Peter N

Having worked in call centres there are a couple of points that make BT's statements regarding the call centre's ignorance dubious.

The software, recording equipment and internal monitoring would all be at the call centre and under the control and supervision of call centre staff - not BT head-office. In order to keep a record of the nature of calls which are likely to relate to the trial, especially given the extremely wide nature of possible queries, there would have to be a change in work routines and the call centre managers would have to be aware of that.

Call contents are not analysed by listen to the call - BT technical support has only one phone number and there are no "press button 3" type options so the only automated record they could have relate to total call volume.

There's also no way that BT's call centre has software with tick-boxes to cover every type of question such that it could be analysed for the "right type" of question as there are so many types of questions that they will receive. BT couldn't look at all if the reports of slow speeds or crashing browsers for example and work out how many relate to the trial.

By far the likeliest scenario - one I seen used dozens of times - is the low-tech one where the staff are told to write down the details of any calls regarding quite specific circumstances such as discovering strange cookies or problems with very specific websits - the ones showing 121Medias adverts.

Either way, the call centre must have known that BT wanted an unusual data analysis and it is ridiculous to suppose that the call agents, supervisors and managers who will have handled the calls.

Do BT really expect us to believe that the call centres knew which calls to report for their stats but didn't query whether or not the calls themselves needed handling differently form usual?

If the call centre believed that these were just regualr problems, how was it possible for that same call centre to provide those figures for BT?