I work as a customer service representative for a mid-sized Insurance company that services several states.

Obviously for privacy reasons, I won’t name the company I work for, but it is a company with a good reputation that focuses on Customer Service. This company doesn’t offer the cheapest rate, but likes to think that it makes up the difference in customer experience. Overall my experience with customers has been better than I expected when I took this job, but of course there are the same very special customers that we all hear stories about.

This did not happen to me, but we had an incident tonight where a caller threatened one of my coworkers with physical violence. I had actually taken a call from this person before where they had threatened one of our local agents, which I had passed to the local office, who did not take any legal action.

Now, before you say that there is no way they could figure out who we are, our call center is in the corporate headquarters, which is in a smaller community. It would actually not be too hard to track one of us down by our first name alone. I also understand that 99% of people who threaten us over the phone would never actually do something to us. It’s words said in anger.

However, my question is: what legal protection do I have against customers who threaten my person, my home, family, etc? Do I have the right to file a police report if the threats are personal or specific enough? I know from a previous job that there are contracts about how we can use customer information. (Coworker got in trouble for using customer account information to report someone to CPS for severe child abuse - coworker was also a teacher and a mandated reporter) I feel like there should be a means by which our safety and peace of mind trumps their privacy when they take it to a certain level - and maybe a little bit that they should be punished for trying to get results this way.

Edit to add location: Illinois. Can’t be more specific.