B2C telesales - how to annoy the agent hugely!

I absolutely loathe idiot call centres that intrude into my home. I'm Telephone Preference Service registered and have been for years, but a few creep through. Usually they are the offshore centres, predominately in India. And, since they act in general as a Data Processor for the UK corporation, that corporation is liable for the breach of the law..

Of course the very best way to make a sale is to annoy the bejasus out of your prospective customer, but far more fun is to take control of the call.

Most people have no idea how to take control. We're programmed to answer questions with politeness, but get them off the script and they panic. Now this is not my idea. I found it at a couple of sites and decided to have a go in person tonight.

I had a call that could well have been a real call for my son who is in India at present. The accent was Indian, and she introduced herself as Kelly, something I have always felt to be unlikely. After I worked out that she was selling we have a five minute conversation. I started thus:

"Margaret! Hi Margaret. Great joke, you're always doing this"
"No, I am Kelly. please may I speak to..."
"Come on, Margaret, I know it's you"
"No, I'm Kelly from (very annoying company indeed) and I'd like to speak to ..."
"Yeah, Margaret, pull the other one. Last time you used the name Amanda"
"I've never called you before. My name is Kelly and..."
"What's your favourite colour, Margaret?"

And so it went. Eventually she realised she was not ever going to get anywhere and hung up.

Half an hour later some other fool from the same company called. I said "hi" to Margaret again there. He started screaming at me to get put through to the person he wanted to speak to. I moved into gibberish and he screamed louder. It was quite sweet, really. That gave me an idea, but, before I had it, as this halfwit hung up on me a third one came on the line.

This one I spoke to all the way through in "mock-Chinese" until he got fed up and went away.

But my idea is a simple one. When they call, ask them very clearly "Please speak loudly and slowly. I'm very deaf." and as they get louder and slower, ask them to get even louder. "Louder, please, I can't hear you!" It doesn't matter if you feel silly. Imagine them yelling their heads off in imbecilistan

The sound volume in that call centre will be astounding if we all do it!

Under no circumstances, once you have started, answer any of their questions. Ask their favourite colour, tell them yours, ask them what's wrong with it. Ask how to tune your TV in. Really!

And continue, politely, until they hang up. After which you may award yourself a glass of your favourite tipple.

Do you remember those Snap Shots popup windows?

They were here. Now they are gone. Snap.com just launched its own advertising. Regrettably the reaction is not what they hoped! I dislike being forced to take adverts. I want to choose to take them. So it has gone, gone, gone from all my sites.

Their blog entry about the launch makes amusing reading. Well, the comments do.

The thing is, I do not think people like corporations who change the rules and dress it up to look like it's good for you. They were cute. Now they are intrusive. Were.

Sometimes we forget we represent a brand

I met someone today who forgot he was representing his brand. He went out of his way to be rude to me and spent a long time mouthing obscenities at me, all the while representing his very professional employer.

So often this scenario is anonymous, but, today, a man I had never met before, a man I will never meet again, defaced his brand for me. I think he had no idea he was doing it.

The scene was simple. I joined the M3 motorway in the middle of a long snarlup caused by some poor motorist doing something unpleasant enough to require an ambulance. We were all patient enough, except the BMW driver who got out to adjust his golf clubs. Gosh, that must have been an important thing to do!

As we got close to the accident we found it had been cleared away to all except the nearside lane. Most people were sensible. The Germans call the "merge in turn" manoeuvre "The Zipper Principle", though I'm sure the word is substantially longer than that! Most people have the wit to drive up to the closure and to merge in turn. This maximises the carrying capacity of the road and is simple good manners.

If you drive a liveried vehicle with your brand and a phone number on it, well, it tends to be wise to use good manners. In reality it's always wise. Road rage can be very nasty.

The gentleman in the lane into which I needed to merge did not seem to understand:

• That he was driving a liveried vehicle
• That "Merge in Turn" was not going to delay him by more than a couple of seconds if at all
• That good manners really do cost nothing

So he was the one who blew his horn, closed the previously ample gap suddenly and aggressively, and mouthed what appeared to be irate obscenities at me. I merged behind him. After all, what's a car length in a long journey?

As I tucked in astern I read his livery, and below I read the phone number. Being a good boy I have my batphone happily in a car cradle, so I called the number in the livery. I got through to a very nice gentleman who said "I am very interested in poor road manners by one of my engineers. I manage the people who drive those vans."

We agreed, he and I, that a liveried van represents the company in a unique manner, and that an incident such as this could easily bring the corporation into disrepute. He was going to phone the man (I hope he was provided with a car kit!) and talk to him about the incident.

It's all about marketing, you see. The livery shows the brand off, but the driver can make or break the marketing. It's not about "me and him". Neither of us won. It's about making sure that your brand is always represented well by everyone who displays it. Many firms are wise enough to put "How am I driving" contact details on the back of their vehicles. I wonder if this one will, now, too?

PS the German word? "Reissverschlussverfahren" I said it was likely to be long!

Scéance is the New Marketing Medium, It Seems

I have just been the victim of what might possibly be lawful marketing, but a marketing letter which has left me more angry than I could believe I was going to be. It came, neatly addressed to me at my home address, and contained a technically very poor standard letter addressed to “Dear Sir/Madam”, odd since they have my contact details. It shows a total lack of time and trouble taken.

It comes out under the signature of the Deputy Registrar for a public crematorium in the Surrey area, and arrived today, the Monday after my mother’s cremation on Friday. The envelope is postmarked for Friday - the day of the cremation.

I have several issues, not least the issue of taste, with this letter. Already you can see that I criticise it as a marketing message because it is imperfectly personalised. I also criticise it for failing to adhere either to the letter or to the spirit of the law. I need to explain that.

Well in advance of my mother’s cremation I engaged the services of a good, local, independent undertaker (Funeral Director for non Brits). They act as prime contractor to me for the funeral. I have paid them and they have paid the celebrant (excellent job well done) and the crematorium (faultless until today’s mail arrived). Thus the crematorium is a subcontractor of the undertaker and my personal data was passed to it only in order to fulfil the contract for the cremation. This is normal under the UK Data Protection Act 1998.

Nowhere did I give the undertaker permission for marketing purposes, and I thought that was that.

It turns out that I signed a form to permit the cremation. According to a lady from the crematorium who called me today there is a box on the form I should have ticked to prevent my personal data being used for marketing purposes. In other words she claims a fair processing notice was present. This means it was my fault that I was marketed to with a tasteless letter offering me services I have already declined.

I asked where the box was. “It is close to your signature” (I am paraphrasing). I asked if it was above or below the signature. “Below”.

Informal legal advice leads me to believe that any item below a signature does not form a part of a contract. That means that this box is irrelevant.

Advice from the UK Information Commissioner this morning leads me to believe that this is not processing my data within my expectation of fair and lawful processing. While a Fair Processing Notice may have been present it was not present in a wholly obvious place, and arguably had no valid significance.

I was not handled desperately well. As you can imagine I am not as clear headed as usual because I am newly bereaved. A very good call from the manager of the facility handled me well and showed great customer service and PR sense. But the prior handling by the “Clerk to the Board” was so poor as to lead to a complaint about behaviour to his line manager. She and I seem to have the same view: Handle the customer first, and solve the issues second. She and I had a very brief “man to man” conversation where we agreed that you deal with people in fragile emotional states very carefully, and that they may not be right, but their emotional needs come first.

The Clerk (that so reminds me of Captain Mainwaring!) believes we will be following the council’s complaints procedure. I have left him in no doubt that we will be following my procedure instead.

I never thought a crematorium would be sending direct marketing! But now they know about Permission Based Marketing. I know it’s really hard to market to the dead, but marketing to the bereaved smacks of vultures round a carcass.

How lucky they didn’t try it by SMS or email!

Update: please see this update