Your Call (and Rants on Hold) Will Be Monitored

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Tue, 11 Jan 2005 06:50:39 -0800

 

 

 

 

Your Call (and Rants on Hold) Will Be Monitored

 

<http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/11/business/11snoop.html?hp>

 

 

 

Your Call (and Rants on Hold) Will Be Monitored

By KEN BELSON

 

Published: January 11, 2005

 

ELVILLE, N.Y. - It is the opening line on so many phone conversations

these days: This call may be monitored for quality assurance purposes.

 

The taped message is so common that many callers might assume that no

one is ever listening, let alone taking notes. But they would be wrong.

 

Monitoring is intended to track the performance of call center

operators, but the professional snoops are inadvertently monitoring

callers, too. Most callers do not realize that they may be taped even

while they are on hold.

 

It is at these times that monitors hear husbands arguing with their

wives, mothers yelling at their children, and dog owners throwing fits

at disobedient pets, all when they think no one is listening. Most

times, the only way a customer can avoid being recorded is to hang up.

 

" You could have a show on Broadway just playing the calls, " said Mike

Schrider, president of J.Lodge, a call monitoring service based in

Hammonton, N.J.

 

Call monitors eavesdrop on millions of exchanges a year, and listening

to the mumblings and rants of people on hold comes with the job. Over

all, about 2 percent of the hundreds of millions of calls made to call

centers are monitored by a company's own managers or, increasingly, by

third-party monitoring companies, which have come on the scene in the

last couple of years.

 

Tapping into calls from his cubicle in Melville, N.Y., Stuart Pike is

one of an army of listeners employed by these companies. He has an

unrestricted view of how corporate America deals with the public - and

how the public talks back.

 

The business of assessing the behavior of operators has taken on a new

urgency in recent years. With so many companies selling similar products

at similar prices, competent and professional customer service agents

are more and more the difference between a sale and a lost opportunity,

a burnished brand and a tarnished one.

 

That reality has turned third-party call monitoring into a fast-growing

industry watching over the nation's six million call center operators as

well as hundreds of thousands offshore. And people like Mr. Pike, who

listens to about 150 calls a week, have become the equivalent of factory

foremen policing America's service economy.

 

Recently, Mr. Pike stumbled onto a call where a young male customer was

flirting with a female service agent at a cellphone company. After some

giggles and banter, the woman relented and gave her personal phone

number to the customer. Mr. Pike quickly alerted the cellphone company

to the phone date.

 

" You'd be surprised how casual it can get, " said Mr. Pike, who works at

Aon Consulting, one of the nation's biggest third-party call center

monitors. " It's like watching TV. There's always something interesting

on. "

 

Some privacy advocates worry that monitors, as well as operators, can

steal customer passwords and other sensitive data. Thus far, few

documented cases of identity theft have been unearthed involving

monitors, and most monitoring companies screen their applicants. State

wiretapping laws generally do not provide protection against recording

of call center conversations (the taped message at the start of the call

is in most cases considered an adequate privacy warning).

 

Fears of identity theft have not slowed the monitoring business. In

fact, under tighter scrutiny by regulators, most financial institutions

are now taping all their calls.

 

The growth of monitoring has also been fueled by the advent of Internet

phone technology, which has substantially cut the cost of long-distance

calls and made call monitoring as easy as clicking a mouse.

Sophisticated software that automatically records conversations has

increased the number of calls monitors can assess.

 

As more call centers move offshore, companies are starting to outsource

the monitoring, too. From any corner of the globe, call monitors with

just a computer and an Internet connection can oversee workers virtually

anywhere. For instance, Mr. Pike on Long Island listens to service

agents in India who may be talking to customers in Indiana. Monitors in

Britain are likely to listen to customers in New York talking to German

operators in Frankfurt.

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