Now Mrs Brown can scarcely hear and certainly doesn’t understand what it is that’s being

Now Mrs Brown can scarcely hear, and certainly doesn’t understand what it is that’s being offered, but Anthea skilfully extracts from her the information that she has a grandson and a granddaughter. I can almost picture their proudly displayed photographs.This is a key moment in the call. Too much oohing and aahing and Anthea will get a wrap over the knuckles from her team leader for taking too long, too little and Mrs Brown might just realise that she can live without three-way conferencing. Wouldn’t it be nice, she tells Mrs Brown, to talk to both her grandchildren at once on Christmas Day.

After all – slight softening in her voice – it’s a time for families. The offer is duly accepted.As someone who finds it hard to discuss money with the milkman, I can only marvel at Anthea’s sang-froid. But how would she feel if Mrs Brown were her granny? In three months’ time, she will like as not find herself landed with phone paraphernalia she doesn’t want, has to pay for and cannot use? “No. I’m helping the customers, making their lives better.” It’s the same story all the way up to the top. “The customer always comes first,” says Kathleen Dobie, a middle- aged Scot whose benign smile only wanes when she refers to the academics who write reports about “her industry” without understanding it. “Once upon a time customers only heard from us when our bill fell on their mat. Now we are providing the level of service they require.”Though they will never admit it, it is said that most of the BT directors responsible for the telemarketing division – or “channel” as it is called – have all quietly removed their home numbers from the computer.

They don’t want their evenings ruined or their grannies cold- called For most customers do not “require” this level of service. If it were simply all about the opening gambit of the sales pitch – giving customers discounts such as the Family and Friends scheme which allows you to save 10 per cent on 10 selected numbers – then surely it would be quicker and cheaper simply to knock it off every domestic customer’s bill? The discounts are the window-dressing, the loss-leader, the tin of beans for 10 pence on the poster in the supermarket window that lures you in.There is a danger, in discussing the pitfalls of telemarketing, in focusing on BT. But, since they are Britain’s pioneers in the field, the problems that are causing such concern are much more obvious in an operation of their unparalleled scale The issue of employees’ rights in particular comes up often. As well as using the latest in technology in their call centres, BT prefers with its advisors to use the latest in employment techniques and that means flexible, cheap contracts with third-party agencies both in their telemarketing centres and in their more traditional call centres dealing with 150 and 192 enquiries. Kathleen Dobie cannot confirm the number of agency staff used at Newcastle – it is, evidently, commercially sensitive information – but she defends such “partnerships” with employment bureaux on the grounds that they cut down on routine personnel work for her and her senior staff and “they allow us, in what has to be a cost- conscious environment, to flex up and down numbers of staff so as to provide the level of service our customers expect at peak times”.Simon Holding – not his real name, because his wife still works in telemarketing and now, more than ever, they need her wages – worked in a BT telemarketing centre for two and a half years. Like, he estimates, some 90 per cent of the advisors he worked with, Holding was on an employment agency contract, renewed at regular intervals. With its own people BT is a model, union- friendly employer but agency staff are paid at lower rates, have to rely more heavily on bonuses, do not get BT pensions, sick pay, discounts on the company’s services and they cannot apply for internally advertised staff jobs.