No: I won't participate in a telephone survey while I'm at work

The BBQ Pit
21

I agree. The tele people don’t INTEND to be rude but they are percieved that way. If the people on the other end of the phone politely say “no” then the convo is over. You do your job, they do theirs. No humans were harmed in the making of this phone call.

SHIT! I wasn’t going to say anything. Bum. I was a tele-person over 20 yrs ago. I should have gotten over how rude people were. :slight_smile:

As to the CBD thing. I’m sure it is the same there. different suburbs have different phone numbers. The first 3 digits tell you the area. I still can’t see how posting on the Dope is a better use of the bosses time then a telephone survey though.

22

“CBD phone prefixes” won’t stop an auto-dialler program. One phone exchange in a city such as Adelaide or Sydney (in Australia for example) services several parts of the city, some of which include the CBD and some of which don’t. There are dozens upon dozens of prefixes that the exchange will handle, and they’re not related to physical location beyond being part of the “Darlinghurst” exchange (or whichever one it is). A phone number in the CBD could have the same prefix as a phone number belonging to a private house a suburb or two over, and to cut out all of them which might include the CBD would also cut off other parts of the city and other suburbs. It would cut out “legitimate” customers as well as the business phone lines, so the telemarketing/survey companies just aren’t going to do it.

23

In in the interest of full disclosure, I work in marketing. Direct response marketing, to be exact…which means GASP! I work on putting together direct mail pieces. MUAHAHAHAHAHAAAA!!!

On the bright side, for our major client, we only send mailings to current customers (we are in customer retention, not acquisition), and we have a crack analytics department that models people to predict when they are, say, six months out from likely being interested in purchasing a new car. In other words, although it obviously isn’t 100% accurate, you should only be seeing our mailings if you are in market.

That having been said…I think unsolicited sales calls are the spawn of the devil. Not sure if it is better or worse than SPAM. Well, at least with calls, there is a working (pretty much) Do Not Call list in play. And you can’t get viruses…so, yeah…sales calls bad, SPAM worse.

But…I’m fine with market research surveys. I’ve always been interested in research. Plus, I figure if I’m sending out surveys, it’s my duty to take them. I don’t get the being rude to surveyors, though…if you tell them you aren’t interested, they say “Thank You,” and let you go. In all the professional research firms I’ve dealt with, not a single one has a “The respondent must decline the survey three times” rule or anything like that, unlike sales calls. If they try to force you to stay on the line and finish, it’s either a sales call or unprofessional. And I say go ahead and be rude to those groups.

Case in point: my bank called my cell (while I was at work) to get my opinions on some product line. I actually told them I couldn’t participate at that time, but if they called the same time the next day, I’d be likely to participate. I’ve found that legitimate researchers will return the call, while sales folks will not (not always the case though). Sure enough, they called back the next day, asked me my age, and said “Thank you.” That was it. :slight_smile:

On a side note, and I’m sure a lot of you are aware of this, a lot of the market research calls are screeners for focus groups. You answer a few simple questions, and if you meet the requirements, you get invited to participate in a two-hour discussion for anywhere from $60 to $200. Usually in the evening or over lunch. Not bad.

Regardless, really don’t see the point in bring rude to legit research groups, marketing or otherwise.

24

Perhaps because they are rude to us?

25

Sorry…I don’t see merely being called as being rude. And there is nothing above that states that the market research companies are being rude in how they treat people on the phone. Sales calls…yes. Which is a whole different ball of wax.

In my experience, many people (including me) automatically assume an unsolicited call is a sales call…even if they are told up front it’s not going to be. And kick immediately into “annoyed” mode.

If a caller is ever rude in behavior, they are shooting themselves in the foot. But for research purposes, they are looking to meet a certain quota of respondents, and being rude is antithetical to that goal. Not saying you won’t meet rude researchers, just that legit research facilities actually train people, and tone and manner are part of the syllabus.

My solution: Call out the rudeness (in researchers, sales calls, family members) and hang up. But just being rude out-of-hand to someone because they call with research? Don’t see the point.

26

I think the important part of Lockseer’s quote there was legit research groups.

If they are legit and for research (i.e. a market survey and not telemarketing), then they willnot be rude to you. If they are, there’s legit company that you can contact and get the surveyer who called you warned or fired.

Back in my poor student days I did work in market research, but only for large legit research companies. No way I would ever do telemarketing or sales calls.

Legit companies will have there employees quickly end the call if the respondent even mentions once that they’re not interested. They will put you on their companies do not call list. And they won’t be rude. When I was calling there was at least a 10% chance that you have a supervisor listening in (live) on any particular call, and they also audited call recordings. And they weren’t very lenient with the warnings for poor performance. Rude behavior would get you canned pretty quickly, and you knew you were replaceable - most of the employees were part-time, and students or retirees. High turnover.

Any rude behavior is unacceptable, and feel free to hang up on any idiots who call you and act unprofessionally.

But don’t dismiss everyone as rude just because they had the temerity to call you. (General you, not any poster specifically)

27

Sorry, must learn to “preview” more.

What Lockseer said.

28

Well we disagree on this point. I am clearly not alone in this opinion. There are numerous examples in this thread of people being upset that some stranger called them at work for non work reasons.

These calls are wasting people time that is rude.

29

What does this mean?

30

I dd this stuff (market research only, not sales pitches, but unsolicited cold-calling nonetheless), once.

Trust me, I did not hold it against anyone if they got thoroughly pissed at me. I wondered about the ones who didn’t.

I suppose there are people who take these jobs despite having other employment options available to them, but I can’t imagine why. The survey structures are usually insulting and demeaning to the employees who have to read them, too.

31

A couple things:

The main point of contention here is whether someone feels it is rude to be contacted at work for research or sales purposes. For research purposes, I don’t. For sales purposes, I do. Some people disagree, as stated above.

As to what I meant by “legit research companies,” I mean companies who are just doing research, as opposed to sales calls that are thinly disguised as research studies.

Curious what you mean by survey structures being insulting and demeaning to the employees. I’m not contesting this…just not sure what you mean by this. Could you give some examples?

32

I did market research for awhile, too, but I didn’t find the survey structures to be insulting and demeaning. I understood that they had to be written and presented the way they were to ensure the most statistically relevant results.

And I’m one of those people who generally is not immediately annoyed by telemarketers. I always respond with, “I’m sorry to interrupt, but I know you’re busy, and I’m just not interested.” It gets callers off my line quickly and easily. Frankly, you can hear the relief and shock in their voices many times.

However, for those telemarketers that suck, I hold the company and their supervisors responsible. I put myself through college both telemarketing and managing telemarketers. There is no excuse for the telemarketer to be rude, and it’s quite counter-productive. Helloooooo!!! You WANT people to listen to you and be swayed by your pitch, ya dumbshits!! If you train your people to be good at their jobs, professional and respectful, you actually end up with more successful salespeople, and not just order takers. Which, duh, may make you more money.

33

Otto, I can assure you that I was quite polite. I merely said that I wasn’t interested in participating because I was in the office at work and then hung up. My point about CBD prefixes is simply this: a Sydney number of the form 9210 xxxx is right in the CBD. It’s about 99.99% certain that it’s a non-residential number. Calling such a number during business hours and asking the respondent to participate in a non-business related survey is almost invariably going to result in a non-cooperative, and possibly angry response. Why then do the survey companies generate these numbers in the first place?

34

I’m not familar with your CBD phone setups, but from reading Sierra Indigo’s post it appears that if they were to cut out numbers with your prefix they would lose a significant number of residences. In a survey with a small sample size targeting that area, a few hundred or even a few dozen households can be significant.

35

9210 xxxx is right in the middle of the CBD for some phone numbers, but it also services several ‘residential’ parts of the city, as well as a few of the ‘inner suburbs’. To cut all of the numbers that start with 92 or even 921 would run the risk of removing a lot of potential survey/research subjects. The company’s just not going to do it. Perhaps if you removed all numbers starting with 9210, but the company’s still not going to run the risk of possibly missing a contact that would provide information they need/want, just in case a business might be the one answering a phone. In fact, some businesses may even be part of the target group they’re trying to contact, in which case no numbers would be blocked/removed.

36

Thanks **Sierra Indigo ** (and my apologies for not seeing your earlier post with similar details). That’s very interesting information. I hadn’t realised that the CBD prefixes could stray as far as the neighbouring suburbs.

37

I was once pulled out of a parent conference by a researcher who’d been a little fuzzy about the natue of the call to our secretary. They did not get their survey filled out on that call.

I can see your point and maybe it’s just me, but I was taught to never do anything over the phone that I wouldn’t do in person. If I needed to have a survey filled out, I wouldn’t just walk into someone’s office during their busy workday, I’d write a letter (or call an assistant if applicable) and set up an appointment. This isn’t always possible, I know, but it’s how I’ve been contacted by researchers before.

There’s also something a little rude about how they launch into their spiel deliberately not allowing you space to respond. Only had one be deliberately rude though.

38

N/P Cunctator. :slight_smile:

39

I can totally understand that.

However, IME in market research, we were more than happy to book a specific time to call someone back. And many times we would call people in order to get their permission to mail out a survery, or to recruit a pool of people for focus groups. Not all of the research was directly over the phone.

And we had an intro spiel, but it was only our name and the company we were calling for. We didn’t actually start into any scripted questions until the respondent confirmed that they wanted to do the survey. The default assumption was that they wouldn’t, and then if they did, we would start talking. But again, I only worked for large reputable companies (e.g. Ipsos-Reid, but also others).

40

Lockseer:

niblet head:

Examples y’all want, examples you get.

  1. The Soda Pop Survey was one of the worst and I already described some of it here. I described it too well to not borrow from this previous post, but please do click the link and read all about the Soda Pop Survey.
  1. The Credit Card Survey was another really bad one. On a question by question basis, the incredibly badly written individual questions on the Soda survey were the undisputed WORST, but the Credit Card Survey may have been worse overall because it just kept going and going and going… respondents tended to start asking “Is there much more of this??” after the first 20 minutes, and many of them got annoyed and dropped out shortly after; of those who stuck with it, most would drop out between 40 minutes in and the approach of the one hour mark.

And, as with the Soda survey, there were very annoying sections in Credit Card that could not be skipped even when prior answers made the questions totally ridiculous. “So you did see a credit card advertisement featuring an umbrella. Was that on a billboard, a bus kiosk, in print media such as magazine or newspaper, or on television? You don’t remember, you’re just pretty sure you’ve seen it somewhere…OK, when you saw this advertisement that featured the umbrella, would you say it was the first time you saw that particular ad in that particular context? Yes, sir, I understand that it would be difficult to make that assessment when you don’t remember where you saw it. Umm, would you say that you had probably seen that same ad prior to that occasion on a bus kiosk? No, sir, I respectfully submit that I’m most likely not congenitally stupid, although a few hours of doing this for a living can generate some doubts. Well now, would you say that you had probably seen that same ad prior to that occasion in a newspaper or magaz…” <dial tone>