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This Call May Be Monitored ...
Iphtashu Fitz writes "We've all heard it. The recorded message when you call technical support or your bank or credit card company: 'This call may be monitored for quality assurance purposes.' But has it ever occurred to you that people actually DO listen in? Approximately 2 percent of these calls are listened to either live or after the fact, and it may come as a surprise that Big Brother even listens to what you may say while you are on hold. The people who monitor these calls routinely hear arguments between spouses or parents and children, people yelling at pets, and all sorts of other domestic disputes."
And, as always, my question is this: how is it that this is related to my rights online when I call up a remote location, with no idea what's on the other end, and my call is recorded when I speak INTO THE PHONE *after* I'm told it might be recorded?
Is there a problem? Is the phone being tapped causing it to malfunction on the original caller's end in such a way that it picks up sounds that should reasonably be expected NOT to enter the phone circuit otherwise? No.
No, this is another example of where some idiot somehwere might have gotten pissy because he's so lacking in the basic knowledge required to operate a telephone that he somehow thought that if he's standing there yelling at his wife to get him a beer and not give him any lip, that somehow his voice was not going to go into the uncovered receiver on his phone and be picked up by whatever happens to be on the other end.
Then, michael, being a socialist prick and probably the biggest slashdot troll in history, saw an excuse to plop "big brother" down on the front page of the venerable "news for tards" site that is Slashdot, label it "Your Rights Online" and watch the ensuing flamefest as people bite.
IHBT by Michael Sims.
IHL.
I will HAND.
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
What part of "This call may be monitored" did you not understand?
I don't get it.
My rights: I'm told that the call may be monitored. I can hang up if I object. No 'rights' are being violated.
Online: You mean "on the phone", right?
Seriously, where's the BIG BROTHER story here? Slow news day?
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
Generally when I'm on hold, I'm either bitching about the f'ing annoying voicemail system that won't properly connect me, or about the idiot who has put me on hold for the fifth time while "helping" me. Great, I must have a lot of black marks on my "record" with Cingular, because I curse like a sailor when I'm on hold...
People seem to lose all sense of reality when you tell them they are on hold
Actually what they say while they think they are on hold IS the reality.
What I don't understand is not that *shock* a call is being monitored after I hear a recording saying that it is being monitored. No, what I don't understand is how these recordings have not seemed to improve quality / customer service. I keep getting the same tech droid giving wrong answers as before. Typically I'm thinking to myself, if someone is monitoring this call for quality, please speak up and help!
What they want to know is: how much crappy service is the average customer willing to put up with before thinking seriously about switching.
Then they aim to provide just above that level.. so they want to know: "What is the least amount of money we can spend to please the largest number of customers just enough to keep thme as customers"
On the other hand, if it really isn't my voice, then the recording protects me.
Am I supposed to have a problem with this? I don't...
They might not be monitoring the call right when you call, but you can bet they keep every recording just in case they want to have their lawyers come after you.
I always thought we should put in a law that ASKS for explicit permision before they are allowed to record you.
As soon as a real person gets on the phone, I always tell them they do NOT have my permission to record me, and ask that they stop or give me a number to call where they do not record. You would be surprised how many companies do NOT have a procedure to not record.
Problem is that YOU can't recorde THEM.
Trust me; i've tried. Trying to iron out problems in billing for my DSL service, i found that the closer i got to getting my problem solved, the more likely it was that i would get forwarded on to somebody else, forcing me to start from scratch. After talking to a handfull o them, it had been agreed by one or the other person that each disputed part of the bill had been as a result of their error. But nobody was willing to clear all of them. Were i to have a recording of previous people i had spoken to, i would have been able to clear the whole thing up.
Promises are made just to get you off the line, then simply broken. If the consumer doesn't have the right to record the call, the corporation is not accountable to what they tell the customer.
-j
I make it a point to curse the company, the big shots, their kinfolks, pets and homelands, all the children they may ever have and their children, etc...
Which often achieves little. The vast majority of the time we CSRs have no way of actually recording down complaints or even suggestions. (If you care enough, write a snail mail letter to the head of the company.)
Can you get your way by getting angry with the CSR? Sometimes, especially if they are new. Overall, however, I would say that you catch more flies with honey. (What may appear as you attacking the company may put the anonymous CSR unnaturally on the defensive, even though its the CSR who isn't being attacked, and wouldn't give a rat's ass about the company otherwise. )
If you choose the anger route, I would recommend slowly increasing your irritation, and then backing off with a manager. (Also keep in mind that you can't annoy the CSR too much...often the CSR will introduce the problem to the supervisor, and it doesn't help your cause that that introduction is coming from their agitated point of view and not yours. If they are a trusted CSR the supervisor may have made up their mind even before they hear what you have to say.)
I can't tell you how many times I've seen a supervisor get off the phone call with a customer and say something like "I would have been happy to help them had they not been such a bitch about it..."
Just pretend talking to your friend while on hold, discussing the option to switch to another competitor "if this call doesn't solve my problems", that might get you something.
As someone who has worked in several call centers I can honestly tell you that the QA departments who monitor calls could really care less. I used to get threatened all the time with that statement while on the phone - just made me want to hang up quicker. The reason why is my co-workers and I were paid 9$/hr (and I'm not kidding in the slightest) to support these complex applications for a company we didn't work for.
Also, I've monitored calls from the start of the menu... Not very fun stuff because people just don't think.
They're stuck on hold. Why the hell should they have to be courteous to you?
most companies will refuse to work with you if you where recording the call.
Yeah, the last thing they want is a level playing field.
Because this is normally someone trying to catch a company screwing up, either by accident or on purpose.
Which, IMO, should be something they are quite permitted to do: the number of times I've run into situations where things agreed or sorted out over a phone line suddenly become unsorted or different from what was agreed when black-and-white proof turns up weeks later in the mail (whether deliberately or through misunderstandings) is terrible. With serious business being done over the phone, I have a hard time seeing how it can be fair that one side can record it with impunity while the other is left with nothing if the other screws up or decides to change things.