Telephone Monitoring Legality

dgrant

If I had a situation where I had a customer service rep complaining to one of our customers about her work conditions here, what are the legalities of monitoring her phone calls?

HS

Do you have a program in place that your reps all know about; where you monitor calls for quality assurance? If not, you should insitute that practice for the future. If it's a "personal" call, you are not allowed to monitor it, just note that it was a personal call.

We monitor our reps for quality assurance purposes...their phones are labeled accordingly and they are told that during the orientation / training process as well. Supervisors and trainers monitor calls to be sure that the reps are giving out correct information and treating the customers respectfully. If a personal call comes up, they note it, then switch to another rep to monitor. Our monitoring is random and not based on a specific person, unless there is a reason to gear it towards a specific person. I.E. customer complaints about wrong information, a lead or supervisor noting wrong information being repeatedly given out, etc.

Hope this information helps.

Theresa Gegen TX

This issue really depends heavily on your state's law. Some states will allow the monitoring with one party consent (which you can get by having your operator sign an acknowledgement that the phone calls may be monitored for quality assurance). Other states may require both parties to consent, in which case, you will need to have a recording or the operator tell the customer that the call may be monitored.

Good Luck!