – be it an order; help desk session, or customer service report – to be directly linked to the voice file. 

Phone recording softwares in other situations have stand-alone voice loggers that can be interfaced to the switch or call-processing platform, tapping into audio paths at the agent headset, the switch destination port, or the source port. In case of phone recording softwares, often vendors of stand-alone systems design universal interface adapters that allow audio to be easily tapped into the handset or headset connection without affecting or degrading the audio level.  For external systems it is done through tapping into the headset audio at the agent station and feeding it into the PC's sound card.

For both internal and external voice loggers, the speech is digitized and often stored on the agent station hard drive, usually as wave files.  At some point (either immediately or at a later time), the wave files are sent over the network to a central voice-logging server where they are indexed and stored. 

Indexes are commonly applied to all header field data, such as time, date, station number, agent login, source port, destination port, call completion code, and project ID.  If needed, queries can be established to fine-tune the search even further.  Searching by agent or time is the most common function.