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oh, man.
as a one time phone monkey, i can assure you that calling back those who are too quick to hang up is a common way of dealing with the job.
if you are being regularly abused, as all sales people are, the simple joy of another monkey's rising fury on the end of a phone line can often be your only joy. bear in mind that some monkeys are more sadistic than others, and some will have a lower threshold for 'deserves it' than others.
it makes little sense to blame the person you are phoning, but it does follow for most folks. you can't give your boss shit, or you'll lose your job. you can give the peope who are rude to you shit, because the worst they can do is complain to your boss. your boss won't mind, so long as he has plausible deniability ("oh, i think he thought the line had gone dead") and it seems like you are chasing sales.
i know.
it gets worse.
i have called people up and razed them for their lack of common decency and their inaibility to treat me as a human being before, and i can imagine there are other folks among your friends who have done the same. it gets wearing being the receptacle for abuse, being treated as though you deserve all the nager in the world all day. people perhaps don't realise tha you get it ALL DAY, and as such, are pretty over their moans.
you get phoned a lot? oh, once a week? well, i get heavy abuse in my ear every five minutes from someone just like you or worse, and i do that for eight hours, five days week. you may feel hard done by, but i swear, you are not having as bad a day as a phone monkey.
i'm not saying its not annoying. it is, it really is.
but you have to see the other side- your torment is dwarfed by the torment suffered by a call centre worker.
i was pretty ethical about it, in my own way - like some kinda telephonic morbius, only boiling the blood of the evildoer; the rude and inconsiderate assholes who blow whistles down the phone at you or the wankers who think they should give you a tirade about indians stealing all the british jobs - but i recognise it was really just a steam release, a way to take out the frustrations of a job on a person you have some small measure of power over.
like axolotl, taking steadily more and more joy in telling people their predicament was their own fault for not reading TnC agreements, i knew it was wrong.
cold call sales is not nice, and it is to be avoided if you are anything but a rhino-skinned asshole. you have to be a dick, and you have to confront the effects of your being a dick daily.
but yeah.
how to get them to fuck off and never call back?
they work in sales, so make it sound like they wont get a sale.
that's not to say become adversarial.
in fact, avoid that at all costs. if you become adversarial, they will, if annoyed enough about their lot and your attitude, go to greater lengths to irritate you.
it seems obvious, but so many people don't seem to get the simple fact - you don't belittle and bully your witer, because they will piss in your soup. you don't abuse call centre staff, or they will abuse the data protection act to fuck with you. i have never taken numbers from work, but i know those who have.
you won't get taken off the dialler if you get at all confrontational, and they may well lie about their name and their company name, giving you no way to get something done.
nah.
the best way is to confuse the bastards.
if they are trying to sell you internet, act really pleased to hear form them and then lead them on a merry wind of bollocks for a second or two about how glad you are that they have FINALLY got back to you, as the pr0n just KEEPS appearing, and you have NO IDEA why. donkey pr0n! with midgets! and you're allergic to midgets!
if they are trying to sell you a mobile, thak them for calling, as you have been going out of your mind with worry since you lost yours. "yo uare form orange, right? this is about the one i lost on the bus, right?"
the trick with all of this is to refuse to understand a single word they say by way of clarificationjump to conclusions. talk about how great it is that they've found your mobile, fixed the pr0n, managed to sell your car, have got their hands on an ounce, etc, etc.
this sort of approach gets them gone in a few seconds(really, no one wants to be talking to a loony when there is commision to be had) and stops them calling you back every hour to make sure you are still not interested in their brand of snake oil.
on the plus side, it also alleviates the stress of the job.
i loved the calls that make you wonder. those are your lunchtime banter, and that is what keeps a call centre monkey sane.
if you have time, it can also be fun to string them along for hours. that takes patience and skill, though, and never ends as well as it does in your head. |
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