Speech Technology - October 2008 - (Page 28)

LEGAL ISSUES WITH SPEECH recorded for quality assurance purposes or to glean customer data, compile customer profiles, tailor upsell and cross-sell opportunities, identify market trends, streamline operations, improve the customer experience, boost agent productivity, evaluate agent performance, resolve disputes Less than halfway through the prompt, the customer is sure to hang up. Most consumers have neither the time nor the patience to listen to a two-minute diatribe about why their calls are being recorded. And even if they did, would they really care? Jean Bave-Kerwin, the head of JBK Consulting in Slingerlands, N.Y., and a certified associate at the Incoming Calls Management Institute, doesn’t think so. “What you tell them is up to you,” she says, “but do customers really care why they’re being recorded? Not really. Most have become used to it.” Fluss agrees. She maintains that such in-depth notifications “provide no benefit to the customer.” The fact is that most consumers really don’t care about the technology being used in a call center at all, as long as they can complete their desired task. “Really, if you had a bunch of mice running your technology, your callers would not know,” Moshe Yudkowsky, president of Disaggregate Consulting, said in a session during the SpeechTEK 2008 conference in New York. “Your callers do not care about your technology. Technology is not what your customers want—what they want is service.” The practice of telling customers that their calls could be recorded started more than 20 years ago—back when companies really did use the recordings only for quality assurance—and companies issued those notifications more to reassure a mistrustful public that there wasn’t a larger government conspiracy at work. Bave-Kerwin and others say that those days are far behind us. “Just to be safe, I always recommend that if you are recording calls, you notify people that they may be recorded,” Bave-Kerwin says, “but I do not see a reason why you need to tell them what you are doing with those recordings.” Simply saying This call may be recorded will suffice, she adds. And legally, depending on where the company is based, even that might not be necessary. Federal laws in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom, for example, require only one-party notification, meaning that only one of the two parties on a telephone call has to know that the call is being recorded. Laws in many other countries vary greatly, so it is recommended that companies check with the local telecommunications authority in a country before recording calls that involve its citizens. Consenting Adults Beyond the federal level, laws in all but 12 U.S. states also require only one-party notification when recording calls. The 12 states that require the consent of both “Do customers really care why they’re being recorded? Not really. Most have become used to it.” parties to a phone conversation are California, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, and Washington. In the states where two-party notification is required, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has outlined the means by which such notification be given: • Verbal or written consent must be given prior to the start of the conversation. A recorded message will suffice here, and it can be assumed that a caller consents if he stays on the line. If he does not wish to be recorded, he has the option of asking that the recorder be turned off, or he can hang up and contact the company through other means, such as a letter, fax, or email. • An automatic tone, called a beep tone, that is repeated at regular intervals during the course of the conversation must be heard. The accepted norms for this tone are that it falls within the 1,260- to 1,540-hertz range, lasts between 170 and 250 milliseconds, is broadcast for both sides to hear, and occurs every 12 to 15 seconds, according to VLR Communications, a provider of the technology. In two-party notification states, failure to abide by the laws could result in criminal and civil penalties. Depending on the state or states involved, fines for failing to properly notify callers that they may be recorded can range from a few hundred dollars to $10,000 or more per offense, according to Zachary Rice, director of government affairs at the American Teleservices Association in Indianapolis. But government enforcement of such laws, particularly as they relate to businesses, is rare, he adds, because most call recording statutes were written more as a means of protecting the public from unauthorized government and police wiretapping. “The legislation indirectly affects call centers,” Rice says. “Because the law says ‘any kind of phone call,’ call centers became an unintended consequence of that legislation.” Where notification laws really get sticky is when a company is based in a one-party notification state, but its agents make calls to or receive calls from residents of twoparty notification states. In these cases, the two-party notification statutes apply. Since most U.S. states and the District of Columbia require only one-party notification, most companies can meet the lion’s share of their legal obligations by letting their call center agents know that phone activity could be monitored and recorded at any time. Most firms require new agent hires to sign a consent form, and make signing such a document a de facto condition of employment. What about when agents make and receive personal calls during business hours? Should there be an expectation of privacy? The laws are unclear on this, so to address such issues, consultants recommend that companies set up recording equipment only on phones within the operational areas of the call center, not in break rooms or common areas. Companies should also have an enforced policy against placing or receiving personal phone calls while in the operations room. 28 | Speech Technology OCTOBER 2008 www.speechtechmag.com http://www.speechtechmag.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Speech Technology - October 2008

Speech Technology - October 2008 Contents Editor’s Letter Industry View Inside Outsourcing Interact Keynoter Highlights the Shrinking Technological World Former Hacker Tackles IVR and Biometrics ‘Press 1’ for Caller Thoughts Soundbytes Voice Vote A New Dragon Emerges Overheard/Underheard An Emotional Mess Emotional Intelligence The Case for Call Recording Unified in Care and Communications An Education in E-Learning Guest Column Standards Speech Solutions Voice Value Forward Thinking

Speech Technology - October 2008

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