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Telemarketing War Stories - and lessons learned - Brief Article

Date Posted: 2005-10-10

OH, THOSE WACKY TELEPHONE REPS. Just when I think I've seen and heard it all, a colleague tells me a real humdinger and we shake our heads and share a laugh. Over the years I've found it really helps to compare war stories so you know you're not alone.

If some of these anecdotes sound familiar, consider yourself a call center veteran and give yourself 'a pat on the back for. surviving it all. Names have been changed to protect the guilty but these are true stories. Weird, but true.

Best example of "on-the-job quitting": After a number of years on the phone and compiling a solid track record, one outbound sales rep decided he'd just had enough. When the predictive dialer got a connection he simply hung up the line. Over and over. This was discovered during the course of the day during monitoring. When the supervisor asked to speak to him in her office he asked, "Should I bring my stuff with me?"

Lesson learned: You just never know when even a seasoned veteran will spin off into the galaxy. So much for the old axiom "Those guys over there are the vets; we don't really need to monitor their calls."

Best example of "cherry picking" leads: In reviewing daily stats for another representative, a manager discovered a rep with an unusually high percentage of "unavailable" calls. When asked to explain, the rep shrugged and said that when he saw a name he couldn't pronounce, he simply coded it as "unavailable" and went on to the next record.


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