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  • From: Simon Spero <ses AT unc.edu>
  • To: s_l AT mindspring.com, "Internetworkers: http://www.ibiblio.org/internetworkers/" <internetworkers AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Cc:
  • Subject: Re: [internetworkers] counterscripts
  • Date: Sat, 12 Jul 2003 15:46:21 -0400

Scott Lundgren wrote:

When I got two calls over two days following up on recent customer service
experiences.

There's a difference between market research (which is basically just opinion polling. and which is supposed to be making your next customer service experience better), and tele-marketing (which is trying to sell you something you woudn't buy even if it came with free real dolls).

Having known/dated too many people who've worked at FGI doing market research, I try to earn karma points by trying to make the callers life a little better by trying to help them out as much as I can.

I start by asking if the person sitting behind the phone is being paid per completed response. If so, I always try to complete the survey, as long as they let me give overridable default answers to those long blocks of virtually identical questions, which they almost always will do (if you're the one who asks, then they're not going to get into trouble if the call is picked for review). This drastically cuts the time taken per-call.
Watch out for telemarketer's posing as market-researchers. A market researcher will *never* try to sell you anything. Check this up front, and if any kind of sale pitch starts, either hang up, or stop them in mid sentence and demand to speak to a supervisor, then take out your frustration on the supervisor instead. It won't change anything, but the supervisor is getting paid more, so your escalations cost the company more. How high can you climb?

It may help if you record the conversation (I believe you have the right to do this if they've sought consent to record the call for monitoring purposes on their end - what sayeth the lawyers?).

Simon // Support PETT - People for the Ethical Treatment of Telephonists.











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