Privacy Notice - Finance and Customer Services

Customer Services

Customer Services – Service Specific Privacy Notice – Recording Telephone Calls and Electronic Information

Introduction

This privacy notice explains how Customer Services gathers, uses, discloses, and manages customer data.

Background

Customer Services deal with a wide range of enquiries which arrive through various access channels; including telephone, email, online forms, social media and face to face.

Customer Services also manage the Council’s website and provide customers with online forms that can be completed for service requests.

Telephone Calls

Why do we record telephone calls?

Rotherham Borough Council may record telephone calls that are made to and from services which form part of our Contact Centre telephone system.

Recording telephone conversations is a standard process for many organisations. A call recording acts as an independent record of a conversation that has taken place.

Recordings of telephone calls made to and from our Corporate Contact Centre are kept in line with our data retention policy for the purpose of quality assurance, maintaining standards, staff development and for the purpose of investigating complaints and reports of threats and abuse.

How will I know my call is being recorded?

You will know where your call may be recorded as our automated welcome message will advise you of this before your call connects to a member of staff.

If we call you from our Contact Centre, we will verbally advise you that the call is being recorded.

By choosing to continue with your call you give us your consent to record the conversation.

Should you choose not to have your conversation recorded you can terminate the call before speaking to someone. If you still need to speak to us but you would prefer for your conversation not to be recorded, you can request this. A manager will consider the request and may take steps to transfer the call to a telephone that is not part of the contact centre telephone system.

Where a call is transferred to a telephone line that is not part of the Contact Centre telephone system, the recording will end.

How secure are my recorded conversations?

Your information is stored securely on our internal servers and treated confidentially. Access to them is tightly controlled and managed by the Head of Customer Services.

Some call recordings may be kept longer than our retention policy if there is a justified reason to do so.

Access to our call recording software system in order to playback conversations is restricted to certain members of staff with the appropriate authority who are required to maintain a secure system password and whose access can be audited and traced.

Browsing call recordings for no specific reason is not permitted by any member of staff.

Why do we need to access a call recording?

We will not generally have to access a call recording unless we are carrying out our quality assurance checks, if there is need to investigate a complaint, reaffirm key information, assist the Police in the prevention and detection of a crime or to investigate in the event of abusive language or threat to staff.

Rotherham Borough Council will not tolerate abusive language or behaviour. Staff have the right to work without fear of abuse both physically and verbally. We will protect staff and maintain high standards by reviewing any conversations where a member of staff has reported feeling threatened or offended and take action to prevent this from happening again.

If through our quality assurance checks we identify a call that could be used in a training environment, we will always edit out personal customer details.

Who do we share this information with?

Should there be a genuine business requirement for an internal service user to access a call recording, a written request will be made clearly stating the reason for the request. This will be considered by the Head of Customer Services.

Call recordings may be provided for the detection and prevention of crime to external bodies such as the Police.

Transfer of physical call recording files in WAV or MP3 formats is done securely through a secure Council email account to a secure recipient email address or on hard copy via a secure courier service or postal service.

How do I access my call recordings?

If the recording is still available, you can request access to your information by submitting a Subject Access Request under the Data Protection Act clearly providing as much detail possible including the date and time of the call and the telephone number from which the call was made. You must also state the reason why you need access to the call recording.

We will then invite you to our office to listen to the recording and upon providing two forms of identification.

Information entered onto a Council system on behalf of a Customer

When a customer makes contact in person, by telephone, email, or social media customer service advisers generally ask additional questions so they can better understand what the customer needs to know and what they need to do next. This may mean they have to collect personal information and enter it onto an electronic system.

Information added to an electronic system provided by the Council department responsible for delivering the service:

Please refer to the service specific privacy notices for more information.

Self service forms on the Website

When a customer submits an online form, the information is sent to the department responsible for delivering the service in question.

Please refer to the service specific privacy notices for more information.