Starting a conversation like a rock star
Like most students I had to keep myself from drowning in debt at every opportunity, and each summer I took on a summer job. One summer I found myself working at Virgin Money, a job I took because it started soonest, paid the most and lunch was free. As it happened, I ended up learning a skill I still rely on to this day as a UX Designer; being able to start a conversation from nothing with someone I know very little about.
As a “Customer Service Representative” at Virgin Money, it was my job to help people through their credit card application process. Given that I was totally unqualified to give financial advice, what that meant in reality was that I was just there to complete applications (on paper!) on the behalf of the people who called up wanting a credit card. There turned out to be a lot of them.
It was 2005 and on my first visit to the office where I would end up working, I discovered a bunch of people, also students, sitting with their feet up on the desks surrounded by large televisions showing what turned out to be one of the best summers of cricket. Perfect. It was a call centre, but not as I imagined it. If I’d been paying less attention to the cricket on that visit, I might have realised that not once did I hear anyone’s phone ring.
If you’ve ever worked in a call centre, this won’t be news to you but on day one reality hit me like a cricket ball to the face. You see, if you work in a call centre, you never have to dial a number and the phone never goes brrrrr-ing br-ing for you to pick up. What happens, as I found out the hard way, is that you sit down at your desk, put your headset on, set your phone to “active” and wait until you hear “BEEE-BOOOOP!!!!” in your ear.
That’s it, suddenly there’s someone on the other end and you’re off, reading a carefully prepared script that I could probably still recite verbatim: “Good morning [UNPRONOUNCEABLE NAME STILL LOADING UP ON MY COMPUTER SCREEN], this is Jonathan from Virgin Money Credit Card Applications, I understand you want to make an application for a credit card?”.
And so that was it for me, a true baptism of fire, the worst way I could ever imagine having to start a phone conversation; none of the ceremony of dialling the number, let alone knowing in advance who you’d be speaking to. But it taught me that talking to someone over the phone is not scary — the person who picks up is always human and having a script always helps.
Not everyone has had that experience and starting conversations in the context of research, for example, can be understandably anxiety-inducing. I think Dave Grohl can help.
How Dave Grohl starts a conversation
This article from The Guardian, an interview with Dave Grohl, is a good few years old now but I re-read it from time to time to remind me how simple it is to start a conversation; at a conference, on the phone, by email…
The article is great (especially if you’re a Foo’s fan), but this is the quote that I’m referring to, where Dave Grohl talks about being backstage at a festival:
Why not just go fucking knock on everybody’s door with a bottle of whisky and say: ‘Hi, I’m Dave, how are you? Nice to meet you,’ and see who’s going to fucking join the party? That’s the first thing I do.”
The thing is, I genuinely believe Dave Grohl is curious enough to want to find out the answer. Ok, so it’s unlikely you’re going to be able to turn up to any of your conversations with a bottle of whisky (I’m still trying), but next time you need to start a conversation and you’re stuck for an opener, give it a try, it would be a strange character that could resist replying…
Hi, I’m Jonathan, how are you? Nice to meet you…
