Heard a very interesting story tonight from the friend of a United Airlines customer service rep. Apparently when you call up United customer service, the name the customer service rep provides may be completely false. That’s right, they sometimes make up the names they give you. These names are registered in a database, so when someone calls up to register a complaint about customer service rep “Peter Parker,” United knows exactly who they’re talking about. Undoubtedly, this practice extends to other companies as well. Nothing particularly earth-shattering, just interesting that while a company knows everything about your credit and purchase history, and most certainly, your name, they still feel compelled to use false identities. Probably a good security move, nonetheless. — BEN POPKEN
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@kdwade:
Every time I’m on the phone with Chase, it seems to be with someone from India. So when I’m on the phone with “Caitlin” or “Larry,” I’m thinking those are not their real names.
@ReccaSquirrel:
Yes, I’d definitely remember if I talked to a CSR with the last name “Squirrel.”
I totally understand the reasons to use pseudonyms and that’s fine with me, although it’s good if there’s some sort of ID# that I can get so that if I had a problem, the company will know which CSR is calling himself “Wyatt Earp.”
Just a couple of weeks ago, I spoke with an AT&T CSR who offered only “Karen H.” as her name. That was good enough for me.
i don’t have a problem with fake names as long as there is consitent tracking of who is taking what call.
people can be vicious to call center personel for any percieved slight.
I’d hate for Suzy Sunshine to get attacked IRL because some jackhole didn’t like the job an installer did.
I worked at a company that conducted phone surveys and it was a constant gag amongst the 30-40 people making the calls each shift. As we sat there coloring in our coloring books (the favorite activity amongst call center employees) we would make up fake names and pass them on to the caller. On smoke breaks we would sit around and tell everyone that we just called someone as “Buster Cherry” or “Ivanna Tinkle.”
On a related note: never, ever, hang up on these calls. You are marked as a dropped call and will be called back the next day – always tell them to take you off of their calling list and wait for the person to confirm they have taken you off. Of course, you are only removed from that current campaign and not all campaigns, but at least you won’t get called again tomorrow.
United Airlines excuse, can’t think of any. They have big call centers and should be able to use proper names.
Small companies are a different matter. A lot of folks wear multiple hats and rather than confuse the customer we use a pseudeonym. One company I worked for used the fake name Francis Parker. If a customer called the main switch board for support and asked for Francis the operator knew which extension to send the call to. Whoever was covering that line knew what was associated with that name and acted accordingly. Easier on the customer and on the rotating staff to boot.
Sometimes using fake names are done for a purpose not associated with trying to lie.
@royal72: You can’t be serious. Are you saying that a CSR’s safety should be put at risk because their company has bad policies and long queue times?
That’s pretty sick. I work a combination of phones and front desk and always give my real first name. You can’t have my last name, though. There’s no one else in here with my first name, so I’m not about to let someone stalk me because I “ruined” their financial situation.
A previous boss claimed he would give out a fake name over the phone when he was a student.
@bbbici – you’re Prince, aren’t you?
My company operates a call center in Manila, and the reps have fictitious names, logins, everything. When I was adding users to the system, the first one was Fred Rogers. The second was Ginger Alle. So, I brought up the issue because of SOX compliance. Apparently, if each employee has an individual alias and you have a system to track what employee is what alias, it’s OK.
I fear that we aren’t too far away from the day when customer service reps just decide make up different names every time you call so you won’t be able to file any complaints against them for poor service.
The last CSR job I had the company asked us to make up fake names (I was Juan Assole and I still crack myself up over that one).
I always heard that was standard policy for csr’s. I thought they all did this.
As a person who worked in multiple call centers in the past, most people you’re talking to DO NOT have access to your credit. And it’s a crappy job, that normally pays a little more than McDonalds
The call centre in town here pays just slightly more than McDs if you get the right contract. But the raises and advancements are far better at McDs than there. I’ve heard of 0.07$ raises in a year vs 0.25$ raises quarterly from McDs.
i always give my first and last name… my REAL ones.. now again.. i’m on mexico.. so i guess there’s not much of a problem, also i can assure you i’m always good to customers
and a recomendation!
ALWAYS! be nice to reps!.. and i mean ALWAYS! even if u’re reaaally pissed off or something… if someone treats me nice.. im more than willing to try to help them or give them credits.. even if it’s not comcast fault or something but yeah.. be nice to us
There’s another issue – what about the CSR that gives out a pseudonym that’s different from the one registered to them? They then become untraceable and can do whatever the hell they want.
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From a call center management perspective, fake names are all about keeping that average handle time down — at least with offshoring contracts. In the next-to-last job we found that most Americans will short-circuit when they hear a name that sounds foreign, taking anywhere from three to five minutes to process it, writing it down, asking for the correct spelling, rambling on about it, etc. Having the agents use Western names slashed queue times by about 70 percent.
As far as figuring who did what with your account if they’re giving out a fake name, bear in mind that the person touching your account leaves an electronic trail that includes their real name. You may have talked to Joe, but we can tell that it was actually Navdeep or Sumati who looked at your account.
For the record, as a supervisor, I always gave out my real name — first and last. As far as threats went I had quite a few. I would always remind callers threatening to track me down that I already knew where they lived and worked and to give it their best shot at finding me in the five minutes it would take to report them to their hometown police. I appear to have survived.
I’ve worked in many call-center environments (both in-house and outsourced) in a variety of positions/roles. They all pretty much had the same policy regarding how I was to identify myself:
1. Use the same “real” first name on every call. Most places I worked, “real” could be my actual first name, my middle name, a nickname, or an alias – as long as I used the same one, every time.
2. If requested, provide last initial only. This included other reps, leads and in some centers, supervisors.
If pressed for more identifying information, nearly all the large/multiple site/outsourced centers I worked for would instructed us to say which call center we work in and the First_name/Last_Initial of our supervisor. If pressed beyond *that* we were told to escalate the call up.
There were companies that allowed me to use my own judgement about providing my full name – using the ‘real’ name rules above – but I hardly ever have. It’s just not necessary. My firstname/last initial AND location I work in AND firstname/last initial of my supervisor ought to be enough to track me down. Not only that but nowadays, my username/login “fingerprints” are logged from the moment I look up an account – even if I don’t make any changes or leave notes. It may not be something the next rep you get can look up, but I guarantee management or the Quality Assurance monitors can.
Also, getting caught giving a caller a different/fake name will typically get me written up. If I’m suspected of attempting to deliberately mislead someone? Grounds for termination.
This also makes it easier for them to back out of an agreement by saying, “Peter Parker? No he doesn’t work here. You must be confused.” or, “Bobby? no, he got fired, but he used to make all kinds of crazy deals like that.”
I work for a rather large bank and personally I wish we were allowed to have an alias. Not only do we have to use our real names but we have to clearly pronounce our first and last name at the very beginning of every phone call. Being that i have a very unique name (only 3 associates in the bank have the same first name as I do) and i also have an RI accent, its pretty easy to track me down. Luckily I have not had any angry customer try to track me down however I have had customer who thought “my voice sounds hott” track me on myspace just by knowing my name :/
Wells Fargo call center employees have fake names as well. I worked at the Sacramento call center and everyone there had the last name ‘Sanders’, and every person had a unique first name. You can always trace what call center you’re speaking with based upon the surname of the representative.
I used to work in call center where I had to answer the phone, every call, with my first nad last name.It made me VERY uncomfortable.