Making the Connection: Telemarketing War Stories

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.

Lesson learned: Reviewing call dispositions on a rep-by-rep basis tells you a lot more about what's really going on than just looking at sales totals for the group. It's another good reason why just monitoring calls and glancing at the day's cumulative stats won't tell you what's really going on out on the call floor. As they say, the devil's in the details.

Best case of curiosity and initiative gone awry: One technical support rep was curious about the connection between various internal databases and created what turned out to be a virus to see how they were related. Or maybe he was just hoping to cripple the system for a while to get a longer break. Who knows. The IT manager caught the problem in time before it did any damage — and rewrote the employee manual's chapter on insubordination.

Lesson learned: Assume this generation's knowledge about and access to your systems is greater than yours and put many safeguards in place to prevent a meltdown.

Scariest tale of “What might have happened”: One call center manager made it his business each day to “walk the parking lot.” The reason? Once a rep whose babysitter did not show up locked her child in her car for the shift during a hot summer day. Luckily, the manager was out in the lot during a break first thing in the morning and discovered the child before tragedy struck.

Lesson learned: Child-care issues come with the territory, especially since a growing number of telephone reps are parents or single parents. Many companies with internal call centers are learning that on-site day care is one of the most cost-effective investments you can make. But even smaller operations and third-party outsourcers have options — like the teleservices vendor that located its new call center within walking distance of an independent day care center and worked out a discounted rate for employees.

What's more fun than the dress code? A poke in the eye with a sharp stick: Frustrated by its reps' inability to use good judgment in adhering to the call center dress code, one company put up posters with detailed photographs: one with a female in a modest sleeveless top, the other with a female from the back in a halter top (this photo had a circle with a slash through it). Caption under photo of sleeveless top: “This is appropriate summer attire. Caption under photo of halter top: “This is not.”

A rep in a different call center had an interesting interpretation of the very detailed dress code. Since the limitation on short dresses was “not more than 5 inches above the knee,” she came to work with an ankle-length dress — which was slit all the way up to her hip.

Lessons learned: Just because they're on the phones and your customers can't see them doesn't mean you don't need a dress code. And there's no such thing as a dress code that's too specific.

Tragic tales about personal hygiene: Like the representative who thought it was appropriate to shave her legs at her workstation. Or the manager who had to explain to his group that it was not a good idea to come to work with a “bed head” of uncombed (let alone unwashed) hair.

Lesson learned: What can we say? Chalk it up to many telephone reps' youth and/or lack of experience in a business setting. And pray for some additional patience.

Phone reps can also be heroes: As we know, it's not all bad. One outbound rep called a repeat buyer who was having a medical emergency. The employee kept his cool, calmed down the ailing customer and got emergency services on another line. He stayed on the line until the ambulance came and he found out the customer would be OK.

As anyone who has ever lived through it knows, the call center can be a challenging but ultimately gratifying and rewarding environment. It takes a combination of awareness, sensitivity, people skills, creativity, humor and sometimes just sheer endurance to successfully manage a calling operation. Hats off to all the war veterans out there who give it their all and live to share a tale or two.

MARY ANN FALZONE is president of Falzone & Associates, Chalfont, PA, a call center consultancy specializing in both live representative and automated voice response telephone campaigns. She can be contacted at mafalzone@cs.com.