I've worked in the call centre industry for the last 15 years, most lately within business development and customer service and in my experience it works like this:
The screen in front of each Agent is part of a CRM system (Customer Relationship Management) which lists details of each customer but mostly has basic details, only activated by name, pin and account number (or whatever QVC needs) when you call.
They follow a sort of process or "script" and more or less say the same thing according to guidelines, ie you can start saying your thing but they will interrupt you to ask for details etc etc and only then will deal with your query/problem. This doesn't mean that they're not trying to be helpful, sometimes people I have spoken to will go out of their way to help.
They have a "notes" section which they will access while they are speaking to you - in which details such as "is a good T-caller", for example, are noted. You may have noticed that if you ring up to order something, this element is highlighted and you are asked if you want to speak to a presenter.
Data Protection - you can ask to see what's on your "file" and they are obliged to send it to you.
They will have access to the items you've bought, what you've sent back and the correspondence that's been sent to you. This isn't sinister, it's just standard in my experience. If someone had bought lots of stuff and sent 90-odd percent or more of it back, that SHOULD be noted, as it would mean that the company was losing money from this particular customer, and even making a loss. The rights or wrongs of this have been discussed already!
You're NOT flagged as to "what type of customer you are" - that would be highly unprofessional, very subjective and subject to auditors' analysis of systems. It wouldn't stand up to scrutiny. How for example, would you define a "troublesome" customer? Under what definitions? It wouldn't make sense, and would also render the company vulnerable to whistleblowers.
As I've said nothing is sinister or Big Brother-like; sometimes Agents don't have ENOUGH information nor do they register it correctly nor even understand it. For example I have Power of Attorney for my Mother, who has dementia and the bliddy Post Office had no idea what this meant. Even when I pointed out to them that this should be in big pink letters on their screen they didn't get it and still merrily took "direction" from an old lady who was mentally ill and thus created a great many problems for a while.
