[...] we’ve been told that management screens calls randomly and that they listen to every call that trips an alarm suggesting customer dissatisfaction.

They’re very vague about what gets a call flagged, which makes me suspect this “alarm” is as bullshit as SDF8’s “high-tech security system.” There’s some low-hanging quantifiables, I guess—if the rep hangs up before the customer, which isn’t allowed. If the customer gives negative feedback. If the customer calls back the next week. If the rep doesn’t have all eight windows up and loaded. If the customer yells at you. If you don’t say some specific keywords you’re supposed to use.

I’m initially skeptical of rumors that some software scans every call for proper (or improper) verbiage and flags calls in which a customer swears or sounds irritated. As someone who transcribes a lot of interviews, I’ve followed the progress of speech-recognition technology pretty closely: last time I checked, the day I could trust a computer to do my transcription for me was still at least a decade away.