Posted By Guill
Hello everyone,

My question is around call centres and the data protection act.

My partner unfortunately works for one of these centres.

Last night she had a customer who demanded her full name, as he wished to report her for not being able to help him.

I do not wish to enter into all the details, but would like to ask, do these call centres have the right to order their staff to give out their full names over the telephone to complete strangers?

Especially with todays technology of finding anything via the internet etc.

I have tried various websites etc to try and find info reference call centres, but at present no luck in what I am after, could anyone advise as to where I could obtain such info.

Thanks.
Guill.

Posted By Eric Burt
I can't see a problem with call centre staff giving their full names. It needn't be their true name - merely one they use at work if they are worried about possible conflict with customers but at least this would help to identify the particular member of staff in case of a complaint or query.

If all call centre staff were courteous and helpful then they would have nothing to fear would they!

I also see it as a matter of courtesy - after all, the call centre usually know all YOUR details so what's the problem with the caller giving their name?

My wife used to work in a call centre so I know the type of abuse they have to deal with, however she was always polite to customers even if she did have to put the phone down on a couple of occasions.

Posted By Jasonjg
This is a true story

In the year before DDA was due to come into practice I worked as a Customer service advisor for a very well known company.

All staff attended a training session on some of the new changes to come into effect and was told that under no circumstances, must they rush or drop calls if they suspected the person on the other side was impaired in anyway.

All staff happy at session and went to work over comming weeks feeling assured that they was able to take more time dealing with certain enquiries. No problems, all was happy and dandy and CSA's were happy in giving their names out etc.

Some months later, the centre was getting a repeated caller who was beggining to become quite infactuated with speaking to the same girls over & over agin for a long time (yes at one time it did go on for over a hour. He was rude but did not swear and quite often had some girls in tears due to some form of compulsive behaviour on his part about bills. This as reported to team leaders who took the call and refered him to the head office complaints department.

Guess what happened

A pop up appeared next to his details stating that he was disabled and thus was proteced by the DDA and therfore staff had to remain online at all times. As there was a policy for stating your name if asked, staff could not really refuse to give it out and the customer knew this. Some days he would just chat for time and others he would ever so slightly start to threaten staff.

In the end one girl threatened to dismiss herself and seek legal advice. The company's next step was to have girls directed that they should automatically transfer call to male staff member.

I unfortuantly got him one day and he was in a bad mood. I can laugh now but it was a dismal state of affairs then and I went staright to centre manager and demanded he took the call hehehehehehehehehe:-

1. You need the money
2. You was a girl who traveld on public transpoirt to work
3. He lived locally
4. You got no support from company due to fear of DDA claim even though they probably could have provided evidence via recordings.

End solution was staff gave first name only and number to represent surname.

End End solution was company folded due to poor customer service/support planning lol all in a lifetime of working fun.