I do phone sales six months of the year. AMA! *

I bet when you hear the sound of candy wrappers, you guess "FAT," but politely suggest "a larger size."

How are things on kiwifarms? Have you hounded anyone to suicide lately for lols?

Haha, r1 I actually do occasionally suggest a bigger size with a gentle reminder that cotton shrinks

r2, not during the holidays of course.

What does a fat voice or a skinny voice sound like?

skinny voices talk really quickly, matter of fact and have everything ready. Fat voices never have their stuff organized and ramble. That's if they don't have a fat person voice which is kind of wet and gravel-y

What type of phones do you sell?

haha r6, I read that 3 times before I realized you were playing on the thread title.

I can say people from Texas, Arkansas, and other deep south states generally say 'I want' or 'give me' while east coasters generally say 'can I have' or 'I think I will get'

What are the rudest cities/states and which ones are the nicest cities/states?

Scammiest areas - always wanting a refund or free stuff?

rudest is Texas or Arizona and a certain subset of elderly ladies from South Carolina. Nicest is New Jersey or Brooklyn or the midwest.

We don't get a lot of scammers that I deal with because I don't do returns. I think I am supposed to but I just don't do them, I bump them up the line if it's questionable or has a hint of difficulty. Otherwise I just send a return label and let returns deal with it. The bigger problem is credit card fraud but that's not my problem either to deal with.

I had a guy yesterday that I was convinced was a D Ler or should be. I actually had to pause my inbound calls for a minute because I was laughing so hard and saying to myself 'that was some Norman Bates shit. mother indeed'.

I worked in an American Airlines call center 25 years ago and it was a hoot. You get some real wackos. I worked the weekend late night shift and every Saturday late we’d get the same two prank callers.

One was a very deep, vaguely female, husky voice. The person would make a first class reservation from JFK to some other big city like London or LA. They would hem and haw about giving a name, then launch into this long drawn out story about being famous and not wanting to hand an ID to the ticket agent, but hold it up for them to look at. Then this person would claim to be DL icon and actress with all the FLAVAH, Lauren Bacall. When you got to asking for payment they’d hang up.

Another regular was less original. He’d call up and during asking about schedules he’d start yelling at kids in the background. He’d then joke that he was going to have to spank them. That would segue into asking you if your parents used to spank you and soon you’d hear obvious signs of him jacking off.

No one really minded, and typically you’d brag if you’d gotten one, or better both, that night.

If anyone seems like they're going to get out of line (and frankly, I have only had a few because our normal customer base is elderly) I just say, can you please confirm your phone number is xxx xxx xxxx? because we have caller id.

[quote]Nicest is New Jersey

Really? That's surprising.

Oh, and fuck off, R2.

This is inbound rather than outgoing right?

How does your company measure your performance, what targets do you have to meet?

Inbound only r14, I would never be able to do outbound. My targets are making sure I say exactly what I was trained to say and be excessively nice. I don't have numbers, quotas or anything like that because I don't get commission and people know what they want when they call. I can make suggestions or mention sales we're having but there's absolutely zero pressure on the customer. I would never ever do that especially as most are elderly, that would be evil. Which is actually what I told them when they mentioned upsells and they understood that point of view.

Whoops, hit enter too soon. At least once a week someone randomly audits 3 of my calls. I am expected to hit all the points, be extremely nice but not rambly or unprofessional and apologize for everything that could possibly need an apology. I get scored and we meet and discuss what I did right and what needs improvement. If someone doesn't get over 70 percent on multiple audits I think there's an issue but I don't know what it would be because I typically get over 90 (because it's fairly easy and we've had good training). It's actually a good company for phone work but seasonal pays for shit. Nice people though and I don't have to leave the house.

Interesting, I did both inbound and outbound very briefly as a first job out of university twenty years ago. I lasted three days at outbound, I just couldn't do it, I felt so awful every time I pissed someone off which was pretty much every single call. We were selling an internet package that basically had no advantages over its competitors. I still managed to sell four of them, I think. Every time I made a sale the manager threw me a Mars Bar.

Then I spent three months taking calls for Sky TV (outsourced to our call centre company). That was ok, but it was 12 hour shifts. We did have one target, which was to type in numerical codes into our system while taking a call to register what the call was about, we were supposed to enter a code for 80% of calls. The flaw in their system was that they couldn't check we were inputting the right code, so I just inputted any random numbers and smashed the target each time hahahahaha.

We were also meant to promote the magazine with the offers, seems like we were not nearly as cuddly as your employers.

What do you do if they can't speak English intelligibly?

Is your company hiring?

Yeah, I would die if I had to do outbound, likely from an ulcer or something. Last year I did 8 hour shifts on the weekends but I said this year I can only do 4 hour shifts. I am too much of an introvert to keep it up for 8 hours. if they forget and put me on 8 I just try to trade half a shift. I currently do 4 weeknights and one weekend day on average.

r18, I have no problem understanding probably 90 percent of accents so I may not be the best person to comment on that. I also get people with strokes or stuff like that and have no problem.

r19, yes! But I think you have to be in Vermont 😣

Six months is a long time, I assume this is on top of a full-time gig? You've got more energy than I do.

Do you get any men buying women's clothes / lingerie that's clearly for them?

What is the most surprisingly popular item sold?

r21, it is. and I don't think I have more energy, just likely less money.

I would not assume r22 but I don't think I have and wouldn't judge if they did unless it was a creepy call (they're just clothes, I don't care who wears what).

I won't get specific r22 but some food items. I think it's because I am cheap and can't imagine paying that much money.

What's the largest order you've ever processed?