Some of you know, (and some of don’t) that I work in sales and marketing. Some of my job is telesales. Purely to businesses. Purely 9-5. I don’t read off a script, I have a conversation with them. I don’t hassle people. If they say not interested then fine. Thanks for your time. Goodbye. I am *always* polite. Never shitty, never pushy. A lot of people I have contacted still contact me months on for repeat orders
Most people are nice. Or if not nice, polite. Or if not polite, manageable. Then there are the other people.
I HATE rudeness. I really don’t think there is any need for it at all. Especially if the person you are being rude to is being polite and pleasant. Most people, I have already said, are not rude. There are not nearly as many rude people out there as I thought there would be when I took this job on. The situation might be different if I was ringing people’s homes when Corrie was on, but I’m not. I’m ringing businesses about local business related things. Things that could (and more often than not do) save them a shit load of money on stuff they’d have to buy anyway (on ink and toner if you’re interested – and normally we’re talking a 50% saving).
So. I call a gentleman up. This was *not* a cold call, by the way. He’d spoken to us before and had agreed to get an email with some details. He was so rude, bordering on accusatory, and I had to be polite and say thank you very much and ended the call. I don’t see why I should do though. He has no right to treat me as sub human. He agreed to the information and had spoken to us before. I so desperately wanted to pull him up on it, but of course couldn’t. I had to smile and carry on.
Here is what I would have loved to have said.
“....excuse me Mr [bleep], but what the hell is your problem. Are you so misanthropic that you speak to everyone like that, or is it just you think you can speak to me like that because there is are 2 handsets and some cables between us. I don’t care that you’ve had a bad day, how great do you think mine has being having to speak to people who make me feel crappy. If you don’t want cold callers, TPS your number. It’s your right and a legal requirement that we follow it. If you just say “no thanks” then fine, ill fuck off and leave you be. But you have no right, to make me feel 2 inches tall....”
All I’m asking people to remember is that there are people on the end of these phones. People doing a job. Like what you do, I do and everyone else does. And guess what, we may not like it all of the time. This isn’t necessarily what we dreamt of doing when we were young and full of hope - but it pays the fucking bills. Common courtesy costs absolutely nothing and may make one person’s day a hell of a lot easier.
For those wanting to register as TPS and stop sales calls, please visit http://www.mpsonline.org.uk/tps/
Rant over
Alex,
ReplyDeleteI am one of those people, that dont care very much for cold callers. For legitimate outfits like yours, I have no problem at all.
We ARE TPS registered, however, I get 5 - 10 of these calls a day. Sometimes I tell them where to go, some times I chat to them. Some times I ask nicely to have me taken off their database.
The point is the people that I seem to end up getting calls from are liars. We register with the TPS therefore we shouldnt have these calls, but we still do. This is what angers me.
We are told that we spoke to them back in January and asked them to call back in September. Firstly I was on holiday in Jan, secondly, I would never ask someone to call back in several months. Its not worth the time and hassle for us in 99% of cases. For the 1% that it is worth doing, its not worth investing the 100% time required to facilitate the deal.
There are good people and bad people. You are a goody, sadly you get tainted by the baddies.
Keep on ranting.
Disklabs
:) Thanks for your comment. I appreciate that there are alot of cowboys out there, we have to deal with some of them. The sods. The only thing i can think to do is when they call get their names and report them but if theyre not giving their names its difficult. Ill check to see if there's any other ways of getting rid of them!
ReplyDeleteI understand peoples frustration but its also frustrating for us to be tarred with the same brush. even so there was *no* justification for the way that bloke spoke to me earlier.
Ah well. In this job you got to get up adn do it allllll over again!
As for the evil UW - the name Avril doesnt ring a bell does it - just out of interest.
A x
I guess even the cowboys you both refer too are still doing their job in a lot of cases?
ReplyDeleteThery are paid to make the calls, not paid to make the decsion on who to call, most of the time its a computer choice, right?
I guess its not their fault that their employers are unscrupulous. Whatever the case maybe, this post will definately make me think twice when I next take a cold call from somone.