Eek!
Oh, god, that is horrid.
AHunter3How often would you have some one complete a 20 minute survey?
Oh, I can top that, although it was kind of an “after the fact” thing, where I couldn’t step in to save people.
Started up at an ad agency in Chicago, and one of my first tasks was to review this phone survey that one of our clients had put together. It took me an HOUR to go through it by HAND…I shudder to think someone actually having to read through it.
Plus, the questions were poorly written, questions weren’t skipped that should be, etc. And yet, they said they had a good completion rate.
CoughBullshitCough
I would have felt bad for any research company that was contacted to field this survey…fact is, though, the company didn’t put it together, and often has little input into its administration. Shudder
I’ve never had a tele-drone accept the first “no”. It’s always like this:
Annoying Bastard:"Hello- I’m calling from <a company that we don’t work for, but you’ll recognize the name, so we lie>, and we have some crap you don’t want.
Me: “I don’t want it”
AB: "But it’s so wonderful, let me drone on for a few minutes and tell you how awesome the thing you don’t want is, and why you want it!
And so on.
Telling someone to go do something obscenely biological to themselves and slamming down the phone is more efficient, but keeping them on the phone and purporting to have absurd opinions on anything from non-belief in the modern monetary system (I pay for everything with shiny rocks, kittens and puppies) or not owning a phone (I thought you were just the voices in my head), or intense fear of the printed word (magazines make me run in terror) tends to keep the telemarketing industry somewhat less profitable.
I pick my strategy based on my mood.
The quote you used from calm kiwi was a comment about surveyors, not sales people (see the quote from Otto that kiwi is discussing. Again, I agree…sales people can be hard to shake off and downright annoying. Surveyors, not so much (from my experience).
What I personally hate are the calls from the local fire or police department, looking for donations. Whenever anybody calls asking for money, I politely explain that I never donate over the phone, but would be willing to look over any information they’d like to send me so I can consider it. This one cop from Chicago (if he indeed was a policeman), would NOT give it up. Look…I’m telling you that would likely donate if you just send me some information…but, no. Had to apologize, say I wasn’t interested, and hang up.
gazpacho:
Like Lockseer, I actually occasionally got a “complete” on the >1 hour survey (that being Credit Card). One night I got 2 in a single 8-hour shift, which put me statistically at the top of the pile for the week and I got a little paycheck bump due to the commissions that go to people above average Percentage Quotient. On the 20 minute surveys I would get several per night (I worked 5PM to 1AM, calling from Long Island NY and calling to increasingly westward-lying states as the night wore on).
I hated that gig so much I was verging on suicidal before finally landing a real job.
A few weeks ago, I got called for a survey. Thinking it would be something short, like the political surveys I was hit with last year, I agreed.
I was question after question after question about whether I downloaded music, how many computers I owned, what premium cable channels I subscribe to, which ones I cancelled, how long I’ve subscribed to them, how long ago I’ve cancelled them … it just went on and on and on.
“Is this almost done?”, I’d ask every three or four questions. “Yes, almost there”, she’d say, but she kept it up. After 25 minutes, my cordless phone battery died.
The survey company called me three times later that week, wanting to complete the survey. I told them to bugger off every time; I’m not spending another half hour with them describing how many television sets in my house are on satellite, what rooms they are in, and whether those sets get premium channels or not too. Ridiculous. Never again.
I’m little confused by the idea advanced by some in this thread that calling me and wasting my time trying to sell me something I don’t want is unacceptable (with which I wholeheartedly agree), but calling me to find out if it’s worth your time to waste my time by trying to sell me something I don’t want is okay. Although I admit I’ve never had a “high pressure” research call, the whole idea just in principle is at least as rank as telemarketing itself.
Note that a good number of charity pitches (including those for Police or Fire) are really scams, with only a tiny % actually going to the “cause”. This happened here in Santa Clara County.
AND, some of the "surveys’ are dudes “phishing” for information to facilitate Identiy theft.
So- besides the fact that an unsolicited phone call is rude- they might well have criminal motives. :mad:
Not sure if you are referring to me, but I wholeheartedly agree…sales calls veiled as research are more contemptible in my book. A “good” and legitimate research call should never be high pressure.
I’n pretty sure mine wasn’t. They never asked me for sensitive information (SS, birthdate, and so on), it was conducted by a woman with an urban accent – she “axed” me questions – and there was the din of other surveyors in the distance. The people that called me back were women with Long Island accents.
Yep, quite a few years ago I was house sitting for a friend when I received a call from a researcher. They started off asking me about the hours I worked, then the house’s security system. I was starting to be very suspicious and when they asked if I owned a dog, under the guise of what sort of pet food we purchased, I knew this was not a legit call. I told him that I owned a pack of Rotweillers to go with my shotgun collection and I was reporting the call to the police. The police dept. confirmed my suspicions. I wasn’t the first person who’d received those calls-- they really were fishing for info on which homes to break into.
Then I went to apologize to Maxxie their australian shephard. She was feeling inadequate because of the rottweiller crack.
Well, I guess I’m wondering what you mean by “legitimate” research. The research calls I get fall into two camps: political opinion polls, and market research. Both are pretty annoying, really. I don’t like the habit of “governance by poll” that seems to be so common these days, so I have philiosophical problems with the first. For the second, even when the marketing calls aren’t trying to actually sell me a product, they are trying to find out how they can sell me products more effectively. That’s what market research is for, right? Starting with the basic assumption that I don’t want to be marketed to at all when I’m trying to relax at home, why is a marketing research call any less objectionable than a plain old marketing call?
Well, in my case, it was because some weeks, it was all the temp agency had for me. If they sent me on an assignment, I had to go, unless there was a physical reason why I couldn’t. So three times, I think it was, I would go to a call center and tough it out for a week, and the following Monday the agency would have a data entry or admin. assist. job for me again. I never made commission, but I got base pay, which was at least something for my time.
As for hurting the caller’s feelings, that wasn’t an issue with me…after I’d been scarred by the one call center job I took independently, not through an agency. What can I say, I was young and dumb. And what scarred me was not anything a “target” did (yes, that’s what they called the people on the list) but what the supervisor did. After a few days of no sales, she brought me into her office, had me run through some call scenarios, and kept berating me—“You’re not doing it right! NO, you can’t say that!”—until I cried, and then screamed at ME for not acting professional.
So at the jobs the temp agency sent me on, I just let it roll off me. Plus, the supervisors at those jobs were much more pleasant and reasonable. But in one case, I do think my calling was borderline rude, because of the nature of what I was calling for. I was trying to get people to participate in a fund-raiser. :dubious: Call people to ask them to give up their time to raise money for the company’s cause? Made little to no sense to me. Oh, and it was right after 9/11 (which is why the agency didn’t have anything else for me).
And they wanted me to call every local business in the community, including auto repair shops and beauty salons, and I know those people can’t leave! I tried to get around that by saying, “Look, I’m not asking for any of your time, but I’m wondering if maybe you could donate to the prizes we’re offering? A coupon for an oil change/free manicure, maybe?” I actually did get a few of those, but then the supervisor told me to forget about that and just concentrate on getting warm bodies for the fundraiser.
Anyway, my point. Few people stay at these jobs long, because they’re the best incentive to find permanent, or at least better, employment, that I’ve ever known. And if they are long-term employees, they must have it in them to “make the target squeak”, as the first supervisor put it, in which case they deserve whatever abuse they get.
If I got one call every couple of weeks I might not be as testy. Before I went strictly cell I got 3 to five calls a day. If you’re one of those callers sorry, you get the ire. Also even if you say this is just a survey, people will suspect it’s leading to a sales pitch and with good reason. I got into the habit of kjust saying “No thanks” and hanging up imediately without waiting for the scripted response. I felt that was all the politness they deserved if they called me uninvited.
We have a small privately owned buisness and get several calls a day. Fairly often its a recorded sales pitch. Are fucking kidding me ? Who thought that was a good idea? Sometimes its a recording that says please hold on for an important message and then a live salesman comes on. The other day a guy started his pitch and I informed him this was a buisness not a residence. He said uh huh? and continued on with his pitch. "I started to inform him that he shouldn’t call us to sell our employees something during business hours and he let out an exasperated “Fine!” and hing up.
My neice used to do phone sales and I love her but she expected what she got. When you invade peoples homes uninvited along with others like you don’t expect people to be nice.