Don't See in Here

When I started at the ad magazine, I did outbound calling, where the object was to identify items which had sold (company revenue, and a slice of it for me!) or, failing that, get the client to renew his ad.  Not surprisingly, most of the time I got voicemail, and often the client hadn’t read the manual:

[Prerecorded VM lady] “The party you have dialed,…”
[Clueless client] “Hi, you’ve reached Jane and John!  Leave a message!”
[VM lady] “… is not available.”

Then there’s the Sprint lady.  I’m not sure what flew up her nose, but the recorded voice from Sprint just SNARLS out the digits: “The number you have dialed, 5! 0! 8! 9! 4! 6!…”  Jeez, chill, SprintHilda.

Others make full use of a free-form outgoing message.  There’s one guy out there with a 2-minute prayer on his OGM, and while I don’t doubt the sincerity of his multiple blessings on callers, I wish he’d cut to the chase and leave the Holy Trinity out of it.

My favorite OGM, even though I fell for it every time, was the Ferris Bueller wannabe.  His pickup was complete with the sleepy “Hello?”, the precisely timed pauses, several uncannily appropriate responses and then the kicker: “Don’tcha just hate when voicemails do that?”

Occasionally I’d reach a warm body, and the reactions ranged from hangups to lonely people telling their life stories.  I’ve switched to inbound calls now, but we reps are all in the same room, and at any given moment we can usually hear an outbound rep protesting, “No, I’m from The Classifieds.  The Classifieds?  The Classifieds Magazine.  No – ma’am – you placed an ad with us?  No, I work at The Classifieds…”

The brevity award goes to a client who picked up and shouted, “NOT SOLD!”  (I hadn’t counted on caller ID.)  Well all righty then!  At least those two words and a hangup boosted my calls-per-hour stats, partially compensating for Father Frank’s interminable blessings.

Doing inbound, I get warm bodies all the time now, with the exception of a few persistent faxes.  The easiest way for us to access a client’s account is by his phone number.  One would think that it’d be easy to get a number from a client, and one would be wrong.  Much of the problem is unconscious – they know the number, so they blurt it as quickly as possible, letting their volume fall off during the last 4 digits.  Hispanic callers can be a challenge (I took French), but so funny: “Fie oh ay, tree nye sebbeng…”  Some callers act stunned when I ask for their number and release it with excruciating concentration, as though they’re giving birth.  Quite a few start with 1 (“1-978-…”), and way too many leave off the area code.  Then when I ask for the area code, almost without fail they give me their… zip code.

The strangest phone number phenomenon is regional.  We’re all convinced they’re putting something in the water in Fall River (excuse me: “Fah Rivvah”).  For some reason, almost every caller from that general area gives an aberrant reading on his number (“508-55-
56-78-9″).  Usually the area code is intact, but we’ve had pauses in those, too.  It’s frustrating because at least half of the calls come in from cellphones, so when one of those FahRivvahrites gives a 2-digit exchange, I always think the cellphone blanked on a digit.

If you’re with me so far, once we get into the client’s account, the real fun begins.  The ads can paint a picture:

Other ads just scream “Deal of the Century”:

Mea culpa

I know, I know, let he [sic] who is without sin cast the first stone.  We definitely mess up sometimes, and what comes out of our mouths often isn’t quite what was intended.  Overheard in the teleservices room:

And we’ve been known to fatfinger the input.  Gems found while proofreading:

Caller quotes

Wretched excess

It’s a New England thing

Dept. of Redundancy Dept.

Say what?

In our copious free time between calls, heh, we enter ads which have been sent by fax, e-mail, snail-mail and the web.  In our clients’ own words:

~~~

OK, so maybe I do know where SprintHilda got her attitude.

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 6th, 2007 at 7:29 pm and is filed under TTMYGHmm. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.