Tell Me Everything!

[tamezin]

I've always instructed my phone agents not to give out their last name, their first name and state was plenty to identify who they were since we were the only call center in our state, and my team was only 35 people in size.

When I was still on the call floor, we seldom gave out our last names. There wasn't a company policy on it, but because I worked in backend collections (you know the last step before you lose your car), I never thought it was a great idea, especially since many of the accounts we had were located close enough for irate customers to pay a visit. Unfortunately, all of the correspondence (statements, collection letters etc )that was sent out, had the account reps full legal name on it, so we were hosed anyway.

[iviles]

When ever I have to call its always nice to be greeted with hi this is so and so but honestly if theres a complant I think customrs dont need names! Theres too many people that will take it personaly and try to find this person.

I remeber when my ex stopped paying for a car he had before we got married and they started calling for payment. I didnt have a clue as to what was going on. All I know is that I got a phone call from collections where the guy was demanding payment now or he would sue me, take my car (it was a diffrent one in my name only) and started to threaten me. I have no clue to this day what that jerks name was but it didnt matter. I called the number he called from back noted time of call. I didnt need to know his name becuase they had records of every call that went out and who made them. Turns out I wasnt the first person that he did it to but I was the last becuase he was already warned!

Theres a lot of crazy people on this planet could you imagian if he acted like that with the wrong person??? With his first and last name some crazy person could have really messed him up especily when that company had only one call center and you could find the address online.

[Rattslinger]

at least the SC can't pin me and/or google me or whatever they wanna do to "get even" with me.

Exactly, I keep trying to explain to the older generation/non-web users, that if someone gives you their full legal name, and you know what city and state they're in, you can pretty much get any info you want on a person.

[XCashier]

Ace of Diamonds once posted a story of a female coworker who was stalked by a crazy customer who got her full name off her name badge, looked it up in the phone book, and called her day and night, verbally harrassing her and her parents over the phone. When the SC stood outside the employee's house packing several knives, the police finally got involved.

SCs can get really scary sometimes. That's why it's a good idea to not give out last names for any reason, whether in correspondance, e-mail or person.

[Becks]

At my store regular PT employees, (most of the store employees) only have the first name on the name badge managers have both names on the badge.

That's similar to my store. Most of us have our first name and last initial on our nametags. Customer service, the department managers (and assistant dept. managers), and maybe the people in one other department have their full names on their nametags.

One of the store managers in particular loves to page me by my full name. Why? I don't know. I am the ONLY person in the store with my first name, why add my last one to the mix? (And he mispronounces it, too. ).

[Andara Bledin]

we were instructed to give our supervisor's last name as our own when asked-company policy-that's how they identify us on a call.

I kind of like that idea.

Although it would be amusing to see what would happen with some SC that called in a lot and got about 5 different people all giving the same last name.

^-.-^

[greensinestro]

My wife once had something like this happen to her. Long before we met, she used to give out her first and last name, and if a customer wanted the spelling of her last name, she gave that out as well. One customer she had, who was very nice, decided to look her up in the white pages, which had everything from her phone number to where she lived. She ended up having to file a complaint and thankfully, the customer stopped calling her. Most people would have ended up changing their phone number, but she had a very easy one at the time and did not want to part with it.

From that point on, she stopped giving out her full name, plus would tell customers that she lived somewhere else.