Courtesy Calls are Anything but..

You know, a good sales person needs a good opening line. Perhaps more important than that though, is the way in which they deliver it. Face it, if some bloke calls me up in the middle of dinner to tell me I've won a free holiday with all the enthusiasm as a balloon with a hole in it, then I'll very quickly switch off.

The problem with our call centre society is that the people calling us don't actually care. Why should they? They're targetted to make a certain number of calls within a certain number of hours and are likely to have no incentive to close more business or even foster a new relationship.

The worst offenders are the newcomers - thrown into a cubicle with a script and a list of numbers, they're poised for one of the two responses that you can give them - either that you are interested, or some reason that you’re not. And let's be honest, how often does the first one come up for them? I imagine the response of "Why I'm so glad you called, please do tell me more" almost never happens.

I had a terrible one the other day. "I'm calling from Kitchens Direct, we're doing free quotes in your area if you're interested." Simple response - I wasn't. Length of call, 10 seconds and have a pleasant evening. However (and there's always a however with me isn't there?) if there’s one thing that aggravates more even more than having my evening kebab interrupted, it’s people that flat out LIE.

Best example? “Good evening Mr Rose, I’m calling from insert faceless call centre here and it’s just a quick courtesy call to...........” Now the dots aren’t there to act as an ‘etc’ or an ‘and so forth’, no, they’re there because once I hear the words ‘courtesy call’ then all I hear after that is white noise. Give me an extra couple of seconds and my brain will actually start playing reruns of iconic TV shows from the eighties just to stop me lapsing into a coma. It’s sad really, because on reflection, Knight Rider really was rather weak.

Let’s take a look at why this happens, ideally without the use of an MRI to understand my brain. It happens because I don’t understand how any company with whom I have never done business would want to call me simply out of courtesy. It would make a nice world wouldn’t it? “Good afternoon Mr Rose, just calling to say hello and see how you are, no other agenda whatsoever”. Wake up genius, it’s not going to happen.

All these so called courtesy calls are sales calls, so why not just be honest about it? Don’t call to tell me I’ve won a prize in a competition I didn’t even enter. Don’t tell me that my home has been selected for a free conservatory before you’ve established that I live in a flat on the first floor (I don’t any more, but that actually happened), and don’t tell me that you’ve got ‘people in my area’ when we both know that they’ll be in my area just as soon as I agree to an appointment.

What I just don’t get is why all these telesales people are trained in believing that their target customers are all complete idiots. It’s like they just don’t even want to try any more - a cheery disposition and a slick script is only going to work on the thinnest slice of the population, so why bother using it?

Just level with people - “Good evening Mr Rose, I’m calling on behalf of XYZ and I wanted to take a few moments of your time to see if we can be of any help to you with regard to life insurance”. Crisp, polite and to the point, that person will not get the phone slammed down. They will get told that I already have an insurance broker, but I will not feel as though my time was robbed from me by some liar in a call centre.

But why not make it even more powerful? Send out a gift in the post and then call to see if they received it and what they thought of it. It's honest and a great way to lead into a conversation that could turn into a sale. Oh sure, most people throw junk mail away - but aren't they the same people who are going to turn down your 'courtesy call' anyway?

Targetting fewer customers with a slicker campaign will yield a better result - it's not rocket science, so why are so few people willing to try it. Sales is not a mere numbers game - quality will win over quantity.

Well that was this week's courtesy blog. Did I say courtesy? Let me try again. I hope you enjoyed this blog and took something away from it. If you did and would like to return the favour, I would be much obliged if you would contact me to talk about your next marketing campaign and how I can help you with it. See? Honesty.