Cold calling telemarketing (“Do you have time to answer some questions about x?”). Felt grotty with every call (got yelled at a lot too, be nice to people who call they likely don’t want to call you any more than you want to receive the call), lasted 2-weeks.
Swapped out to data entry of paper responses into a spreadsheet, was so much better but only lasted 2 days before I went back to the phones. Am verg grateful I don’t have to do that any more.
What’s the correct way of handling those calls. I’ll usually just let them say their bit and then say I’m not interested, which I think is fair but I wonder if it’s not easier for everyone involved to just cut them up and say you’re not interested immediately.
My partner’s mum gets right on my goat because she insists on being an absolute arse on the phone. I get it, it’s annoying but I don’t understand the need to be a total see you next Tuesday to the person on the phone. Hang up and move on.
I mean, I was good with people hanging up during the spiel. Saying “sorry I’m not interested” is more than fine and likely to put you on the upper end of calls that’s day. Swearing or getting upset isn’t acceptable and fails to recognise that neither of you want to be on that call.
However telemarketing has a better response rate than paper based surveys, and the data is used to drive decision making. A lot of people complain when things don’t work out for you - like local council decisions on new amenities, but if you don’t submit your opinion you can’t be heard. It’s not perfect but it is used to define a surprising number of things.
Wrt to you MIL, yeah, it’s not nice to be on the recieving end of hostility, I get it can be annoying but as I implied above nobody chooses the job, I personally had to take whatever I could get and I was too young/not out of work long enough for JSA (plus JSA is a pain to get anyway, but that’s a whole different story).
I usually ask them who they’re calling to speak to, since if they’re not a cold-caller they would know my name. This usually makes them hang up. With your inside experience, is this a good way of handling it?
This is an excellent way of screening. The company I worked for was an opt-in service. So all people being called had at some point agreed to it (though most forget ticking the box on a form or whatever, which is totally understandable), and we therefore had their names, so it wouldn’t have worked for what we were doing. But yes if a cold-caller doesn’t know who they’re calling then it’s a good indication you don’t need what they’re offering.
I heard a podcast with Scott Hanselman (a technologist in the US) and he had a phone system where you had to say the name of the person you wanted to an automated gate-keeper, which sounded like a really cool system, and similar to the sort of screening you’re doing.
“Please take my number off your list.” and hang up. Any company that follows the OFCOM rules is obliged to honour verbal requests for removal, so that’s the correct thing to do.
Admittedly, a cold calling company that follows the rules is an oxymoron so I tend to just cut them off with a “for fuck sake”, hang up, Google the number out of sheer curiosity, and then add it to the block list. Every now and then I see a number in the call history that’s been auto-blocked, so that at least provides a little satisfaction.
Or there’s the Google call screening thing, though legitimate callers find it confusing and often hang up before you get chance to take over the call, or assume it’s voicemail and try to leave a message.
got yelled at a lot too, be nice to people who call they likely don’t want to call you any more than you want to receive the call
comma splice
I hate being mean or obtuse to callers using my phone to sell me things or defraud me too. I’ll bet the humanity on the other end eventually caused you to change jobs too – because the seediness was a known quantity at the start but being in the line of return fire was definitely the catalyst. This is the goal.
In respect to 1) you’re absolutely correct, that should be two sentences and not the horrible run-on that I created.
In response to 2), yes I can understand being wary of spam callers, there weren’t nearly as many 15 years ago when I was doing the job. It was targeted research, so people who’d opted in to being contacted for marketing purposes (“how is your new toaster working out for you”) or local authority requests for comment (“are you happy with the new park that opened”).
I’ve had some real howlers the other way though (with actual scammers) so I understand the frustration, one woman who was obviously a spam PPE caller yelled at me “don’t you like money!” after I had politely declined,and there’s no dealing with that. In the end the easiest thing to do and a definite improvement on being nasty, is just hang up, in my opinion.
I have a contact in my phone called Spam (with a picture of Spam), and I add any number that doesn’t pass the sniff test within 30s (particularly Robo-spammers, urgh!), it can very helpful to get a repeat call and the picture of a can of spam tells me not to bother picking up.
I think you may misunderstand what I did. It was reaching out to people who had opted in to be part of market research. If they said “don’t contact me again” or if they were hostile then they got on the “no-call” list and were never contacted again. The only way that we could have got their phone number is if they submitted it during some sort of sign-up process somewhere. So I think you might be equating the work I did with something else.
The “cold” part of the “cold-calling” I mentioned above was because they weren’t explicitly expecting the call, but they had somewhere signed up and agreed to be contacted.
Refusing to take work is a rather privileged position, not everyone has that luxury, and I didn’t at the time. That being said I was out of there as quick as I could find something else (I only did 2 weeks).
Cold calling telemarketing (“Do you have time to answer some questions about x?”). Felt grotty with every call (got yelled at a lot too, be nice to people who call they likely don’t want to call you any more than you want to receive the call), lasted 2-weeks.
Swapped out to data entry of paper responses into a spreadsheet, was so much better but only lasted 2 days before I went back to the phones. Am verg grateful I don’t have to do that any more.
What’s the correct way of handling those calls. I’ll usually just let them say their bit and then say I’m not interested, which I think is fair but I wonder if it’s not easier for everyone involved to just cut them up and say you’re not interested immediately.
My partner’s mum gets right on my goat because she insists on being an absolute arse on the phone. I get it, it’s annoying but I don’t understand the need to be a total see you next Tuesday to the person on the phone. Hang up and move on.
I mean, I was good with people hanging up during the spiel. Saying “sorry I’m not interested” is more than fine and likely to put you on the upper end of calls that’s day. Swearing or getting upset isn’t acceptable and fails to recognise that neither of you want to be on that call.
However telemarketing has a better response rate than paper based surveys, and the data is used to drive decision making. A lot of people complain when things don’t work out for you - like local council decisions on new amenities, but if you don’t submit your opinion you can’t be heard. It’s not perfect but it is used to define a surprising number of things.
Wrt to you MIL, yeah, it’s not nice to be on the recieving end of hostility, I get it can be annoying but as I implied above nobody chooses the job, I personally had to take whatever I could get and I was too young/not out of work long enough for JSA (plus JSA is a pain to get anyway, but that’s a whole different story).
I usually ask them who they’re calling to speak to, since if they’re not a cold-caller they would know my name. This usually makes them hang up. With your inside experience, is this a good way of handling it?
This is an excellent way of screening. The company I worked for was an opt-in service. So all people being called had at some point agreed to it (though most forget ticking the box on a form or whatever, which is totally understandable), and we therefore had their names, so it wouldn’t have worked for what we were doing. But yes if a cold-caller doesn’t know who they’re calling then it’s a good indication you don’t need what they’re offering.
I heard a podcast with Scott Hanselman (a technologist in the US) and he had a phone system where you had to say the name of the person you wanted to an automated gate-keeper, which sounded like a really cool system, and similar to the sort of screening you’re doing.
“Please take my number off your list.” and hang up. Any company that follows the OFCOM rules is obliged to honour verbal requests for removal, so that’s the correct thing to do.
Admittedly, a cold calling company that follows the rules is an oxymoron so I tend to just cut them off with a “for fuck sake”, hang up, Google the number out of sheer curiosity, and then add it to the block list. Every now and then I see a number in the call history that’s been auto-blocked, so that at least provides a little satisfaction.
Or there’s the Google call screening thing, though legitimate callers find it confusing and often hang up before you get chance to take over the call, or assume it’s voicemail and try to leave a message.
In respect to 1) you’re absolutely correct, that should be two sentences and not the horrible run-on that I created.
In response to 2), yes I can understand being wary of spam callers, there weren’t nearly as many 15 years ago when I was doing the job. It was targeted research, so people who’d opted in to being contacted for marketing purposes (“how is your new toaster working out for you”) or local authority requests for comment (“are you happy with the new park that opened”).
I’ve had some real howlers the other way though (with actual scammers) so I understand the frustration, one woman who was obviously a spam PPE caller yelled at me “don’t you like money!” after I had politely declined,and there’s no dealing with that. In the end the easiest thing to do and a definite improvement on being nasty, is just hang up, in my opinion.
Lord, I remember back when the worst thing calling was either a telemarketer, or a collection agency.
Some of them were unpleasant, but not nearly as unpleasant as the people who are trying to straight up steal your shit these days.
Barring a known number, that phone can keep on ringing.
I have a contact in my phone called Spam (with a picture of Spam), and I add any number that doesn’t pass the sniff test within 30s (particularly Robo-spammers, urgh!), it can very helpful to get a repeat call and the picture of a can of spam tells me not to bother picking up.
If your sign for a job that you know irritates every single person that comes into contact with, then that is on you.
If every person had the respect for others to refused those jobs, then those calls wouldn’t exist.
I think you may misunderstand what I did. It was reaching out to people who had opted in to be part of market research. If they said “don’t contact me again” or if they were hostile then they got on the “no-call” list and were never contacted again. The only way that we could have got their phone number is if they submitted it during some sort of sign-up process somewhere. So I think you might be equating the work I did with something else.
The “cold” part of the “cold-calling” I mentioned above was because they weren’t explicitly expecting the call, but they had somewhere signed up and agreed to be contacted.
Refusing to take work is a rather privileged position, not everyone has that luxury, and I didn’t at the time. That being said I was out of there as quick as I could find something else (I only did 2 weeks).