Phone rings, nobody else is around so I answer with the standard “Acme Corporation.” Then the person proceeds to ask about a large tract of land our company recently sold.
I reply, “I think you must have the wrong company, this is Acme Corporation.” They say “Oh, this isn’t Centex Corporation?”
:rolleyes: Well, no if it was Centex Corporation I would have answered the phone with “Centex Corporation.”
We get wrong numbers all the time, and people never seem to realize that when we say “Acme Corporation.” So now my theory is that I can pick up the phone and say “Soggy candycanes” or “Vito’s Massage Parlor” and the person would completely ignore that.
What annoys me is at home I answer giving my name. Then I wait a second or two, and someone comes on saying, “Is Giles … there?” or the like. My response is usually, “I just told you my name.”
(Of course, I know what’s going on: it’s automated telemarketing, with a computer dialing numbers, and only putting on a real person after someone answers the phone. But that doesn’t make it less annoying.)
Oy. A couple jobs ago, I had regular and prolonged arguments with some woman about whether or not my vet clinic was the Dairy Queen several blocks over. I’ve never called a fast food place, but I’m guessing that they generally do not answer the phone “East Acmeville Veterinary Clinic, this is CCL, how may I help you?” And yet I had to assure this woman several times at least once a week that yes, I was quite certain she had not reached the Dairy Queen.
My friend, who’s worked the phones in a customer service role in a past life, has a theory about this. She says it’s almost better to have a longer opening salvo - something like “Thank you for calling Whatever Company, this is Snickers, how can I help you?” The reason is that the caller lots of times doesn’t expect someone to answer, or even if they do, they’ll take that first couple of seconds to compose their own thoughts instead of listening to the intro.
In her mind, by using a longer intro, you give them more time to realize that someone’s actually answered the phone and hopefully figure out that they’ve gotten where they need to, as well as compose what they want to say.
Me? It’s a good theory, but I’m not certain I buy it completely. People are dumb.
“Acme Corporation, if it’s gadgets to catch that tasty Roadrunner, Acme is your company. What can Acme Corporation help you with today?”
Think that would be clear enough?
I also love it when the person realizes they have the wrong number and then asks us if we know the correct number. How would we know that exactly? We’re not a directory service.
I think people are not really listening to what you say when you answer. Then they are hoping, even though what you said didn’t seem like “Entex Corporation”, that maybe you garbled it.
For example: I work for Bob Jones Medical Supply. When a customer calls Bob Jones Medical Supply, they are greeted with a recorded greeting saying, “Thank you for choosing Bob Jones Medical Supply.” TWICE. Once at the beginning and once at the end. If the customer is on hold, they will most likely hear Bob Jones Medical Supply one or two more times. The CCR answers the phone, saying, “Thank you for choosing Bob Jones Medical Supply. My name is Shamwow. May I have your name and account number, please?”
Then the customer says, “Is this Bob Jones Medical Supply?” I want to reach in through the phone and throttle this person. But I can’t. I’m listening to the QA, and the call is already over.
When I was a teenager, our home phone number was one off of the local Domino’s. I lived with my grandparents, so if the phone rang after 9pm, and I was home, we knew it wasn’t for us. It got to the point where i would answer the phone with, “Yes: I’d like a large pepperoni and anchovy pizza…” It was surprising how fast the callers would hang up.
Happens to us all the time. However, with us there’s at least a partial excuse: One of the companies that we distribute for has an 800 number that is printed in their manuals. It only works in the US though; if dialed in Canada this number forwards them to us. However, the first thing said on our automated system is, “Welcome to Buttafuoco’s School of Acting*,” which isn’t even remotely close (in name or pronunciation) to the company they thought they were calling. 99% of them don’t even confirm when they get a human by asking something like, “Is this Willy’s Widgets**?” They just go on about their business as if we were the company they were trying to contact.
Most of the time this isn’t a problem because we can help them to a degree, but only by directing them to the depot in their area that they should be calling. Some try to lodge complaints with us, but we don’t do that sort of thing, and when we tell them they expect us to forward them on to the company, which ain’t happening.
[sub]* This is not a real company name – or if it is, it shouldn’t be.
** This one either.[/sub]
My name is on my voice mail, it is the first thing you hear: You have reached the voice mail of Khadaji, please leave a message at the tone.
I am always astounded when I get messages for someone else. Last week a jeweler called to tell me that my ring was ready.
Years ago a woman calling her self Grandma called several times wanting her grandson to come over and help her and “pap-pap.” She always called during the day and I never was there to pick up. I finally had to change the message to *explicitly *tell her that I was not her grandson.
More depressing is when it’s a scenario exactly like Juliana’s… customers would be greeted with the company name (let’s call it Giant Faceless Cell Corp, just for the hell of it) when they first connect to the automated phone system. They’d hear it a couple more times while navigating through the menus, and would hear it again out of my mouth as soon as they connected.
And yet, I don’t know how many times I had this conversation:
Me: “Hello, you’ve reached Giant Faceless Cell Corp. This is Mahna speaking, could I have your cellular number please?”
Customer: “Sure, it’s 555-555-1234.”
Me: “I’m sorry Mr Customer, but I don’t seem to have a record of that number. Can you confirm once more?”
Customer: “It’s 555-555-1234, just like I said. What do you mean, you don’t have a record of my number? I’ve been with Mega Competitor Cell Corp for years.”
Me: “Uhhh… sir, you’ve called Giant Faceless Cell Corp.” click
This is a common phenomenon. When I worked at the bank, it was absolutely impossible to reach me by telephone without hearing the name of the company at least twice – once from a computer and once from my greeting – and that was only if you had the local number for my site and my direct extension. Calling in via the normal route, you’d hear it at least four times, more if you spent time on hold listening to the bank’s self-aggrandizing recordings.
And yet.
“StupidBank credit systems, Roland speaking.”
“…is this Dave’s Plumbing?”
Yes, dear caller, this is Dave’s Plumbing. We don’t like picking up the phone too much, so we added the stuff at the beginning about accessing your account using your social security number to throw you off the trail. And that option to press three for consumer loans or prime equities? That’s just a bit of plumber jargon; inside joke for industry types. But you, you were too smart for that; you breached our defenses, and so here I am, at your service. Toilet clogged up again?
Of course, preventing this problem would require people not only to not be dipshits – a lofty goal in and of itself – but also to listen to one or two of the words that other people are saying, which, I come closer each day to believing, is by and large a genetic impossibility for much of the populous.
If you were a minor asshole, you could have had a lot of fun with that. Years ago, our number was one off from a Hospital’s ICU unit. If we were MAJOR assholes, imagine the fun we could have had.
“I’m sorry, ma’am, he didn’t make it. Is this his wife or his mistress?”
Not generally, though it did happen. The best was the lady who got through the phone system, verified by her StupidBank account number and PIN, and responded to my greeting by ordering a pizza. “Oh, this isn’t Pizza Hut?”
Most commonly, though, they’d just ignore this prompt – which also offers other ways to access your account, but you’d think the mention of an SSN would wake people up – and end up getting transferred to a random person. (That’s another rant…the phone tree worked fine if the customer followed it or entered an invalid option, but ignoring it completely confused it into transferring the call to an available extension seemingly at random, which is why we in credit systems analysis ended up with a lot of the “is Joe there?” calls. I and most of my team had come from the phone service ranks, so we knew where to send 'em, but I imagine things got interesting when they ended up in, say, Corporate Legal. Good times.)
When we moved here three years ago we got the phone number of somebody who moved to the next town over. To this day we still get calls from their doctors and hairdressers reminding them of appointments. We even received a call from one of their uncles in Michigan. Man, if you don’t want to talk to your family, leave me out of it.
