Not saying OP is fibbing but I used to work alumni soliciting and they’d absolutely track your call duration and success rate. If you spent that long on the phone, you’d better have something to show for it.
Yeah, was gonna say that having short turnaround time is important unless you’ve got a lead. And if you’ve a lead then the call is transferred to actual sales department.
I worked a call center briefly and did this with an older lady for about 15 minutes. She was just talking about how she spends her time and what her daughter was up to. I got called into the boss’s office because they heard the conversation. I tried to cover my ass saying I was trying to build rapport, but I got told quantity over quality. Make the calls, follow the script, close the sale. So glad I only wasted like 2 months of my life there.
Side note, the main business model itself was a scam. The “sale” wasn’t even a real sale. We were feeling out for people with bad credit to send to our “partner” law firm for credit repair. If they signed up with them after the transfer for $100/mo, only then did I get any commission. And it paid commission against minimum wage, so you only ever saw a benefit if your commissions alone surpassed what your minimum wage paycheck would be. Man, every detail I can remember about that place is scummier than the last. Fuck them and everyone like them. I’m ashamed to have counted myself among their number, however briefly.
Don’t be ashamed. We do what we have to do to get by. I’ve had four telemarketing jobs including my first job at 16. Some were more scummy than others but they were all total bullshit scams.
My grandpa has dementia, so now when I call him, the conversation starts slow as he tries to remember where I’m at in life. Most of the time during that, he randomly launches into a discussion about some subject that he tells me all about. The last time we talked, I got a rundown of red wing hockey from 75-79, including community events. I’ve never seen this man watch hockey, only basketball and football.
Cherish that shit, try to remember something of those stories in case you ever want to pass those on.
For sure, I’m hearing brand new stories from him now, especially about his life before I was around.
🖖
My father has dementia. At some point it becomes less about making the best of what’s left, and instead finding all of the poop footprints he tracked around the entire house after stepping in his own shit.
Damn, I’m sorry to hear that.
All I heard about call centers is: If you need longer than 30 seconds to close a call you really need a good reason. And it will be marked negatively in your report.
You should be able to handle thousands of calls as fast as possible, so they can only pay a few people in order to handle people calling.
This. I worked in a call centre for a while. Service was not the priority, speed was. I got in trouble for staying on the line to actually resolve a customer’s issue because it took a long time (basically ended up having to do a conference call with the third party who had fucked up). I left that job ASAP because fuck that.
Best call center job I’ve had was tech support for Garmin. No handle time it’s stay on the phone until customer is helped. I spent hours on the phone plotting good vacation routes for people loved it.
Op working for a scammy phone sales company actually ending up reducing the senior suicide rate
Honestly just paying people $25/h to literally just do this would actually do some great things for the mental health crisis. The most you would need to do is maybe throw in an 8hr “mental health first aid” class and give them a line to refer out to if the person expresses anything more severe than a passive death wish. I would totally support my tax dollars paying for this on a WIDE scale.
Edit/btw: the official term is a “warm line” as opposed to a “suicide hotline” for people who aren’t in crisis but just need to talk to another human for a bit, possibly to even help avoid a crisis developing in the first place.
Sorry to bother you (great movie, worth a watch) on steroids.
“Yeah I lost my job again, so back onto the phones”
Just calling and talking to old people would also reduce the amount of scams they can fall for if they spend most the day talking to someone not scamming them.
Basically what it’s like being a relay operator.
I worked in phone sales directly out of high school; this is not inaccurate. Exaggerated, but not at all inaccurate.
I used to be a gardener for a group that looked after the elderly in their own homes, half the the time I wouldn’t have to do any gardening, just hang out with these cool old people having a cuppa and listening to their stories.
This sounds a lot like conversations with my folks.
I used to work Dietary at a nursing home. Oy part of the job I liked was talking to old people. I’d even sometimes stay late to get my work done if someone started a conversation.
How much does this gig pay?
How does this company make money?
Low administrative overhead. High-cost, high-margin products. It’s not turning a profit on its own that’s all that difficult once you’ve got the ball rolling, its turning a profit that will keep scummy executives, shareholders, and/or venture capitalists happy.
