Hi everyone.

Does your call centre operate outbound campaigns which involve some element of 'cold calling'? If so, have you or your staff experienced abuse from the people that you call?

One thing that occurs to me is the timing element of 'cold calling' is such that calls are almost always perceived as happening at the worst possible moments. I'm sure you've all received the ubiquitous double glazing salesman calling whilst you are eating your dinner, or the market researcher calling in the evening. It would be interesting to examine the strategies we have for determining when to 'cold call'. Is the outbound marketing arm of our industry rubbing the public up the wrong way, creating more ill-feeling and a perception of 'slimy salesmen' in the minds of the average person?

I'd be interested to hear from you if you've either been involved in some way with running an outbound, 'cold calling' campaign (either in a management/supervisory capacity or as an operator) or if you have any stories to tell about your experiences on the receiving end of such 'cold calls'.

John

We operate 2 outbound areas, one is debt collection and one is welcome/sales calls. Now obviously we get a better number of connections to the right party in the evenings or weekends. I have done call listening in these areas and customers are actually preety good about being called not abusive at all considering we are asking them for money.

I have worked in a few cold calling environments in my time and have to say the number of people generally are not that bad however you do get some stormers. The most I received was when I was selling womens cancer insurance. Needless to say I did not stay in that job long.

At present my team are working on three outbound campaigns. All of which are pretty straight forward and are not the hard sell either, although some people have become quite offensive.

The worst one I can recall is when a guy from aberdeen told me "if I ever find you I am going to rip off your head and sh*te down your throat" All i asked him was if I could go through a quick consumer survey. Obviously caught him at a bad time. His favourite soap must have been on!!

It can become quite demotivating for the guys if they are reciving abuse but depending on the campaign you can generally forsee any problems. I tend to stay away from these campaigns but aslong as you keep your workforce motivated they tend just to laugh it off. You hear them all talk about their calls at tea and it can be quite amusing.

I was watching TV with my father when he received a call from one of our favourite financial institutions. We had just reached half time in the England Argentina world-cup game... What were these guys thinking of?! Trying to run an outbound campaign during the world cup? Nobody was going to be taking them seriously, and I would like to put money on there being some seriously abusive responses if the calls continued after half time.... pity the poor agents, who I am sure would rather have been watching the footie too.

The worst response I ever heard was a recording of an outbound call to a phone company customer. I was shocked at just how abusive some people could be to someone they don't know, who is just doing their job, after all, and is phoning to check everything is OK with the service, etc. etc.. OK, we've all been interrupted at mealtimes, when bathing the kids or whatever - it **is** annoying, but this was ridiculous (more F's than I care to remember and the agent was obviously very shocked and upset by it afterwards).

More serious than timing, I think, is the poor use of predictive diallers - I must have managed to get myself onto a target list somehow. Until recently I received regular calls where there would be nobody there for 10 seconds or more. At first, I thought it was malicious and would simply hangup. Having spoken to BT, though, they suggested predictive diallers might be the problem and asked that I hang on a bit longer. I did and, Lo and behold someone from an outbound CC appears!

Now, IMHO this IS just asking for trouble, and I have to admit I have been somewhat short with agents in these circumstances (usually asking them to have their predictive diallers adjusted - sadly they usually don't have a clue what I'm talking about, but, hey, it's worth a try and hopefully someone somewhere will listen... please?)

The final chapter to this is that I am now registered on the TPS database. I still get some calls (come on guys, sort this out), but now I simply refuse to discuss anything with an outbound call centre agent - the same as I would a door-to-door salesman. I know this might be bad news, but, hey, there is such a thing as overdoing it by phone. Send me junk mail - at least then I can just bin it!

Duncan

duncan.henry@tangent-telecom.com

On the same note

I'm TPS registered and have had some wonderful excuses for recieving a cold call. Including being told that TPS registration only lasts for 6 months and I'd have to re-register!

My policy on recieving a call is always the same. Immediatly ask if they are using a dialler then asking to Immediatly speak to the supervisor.

Normally the agent will ask why and I'll explain to them that they have done nothing wrong but don't need to be involved in what's about to happen.

I'll then ask the supervisor if they TPS their lists and when they say yes (They always do) I ask if they'll report the transgression or do I need to do it. I'm always polite and won't actually contact TPS for a 'first offence' but with one exception it's always worked and I've never had a second call.

The exception was BT (British Telecom) who told me that TPS didn't apply to their customer base and they could call who they liked provided they were a BT customer. I'm not sure on the legality of this. I understand calling with a customer service / debt issue but calling for an upsell?

Answers on a postcard to........................

DaveA

I really should spell check

Or learn to type properly.

;-)