Stalking is over. Truecaller is here!

Before you start thinking about the title in a different way let me stop you right there. What you thinking about will be eradicated only when people fix themselves.

So yeah coming to the point of stalking — what type of stalking am I talking about? “Sales Stalking” — let me describe.

So one fine morning I woke up and thought that lets have a look on some new and upcoming cars in the market. Lets try to get an idea about the on-road price of few cars.

So now first thing you type on your address bar is “car price..” and Google Chrome starts suggesting titles to you(Oh! I am talking about chrome browser btw). So I landup on cardekho.com and some other websites. Honestly saying I have fallen in love with cardekho.com website after they revamped it — ease of searching cars, ease of comparing, price, EMI calculation, loan links etc -everything intuitive.

But at someplace you HAVE to put in your number. Only at couple of trustable websites you can do that. But even then you will have to face the consequences.

So you put in your number and then few hours after you get a call from some “Tata” showroom regarding some car model. I was expecting the call in this case and wanted to discuss the EMI plans etc. I discussed, got all the information I needed and I thought the conversation was over. Wait it wasn’t — “When are you planning to buy the car sir?” — a very genuine question. “I am not sure yet. I was just researching and wanted to know about what EMI and loan plans are available.”
From the otherside of the call: “Sure. Not a problem. We will let our <some team> know and they will contact you for a test drive whenever you want that.”
Me: “No. Thanks but I am still learning driving and I am not planning to buy the car at the moment anyways so I don’t think you need to have that trouble. So no need to update my contact for any further query/request.”
Guy/Gal(Multiple calls — once a guy, next time a girl, again guy): “Thats fine sir. We will update here for a call after 3–4 months. February works?”
Me: “Phew Yes!”

Honestly even with this I would say calls are short these days. “They” have learnt the hard way that peoples’ exasperation aint the prize they are looking for.

One fine morning you you were looking for some co-working office space and you put in your number in a customer channel of that website and bamn! Calls just wont stop! Once a week, thrice in 2 weeks, and multiple times in a month from different dealers and channels/companies.

How Truecaller(Android App) helps?

Well some angels use full feature of true caller and name these numbers as “Mahindra showroom spam”, “office-space spam”, “bank call spam” etc. So once or twice is fine but if you start getting multiple calls next time before picking up the call let truecaller search and show you some result about the number. I have avoided many calls because of “true caller”. Thanks TrueCaller for saving us from “Sales Stalking”!

I have an honest request with so called Sales people who work on lead generation and meeting new targets — stop stalking! I am no MBA but this is basic people skill(say if you may) to not repeat yourself if person has concluded the call with a note — “thanks, will contact if things change”. This is not how you do sales. Try to understand what the person is saying and try to comprehend with the first call itself if this contact is supposed to be called again by any one in the team again.

Sometimes I so loath people who talk to customer care rudely or don’t give respect while answering to credit card calls/insurance calls/personal loan calls. They can be politely said “No. I am not interested.” If you are not busy then atleast here them out and know the product and then say “No” ☺ But warn them that “I might not be opting for it.”

But then sometimes I feel that they are right in talking rudely or just disconnecting the call right away — because these callers/companies just don’t get it that a “No” means “No”.