Here is an “Ask the…” that truly no one will care about. I, as a summer job, am a telephone surveyor. The only difference between me and a telemarketer is that I don’t sell anything (I would never have taken the job otherwise). Aside from that, it’s the same gig. So, if you’ve ever wanted to talk ask anything of someone who works in this most loathsome of professions, fire away.
Please note that I cannot, by NDA, use the proper names of any of the client companies I do surveys for, but I can discuss the ins-and-outs of the operation in general and in specifics otherwise.
Hey, Stainless, respect I worked in market research for 6 months and it was quite hellish. Everyone automatically assumes that we’re telemarketers (easy there Snoop…), but hey, we can’t blame them.
Anyway… any interesting stories? Pissy respondents? Do you call internationally or just in the US?
Why does my wife never (well rarely) qualify for those things. She actually likes taking those survays but usually after about 2 minuts she gets the ‘sorry, you don’t qualify for any survays we have, may we call you at another time?’
Well, I’ve only been at this for two weeks, so there aren’t really any stories yet from me. The other day, however, I was sitting next to a girl who called a woman and asked for the name on the screen. It turned out that the name was the woman’s estranged daughter and the woman started freaking out because this meant that the daughter was alive. She alternated between cursing the daughter (at high volume) for leaving and crying (at high volume) because she was apparently not dead. Surreal.
I call throughout North America, depending on what project I am working on.
Ironically, many of these surveys only want people who are unhappy with the product or service being discussed. Perhaps your wife is… ahem… unlucky enough to have had generally good service in these areas. Other times, the surveys have narrow demographics in mind. I am actually surprised at how many people really enjoy responding to these things.
Believe me, it’s the worst of telemarketing without bonuses or incentives. You must follow the script verbatim, even when the respondent is cursing and asking questions you cannot answer satisfactorily. “How much longer is this?” is a common question- many of these surveys are aimed at people at work, who don’t have time to waste on a survey- and you must give evasive answers because one question may trigger a more detailed section of the survey, you have no way of knowing this. “Take me off your list” doesn’t apply, and the answer for that just makes people more angry. Often surveys are done with specialists like IT or medical professionals, and the phone interviewers have to learn the terms in the study and act like they understand the jargon used.
There is so much more, I would need to go to the Pit to go on.
My question for you- have you had a monitoring report done yet?
I did this for awhile when I was a teenager. One of the main reasons you might be “disqualified” from answering a survey is because the market researchers have quotas for each gender, age group etc. so that they can ensure a balanced and representative sample. Once they’ve reached their quota they will only survey people from other groups.
The company I worked for did surveys for a particular gasoline company. When their quota on female drivers ran out we had to specifically ask to speak to “a man in the house who buys gasoline for the car”. I did have one or two women hang up on me in anger at this “sexist” survey we were taking.
Perhaps this is firm-dependent, because, although ‘verbatim’ is chanted ad nauseum around the office, I am allowed to break the script to answer mid-way questions without any complaints from the supervisors. Basically, as long as the questions themselves are asked verbatim, the call is kept short and I do not say anything that is leading, I can pacify people as necessary.
That is not the case with this firm, as there is a specific “do not call” flag that I can attach to any phone number when requested. I have yet to see it ignored.
By this, I assume you mean a supervisor monitoring my calls and grading me. Yes, it happens every shift and I am not told which calls will be monitored.
I used to work in the industry too. Worked my way up from phone monkey to shift manager. Then I moved back to the IT department where I got paid double the money to sit on my butt and watch movies all night.
My favorite story: I was calling random numbers, as always. A woman picked up, and I started into the script. She cut me off, saying, “Who are you? How did you get this number? I’m in the Witness Protection Program!” and then hung up. You’re doing a bang-up job of it, too, ma’am! I wish I’d thought fast enough to say, “Hey, Guido, we found her!”
Those stupid quotas can be a bitch. I remember one night we were calling Chicago during the final game of the NBA Finals, where Michael Jordan was about to take the Bulls to another championship. And we had to speak to black males, age 18-25, who were the head of the household, and made over $50K a year. About 200 people dialed all night, and we got a grand total of one survey completed.
That quota sounds a little hard to meet even without a game going on.
Me, I was never a telephone interviewer, I went door to door interviewing people. Surprisingly, I didn’t hate it, but I only did it for four months. And maybe I got lucky, but nobody swore at me.
When I had this job, I was told typically that about seventy percent of the people who will agree to be surveyed are female, so we were almost always desparate for amle respondants.
The company I work for part-time asks (when there is no quota) for the person in the household who last had a birthday. This ensures a greater randomness (women answering the phone) than companies who talk to anyone who wants to take part in a survey at the number.
I worked in market research for 6 months and it was quite hellish. Everyone automatically assumes that we’re telemarketers (easy there Snoop…), but hey, we can’t blame them. 