Dive Brief:
- A class-action complaint filed last week in California Superior Court accused Patagonia of allegedly violating state consent laws by recording, analyzing and sharing calls with Talkdesk without informing customers.
- Customers who call Patagonia’s support lines are told that the call “may be recorded for quality training purposes,” but this disclosure doesn’t mention that the conversations will be sent to Talkdesk, the suit alleged.
- “Individuals who contact Patagonia have a reasonable expectation of privacy,” the lawsuit reads. “When customers call Patagonia, they reasonably believe they are having a conversation with Patagonia. They do not expect that a third party is listening in and recording their confidential conversation.”
Dive Insight:
Patagonia’s customer service disclosure is in line with industry standards, but those standards may no longer reflect how call data is collected, transferred and analyzed.
For many years, contact centers recorded calls and listened to just 1% to 2% as part of agent quality management programs, according to Max Ball, principal analyst at Forrester.
AI has changed how contact centers use recordings. Customer data is now applied to improving quality management programs, monitoring CX and sentiment, and training AI-powered bots, Ball said.
In some cases, sharing data beyond the customer service department can provide beneficial results. Alerting other departments that a certain product is generating a high volume of calls or that a certain promotion is causing confusion can lead to better CX.
Most organizations are too siloed to take advantage of these insights, according to Ball. However, companies can still build trust with customers by bringing their privacy notices in line with modern practices.
“I believe this is largely handled through privacy policies, which could be more closely tied to customer service interactions in the future to help inform consumers while protecting brands,” Ball told Fashion Dive sister publication CX Dive in an email.
Neither Patagonia nor Talkdesk responded to requests for comment as of press time.
