Call Centres / Con Centres

[Blue Brazil Forever]

48 minutes ago, Central Belt Caley said:

Virgin media tend to cold call their own customers to try and get them on better (more expensive*) deals.
 

When the girl phoned and said we’re going to get you on a better deal for your package and I replied “Great how much are you knocking off a month then?”. She couldn’t wait to get off the phone when she realised she wasn’t going to make anything. 
 

Had a wee guy from HelloFresh at the door a couple months back who was a cheeky wee c**t. Listened to his spiel cause I was bored and then he told me to get my phone out and he’ll talk me through my first order. At no point did he ask if I was interested. Found it interesting that one of his best selling points was “your neighbours have all signed up”(they haven’t). 

I have a reverse situation. I recently got transferred from Bulb energy to Octopus (who are not half as good at customer communication). Octopus have  a section dedicated to selling Smart Meters. Their first attempt was to inform me that my current meter was fast approaching its Use By date and they would give me an early appointment to install a smart meter at no cost with no mess and minimal disruption. I sent a polite refusal saying the neighbours would be interested to hear their meters were almost out of date  and should be replaced by smart meters  - we all occupy a substantial 20 year old development.  They did reply to say while the certification date was close, replacement was not compulsory but smart meters were effective and accurate. I replied quoting recent research indicating that over 3 million original and second generation  smart meters were faulty or broken (thank you Scottish Daily Mail) and there was no way I would want to replace my working system. Octopus acknowledged but said the option was still available if I changed my mind. I know they will try again. 

The wife and I did enjoy the exchanges. 

[fuzzydunlop]

I got promoted at work and took over from a woman who had left and therefore I got her mobile phone number.

I was getting three calls a day from these Accident folk. 

The thing is when I answer my work phone to a number I don't recognise I always answer by saying my name and "how can I help"..so even when I've just told them my name they still ask "is that Claire?".

Now the "only at the weekends" response soon got boring... as did the response of "aye this is Claire, hows it goin' shagger" in a deep voice with Scottish accent,  but luckily they've eased off to one call every few weeks now.

[alta-pete]

25 minutes ago, fuzzydunlop said:

 

Now the "only at the weekends" response soon got boring... as did the response of "aye this is Claire, hows it goin' shagger" in a deep voice with Scottish accent,  but luckily they've eased off to one call every few weeks now.

. We have a winner. Chapeau sir, chapeau.

[stimpy]

Had a guy with an Indian accent phone my work and claim to be from BT. He rattled off his spiel over a really bad line and when he was finished I said "man, I thought if you worked for BT your line would be better but I can hardly hear you" 

The guy shouts out "F*ck you b*****d" and hangs up! 

Usually the persist with the script but no this fella, he was having none of my Scottish witt. 

[Guest]

A few years back my van broke down and I was forced to call the AA, about six weeks after that I started to get multiple calls relating to 'my accident.' When I asked which accident, and was given 'on or around the xx of December' as an answer I was straight onto the AA by email giving them absolute shit for selling my data.

The cold calls stopped shortly afterwards, they must sell 'live lists' to these telesales firms.

[Edit: okay, nobody 'forced' me to call the AA. Other roadside rescue franchises are available]
 

Edited June 27, 2023 by IncomingExile

[Cosmic Joe]

2 minutes ago, stimpy said:

Had a guy with an Indian accent phone my work and claim to be from BT. He rattled off his spiel over a really bad line and when he was finished I said "man, I thought if you worked for BT your line would be better but I can hardly hear you" 

The guy shouts out "F*ck you b*****d" and hangs up! 

Usually the persist with the script but no this fella, he was having none of my Scottish witt. 

The straw that probably broke the camel's back. Poor guy's telephone was probably launched out the window. 

 

[Honest Saints Fan]

I am currently being cold called by some mob trying to sell life insurance. When I tell them they won't be able to give me a quote as my life expectancy is less than 5 years they swiftly hang up.

[doulikefish]

3 hours ago, scottsdad said:

 

Utterly no bored housewives looking for an afternoon with a stranger, sadly. 

Porn films aren't true ?

[RH33]

1 hour ago, Honest Saints Fan said:

I am currently being cold called by some mob trying to sell life insurance. When I tell them they won't be able to give me a quote as my life expectancy is less than 5 years they swiftly hang up.

I know I shouldn't laugh but

[19QOS19]

5 hours ago, Bonksy+HisChristianParade said:

I just tell them I’m sorry but I’m not interested and we can both go about our day. 

You've maybe had good fortune with the ones that call you. I either have to hang up or make up some nonsense to get them off the phone: I find the former ruder than the latter tbh. 

The ones I get most the now are life insurance and when I tell them I have death in service which would pay the mortgage and still leave my family pretty comfortable they still continue to try and sell me a product I don't need. Arseholes. 

[RuMoore]

One time I was in a 2 week training group for a remote call centre job and they set up a WhatsApp group, a few days in one of the lads lads lads decided to start a separate group chat with some of the younger guys, I pretty much left it straight away coz it very quickly turned into a group where they just bitched about the boomers in the group and I could see it going sour. 

Few days later we had to pair up to do mock calls cue a couple of the people in the secondary group chat not realising they were actually in the main one when they started started ripping the pish out of the people they were with, fully slagging them off about their looks and shite like that.

It was carnage, they tried to try and play it off and say it was some big misunderstanding and I've never felt more second hand embarrassment and righteousness that I'd foresaw the danger. 

They ended up being kicked off the course which was fair. 

[superwell87]

I've lost the best part of 5 years of my life working in customer service. The most part of that was with an outsourcer, who were actually decent to work for, but the campaigns I worked on behalf of were shite. My last job in customer was technically debt collection but not as such. It wasn't as if we asked customers to call and "pay up or we'll send the boys round in a van" type off of stuff. Always worked towards affordability. It was an okay job. there but I left feeling that it was "Just aother fucking inbound customer service job", same shit, different environment after a year. I have since promised myself, never agan to working in inbound customer service.

As for outbound cold calling...... absolutely f**k that.

[Bonksy+HisChristianParade]

1 hour ago, 19QOS19 said:

You've maybe had good fortune with the ones that call you. I either have to hang up or make up some nonsense to get them off the phone: I find the former ruder than the latter tbh. 

The ones I get most the now are life insurance and when I tell them I have death in service which would pay the mortgage and still leave my family pretty comfortable they still continue to try and sell me a product I don't need. Arseholes. 

I don’t tend to answer the phone to numbers I don’t recognise - if it’s important, they’ll leave a message. 

I don’t think it’s rude to just say ‘sorry, I’m not interested’. Far better that than string them along on some hilarious wind up. 
 

[Cosmic Joe]

1 hour ago, RuMoore said:

One time I was in a 2 week training group for a remote call centre job and they set up a WhatsApp group, a few days in one of the lads lads lads decided to start a separate group chat with some of the younger guys, I pretty much left it straight away coz it very quickly turned into a group where they just bitched about the boomers in the group and I could see it going sour. 

Few days later we had to pair up to do mock calls cue a couple of the people in the secondary group chat not realising they were actually in the main one when they started started ripping the pish out of the people they were with, fully slagging them off about their looks and shite like that.

It was carnage, they tried to try and play it off and say it was some big misunderstanding and I've never felt more second hand embarrassment and righteousness that I'd foresaw the danger. 

They ended up being kicked off the course which was fair. 

Elgin City-esque

[invergowrie arab]

In the days before the Internet there was a call centre in Dundee who would take you cash in hand at 16 to gather people's personal data.

f**k knows what it was used for but there was a scary amount of people more than happy to divulge all their personal data to a bunch of Dundonian children for no apparent reason.

[jimmy boo]

21 minutes ago, Bonksy+HisChristianParade said:

I don’t tend to answer the phone to numbers I don’t recognise - if it’s important, they’ll leave a message. 

I don’t think it’s rude to just say ‘sorry, I’m not interested’. Far better that than string them along on some hilarious wind up. 
 

My thoughts exactly. I also never answer my landline phone as it's always cold callers and when I check the numbers when deleting later it's never anyone I know.

[LondonHMFC]

6 hours ago, Sergeant Wilson said:

I went in one house that the guy had carved and painted 3d King Billy's out of polystyrene packing. Two of them stuck to the wall above his fire place.

Incredibly mental, but also quite a talent.

[senorsoupe]

The most common cold calls I get these days are from "Air Duct Cleaning Service" who I usually just hang up on.  I also get robocalls in Chinese, but that's probably because I live near Chinatown.

 

I've never worked an outboard call centre job, but have done the customer service jobs.  The first was for an outsourced call centre that had a contract for Rogers (a Canadian telecommunications company) and the hiring standards were ridiculously low. Some of the people in my training group were extremely thick, the worst being this one girl who was about 18 or 19 and after the 4 weeks of training she put her hand up and said that she couldn't start taking calls because she still hasn't learned anything.  I didn't last that long, after about two months of being shouted at by customers I gave up.

My next one was for a car insurance company.  That wasn't terrible as I was mostly just doing policy changes and giving quotes to people but I would occasionally get a screamer on the phone.  The work environment was pretty good, I got along with my coworkers and the management weren't complete arseholes or psychos (or both).  Did that for a good two years before getting a much better paying job with the Canadian civil service 

[pub car king]

I went for a job once as a youngster at a double glazing firm. It was advertised as office work. However when I turned up there were about a dozen other people in the room. Some Essex wide boy type started explaining how we'd be dropped off in an area to go door to door trying to flog overpriced upvc windows. I went for a pish halfway through this wall street wannabe c***s presentation and never returned. 

[Mark Connolly]

6 hours ago, stimpy said:

Had a guy with an Indian accent phone my work and claim to be from BT. He rattled off his spiel over a really bad line and when he was finished I said "man, I thought if you worked for BT your line would be better but I can hardly hear you" 

The guy shouts out "F*ck you b*****d" and hangs up! 

Usually the persist with the script but no this fella, he was having none of my Scottish witt. 

They do tend to get quite sweary when they discover you've been wasting their time as much as they have been wasting yours