The telemarketing industry lost its challenge against the federal do-not call registry today.
As seen in that article, the industry always cites a figure of 6.5 million workers. That seems wildly overstated to me, but I can’t find what they base that number on or how those outside the industry count the numbers.
And since the do-not-call registry has already been around for a year, shouldn’t the 2 million layoffs that the article talks about have already happened?
If you count customer service reps, call centers, inside sales people and everyone else who uses the phone to take orders, make sales and follow-up after the sale, 6.5 million doesn’t seem the slightest bit overexaggerated.
And judging by my e-mail for the last year, the 2 million directly affected by the no-call list have been assigned to send e-mails telling me how to increase my potency, get drugs for pennies on the dollar, meet hot chix, and refinance my home.
Yes, as per kunilou, I suspect they stretch the number to the largest they can, for PR.
Take a population of 280,000,000 in the USA (is that right? pls correct if not), and 6,500,000 marketers. Assume 140,000,000 have separate phones, that’s a ratio of 65 to 1400 or 21.5 phones per marketer. If they call 7 hours a day at 6 calls per hour, your phone would get called twice a day.
Well, the order of magnitude is about right, but I still think the number is exaggerated (especially since I think they make more calls than that, each).
OK, say they’ve laid off 2 million so it’s 45 marketers per 1400 phones, or 31 phones per marketer, hey they could still bother all of them just as much if they only tried harder and called 8 hours a day at 8 calls per hour (order of magnitude again).
But say half of the phones got themselves on Do-Not-Call, now it’s 45 marketers per 700 phones, or 15.5 phones per marketer. Their employers are going to let them cut back to 5 hours at 6 calls per hour (matching the original productivity level) to reach those phones twice a day? Heck no, they’d lay off more than 2 million.
Aaah, too many assumptions in all the above, but I still think their numbers are stretched.
One of my friends did this in college for a bit. They had a system in which they had more employees than seats. They knew on any given day with such a thankless job with unreliable college kids that they would have a lot of absences. So, let’s say the first 50 people who show up for their shift would get to work out of the 75 people scheduled. Kind of a strange system, but I guess it worked. The turnover in a place like that must be amazing.
This would account for such high numbers. Some of those 6.5 million may not have worked an active shift in a long time. I’m sure many of them are part time college kids.
I agree about the high turnover. Of course, if there are 6.5 million active telemarketers and they turn over quickly, then pretty soon everybody in the whole U.S. would have a taken a turn through the profession. :eek: Not likely.
Nobody’s come up yet with any source for any real numbers, though. They have to be out there somewhere.
When I did this in high school (I did surveying rather than actual marketing) I worked four hours per day, three days per week. While some people went up to five days a week, no one ever did more than four hours a day because the law only allowed calls between five and nine in the evening.
The call centre in Thunder Bay, Ontario, (which only called USA numbers) was closed for this reason.