This Call May Be Monitored

This call may be monitored:  For quality assurance purposes.

One can safely assume that improving training and/or quality assurance are secondary objectives of call monitoring.  At best. Job turnover in call centers averages 84% per year:  For most organizations it is hardly worth the time to try to retrain workers, as they will soon be gone. No, the true reason for recording calls lies elsewhere.

Organizations want a caller’s consent to having his/her conversation recorded.  Continuing a call after learning it will be recorded is considered just such an approval. Why is that important?  The recording may be used to assist companies and call centers should they be sued.  We are a litigious society.

This is but one of many consents we give daily, often without realizing it.  Here are some others:

Smart Assistants
If you use Siri, Alexa, or Cortana you have consented to sharing a great deal of information.  For quality assurance purposes, of course.  Some of that information is inescapable, like your name, address, billing information, and the like.  Fine.  Other data collected are less obvious.  Do your contacts know that you’ve shared their names, nicknames, emails, and phone numbers?  Would they really care to be associated, algorithmically that is, with your search and browsing histories?  Then there’s your photos.  Would all the (labeled or otherwise facially identifiable) individuals in your photos agree to having their images shared with Google, Amazon, or Microsoft?  Think about it.  Those bachelor party shots probably shouldn’t be spread around.

Then again, you did consent.  Read this article to learn more about the data you’ve agreed to share.

We Will Never Sell Your Data
Fine, but that doesn’t mean your data won’t be shared with others for analysis and, check me if you’ve heard this before, quality assurance purposes.  Most consumers don’t realize that today’s algorithms require data annotation labor.  A lot of it.  Data labelers, usually based in low wage countries, help power much of what we consider to be “automated.”  That requires human access to your data.  So, don’t mistake “security” for “privacy.”  A system that is (supposedly) secure from hackers may still be sharing your data with others.  Leaks are inevitable.  It’s at the heart of how private pictures taken by Roomba vacuums were leaked a few years ago. That’s just one example.

Terms of Service: Didn’t Read
I could go on, like describing how you waived your moral rights when you used Paypal, Reddit, Spotify and other services.  After all, you did agree to their terms of service.  The list, as they say, is endless.

This blog, however, must end.  For quality assurance reasons.