Your business is making phone calls, that is what you do.
Please learn what an answering machine message sounds like.
I come home 10 fucking messages, 9 are from these morons a half a brain cell between them
"Hello?, Hello?, Hello!, Hello???, is Mr. ******** there? Hello???, Hello?..for about a minute.
I’m not one of these folks with a cutesy gotcha message, it’s a very straight forwards, we can’t come to the phone, leave a message.
Are you waiting for me to pick up? When you can’t pronounce my last name, I know that you don’t know me. At least try to trick me into picking up the phone.
totally, i always get that. i think there must be something screwy with the phones they use. ever notice that when you pick up sometimes and say hello, it doesnt really sound like anyones there, and then it kinda clicks in and theres suddenly background babbling and they always ask hello? first, just to make sure theyre talking to someone. like their phones only click in to them when someone actually picks up, and i guess answering machines dont do the trick until after the beep. well, thats my theory. anyway, i think telemarketing sucks and wouldnt buy anything from or donate anything to a tming organization, just to show my protest to it. if i want to buy something or donate money to somewhere, i’ll do it when i want to, not when some jackass calls me in the middle of supper and pronounces my name wrong. and my name isnt even hard to pronounce!! you just have to sound it out dammit. nothing personal to any tmers out there, i just dislike what you do.
Just a WAG, but I think they use a dialing machine that sits there and dials numbers. Only when the phone line is detected as ‘connected’ does the telemarketer get a signal of some sort. If the TM is dozing, then you get that clicking noise, which is probably a little red light blinking at their end. And since they didn’t just hear your answering machine message, (all they get is a connect signal when it beeps) they have to assume someone is there, thus the “hello? hello?” crap.
Yes. It’s called an automatic dialer. It dials ten numbers at once. It lets them ring 3 1/2 times. Most answering machines pick up after the fourth ring. Once the first call is connected it sends that one to the telemarketer and hangs up the other 9.
Very annoying.
While telemarketing sucks, being a telemarketer for a while is great experience.
I work in the Market Research Industry. We call people up on the phone and ask them to participate in surveys. We often pay people for thier time. People love us. Life is good.
All that said - what Scylla posted is not entirely accurate. The machine in question is called a Predictive Dialer. It is actually a fairly complicated computer.
It looks at the number of telemarketers available (X) and dials some number of phone numbers larger than X by a factor of Y (XY). The process is based on the bet that there won’t be a live person answering every number it dials.
This is why you hear a pause before the “Hello.” The computer has to make sure that you are a live human before passing you along to a waiting Agent. Unless, of course, there is no Agent available. Then you get that “Please hold for an important call” crap.
The thing that seperates Jerks from respectable businesses is the value of Y. Obviously, the higher it is set, the more productive they can be, and the more of us they piss off with hold times, hang ups and abandoned calls.
THe automatic dialer just dials every number in sequence to play a recorded message. What I was referring to of course was the predictive dialer. Thanks Sdimbert for filling in my explanation and correcting me.
Necros:
Telemarketing experience is good because you learn to think fast on your feet, develop public speaking and one on one skills, learn how to become persuasive, learn how to deal with rejection, Learn tact etcetera etcetera.
It makes you tough, looks good on a resume, and qualifies you for just about any sales job, as well as prepares you for management. You learn psychology, and if you are one of the few that becomes TRULY good at it, and you sell a good product, you can make more money than God.
Secondly, because nobody bit my head off yet, I should recite what I believe is what all successful salesmen tell themselves every night:
“By selling a good product, I am filling a need in my customer’s life for a price they happily pay. For this reason, every prospect will be happy to hear my offer! I bring good news! People love it when I call them!”
Of course, somewhere, this idea becomes perverted and wrong.
I just don’t know where the good karma stops, and the hatred begins. … Probably about when they call pkbites…
I’m perfectly capable of finding the good products I need all on my own, thank you very much. If I require assistance with locating the proper shelf, I will be sure to ask.
In short, what I require in completing any type of quid pro quo transaction, is not a salesman, but a vendor.
But then, I’m also the guy who believes the Internet should remain a plaything, and not bcome an instrument of commerce.
forgot all about the dialer…that would also explain the “please hold for an important message”…
great, more technology to annoy my ass. I really have to pony up for a new machine that let’s me stop and delete mid message, as it stands I have to listen to the entire thing.
You say this now, but I am sure that, sooner or later, you’re going to run into a really good salesman, one who will help you identify a need you didn’t even know you had… one you will happily pay to satisfy.
:stepping behind lecturn:
You see, once upon a time, when people needed to buy something, they went to someone who knew about such things to identify a solution. So, if you needed a dishwasher, you went to the local Appliance Store to speak to someone who could teach you all about dishwashers. Ditto for cars, vegetables, soap, etc.
Then, as consumer pressure for lower prices mounted, people became willing to forego this education in exchange for lower prices. This led to the Big Box store, places like Home Depot and CompUSA. Yes, they say that their associates are knowledgable, but most of them are not.
Haven’t you ever known more about PC’s than the kid at Best Buy?
Anyhow, people were happy paying less… for a while.
But now, things are changing again. Head down to your local Whatever-R-Us and check out the lines. No… not the ones at the register… the ones at Customer Service. See all those people? They are standing in line to return the crap that they bought that was not what they really needed.
Mark my words: Americans are tired of forraging for information and the specialty store is going to be reborn. Yes, the Internet will play a major role, but people are once again willing to pay more to buy something from a salesman - someone who has made it their business to learn how to serve them.
Of course, none of this has anything to do with unsolicited sales… which is really what the whole tele-marketing issue is about. The evil there is that I never asked anyone to help me refinance my mortgague, put siding on my house, change my long-distance, etc, etc, etc… They just decided to serve me anyway.
All you can do is ask to be removed from the list.
It works… slowly.
I am not sure where to go from here… I got carried away…
In short: The problem is not going to go away.
PS - ponch, you can buy a nice digital answering machine for about $35 on sale nowadays. They’re great!
idiot goat fucking neanderthals, whick calling my goddamn house. Leave me alone. Amongst your hundreds of worthless rantings, there are numerous messages from people I want to talk to.
Burn in hell inventor of the auto-dialer.
may your scrotum atrophy inventor of the analog answering machine.
fuck me for being cheap and lazy and not buying a digital machine.
ps…the carwash “system” which attaches to your garden hose, that they sell on TV sucks.
I have figured out one way to dissuade telemarketers. Whenever I purchase an item where I have to give a name and a phone number at the same time, I use a long, unpronounceable name. Similarly, I use the same name for all of my magazine subscriptions. Nobody ever calls my Maxim-reading alter-ego. Well, almost never. When they do, it’s kind of a treat:
RING!
“Hello?”
“Hello, may I speak to Mr… Zu-been-gyeeew Buhzharinskeeee?”
“If you can’t pronounce his name, he doesn’t want to speak to you. Take his name off of your list.”
