Consent creation in client service calls

Recording of customer service calls without consent is illegal in India as it violates privacy. Yet, consent is deemed to have been acquired through a mandated declaration at beginning of calls, usually with the disclaimer that the recording is being done to 'monitor quality of service'. The customer is not provided choice in the matter if she prefers the conversation not be recorded. She has to either proceed with the recorded call to obtain a service she has usually paid for, or terminate a call and be denied the service she wanted. This situation becomes even more asymmetric when the calls originate with the service provider, such as in telemarketing. The same rules of monitored customer interactions presumably apply. But rarely is the consumer informed that calls are being recorded when they originate from a company.

The calls companies record are sampled by managers to guide interactions. Sampling methods vary with a wide divergence in outcomes. But a typical sample would be small relative to the data on hand. In essence, recordings are a productivity enhancement tool collected at little additional cost and rendered useless for the large part. Does the outcome justify the deemed consent used to collect personal information on this scale? AI may put the data to better use by processing all of it to improve service delivery. But there will be doubts over a service built on every preceding iteration.

There needs to be an audit trail of data mined through service interactions with customers. This data is in addition to consumer preferences revealed by ecommerce that's routinely monetised. Guard rails set up over use of personal data should apply to recorded calls as well. The issue of consent has to be handled more sensitively.