- “Do you want to save money on your electricity bill?”
- “Our contractors will be in your area next week …”
- “This is an urgent call about your financial …”
Stop calling me! What do you not understand about “Do not call”? When I put my phone number on the Do Not Call list, it was because I do not want your sales calls. Do you think that I will buy your product or service because you called me? Actually, it’s the opposite. I will always avoid you because:
- If you are paying an army of call reps, then it’s likely that your cost-of-sales is higher so if I do purchase from you then either I will be paying more or getting less.
- If you have resorted calling then there’s probably something wrong with your product.
- Even if none of the above is the case, why would I reward you with a purchase when you ignored my Do Not Call preference?
- And why would I ever support the robo-calling industry?
In case it’s not obvious, your calls are always an interruption. Whether I am in the middle of writing a document, cooking food, watching TV or sitting on the can, you are interrupting me. You are asking me to stop what I am doing, maybe dry my hands or get up from my chair, and answer the phone. No matter how polite or friendly your rep is, I’m in a bad mood once I learn that the call is not personal.
Retribution, yes, of course! By calling me against my published Do Not Call interest, your rep is now fair game for any abuse I chose. My current favorite is asking them to wait while I get the person they ask for … then call out something like “Honey, it’s for you!” to make it sound legit then I just leave it off the hook. I like this approach because I imagine most reps have thick skin and have learned to hang up on “F” before “uck” comes out. Waiting, on the other hand, burns time which reduces productivity.
Despite what tiny gratification I get from abusing your reps, you have ruined my phone service. Thanks to you, I often just let the answering machine get it. Then, of course, I miss the occasional caller that I want to speak with because they think I’m not home. My worst fear is that it will be my kid, “Dad, my car is stuck, my cell phone’s almost dead and I nee… <silence>”. So, yeah, I value my phone service and I want to be able to pick up the phone without your rep at the other end.
To everyone that reads this post, what are you going to do about telemarketing? Are you going to sheepishly continue to suffer it or will you do something? Tweet rants to #donotcall. Bitch to your legislators. Invent solutions. Or at least share stories about your latest abuses to telemarketers.
To all the Marketing Wizards that think robo-calling is a good idea and justify it because the lists they buy are legitimized by a carve-out in the Do Not Call legislation, think again. Robo-calling is a good way to damage your brand.
To the phone companies, consumers want quiet enjoyment of a phone service; I have yet to meet anyone that wants unsolicited sales calls. Please accept this and give us the technology to blacklist telemarketers and block their calls. (And I don’t mean that silly list of 5 numbers you offer to block for a month. What I mean is allow me to block all telemarketers on a wholesale basis through black lists, grey lists, consumer flagging and analytics).
To our dear leaders that created the Do Not Call legislation, you are all wimps! You caved in to lobbyists. You sold my privacy. “Do Not Call” is supposed to mean “prevent all B2C calls soliciting a transaction”. Fix it.
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