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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."
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...
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?
Perhaps if you RTFA you'll see that the issues are more complex than this. For me, two parts of the article that disturbed me are
1) That the monitoring itself even captures what you say while on hold. Despite the 'please hold' and you listen to music, they are recording what you say. That was a reminder for me. I kinda thought the monitoring would be done while you were communicating with someone, not while listening to muzak. I wonder how many times they have heard me say 'If you are so concerned about your customer, don't make me wait on hold' or perhaps 'Thanks for my patience? Do I have a f'in choice?'
2) The monitoring itself is being outsource. Third parties, sometimes in other countries, are listening in when the rep asks you for you account number, mothers maiden name, etc. Thats a privacy issue about how my data is protected/not protected.
I think you are focusing on the wrong parts of the article.
As far as how does this relate to online? Hmm, its a stretch, more about affects of technology. TFA does mention VOIP.
> Granted, socialism doesn't work...
Granted of course. I will be sure to tell that to my sister the next time that she gets a few gallons of government subsidised Milk for her child. Or the next time I see my father laid off and scraping by and manages to pay the mortgage with his unemployment check while he looks for a new job.
I will be sure to let them know exactly what a dismal failure socialism is.
Perhaps if we went back a hundred years and told that to the people who worked untold hours for barley livable pay and had no protections, when being hurt on the job meant you were unemployable and had no safety net and were just dropped to fend for yourself. Yes, maybe if we could go back and let them know what a failure socialism is, we could get out of this socialist hell hole of unemployment, and workers comp and maternitiy leave, and all the other horrible socialist policies that don't work.
Then we can go back to working full days 6 days a week just to pay the rent and feed ourselves with no vacation. Wouldn't that be great?
-Steve
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
This obviously puts the company in a sticky situation since they're most likely NOT in the business of being a match-making service, and this kind of behavior is almost certainly NOT allowed on "company time."
So is it wrong for a waitress to spend a little time flirting with a customer? Or agreeing to go out on a date with him?
You shouldn't date co-workers as it might interfere with business.
You shouldn't date customers as it might interfere with business.
Shouldn't meet people online, you never know if you can trust them.
Get a date a bar gets older after 25, long term relationship it isn't.
That leaves what? Church (for the religious), a few sports (where it's mixed groups) Or some additions group or something.
If anybody actually listened to all the advice the human race would have ceased to exist a few thousand years ago.
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.