A New Phone Sales Technique: I'm not Buying

Modern life, with all the electronic assistance available, is convenient, but at the same time, annoying. Telemarketers, using robo-calling, interrupt naps and mealtimes with their inane, totally inappropriate pitches, and getting to the desired site online is hampered by all the pop-up ads that are inserted in the hopes that you’ll be foolish, or distracted enough to click on. All these things annoy me to no end.  But, recently I encountered what has to be the most annoying modern innovation of all. A combination of pop-up advertising and robot-centric telephony.

I called the service department of a company (for legal reasons I won’t name the organization) and got the usual phone message; ‘press 1 if you’re bored, press 2 if you don’t care,’ or something along those lines, delivered by a soothing female voice. I didn’t want what they were trying to sell, I just wanted some technical help, so when I was given the option of pressing the # key in order not to answer, I kept being sent around in a circle, with yet another offer. I’m no great fan of the vanilla music they play when you’re put on hold but have decided after my encounter with this hard sell technique that the music is preferable. I mean, not only did this woman’s voice keep coming back, but when I refused to ‘press 1’ for the third time, her tone became strident. Remember, this was a recording, not a live person, so the darn thing was programmed to do that with people who didn’t follow instructions. Now, I can take a lot from computers, but being chided because I’m not interested in getting a free prepaid card, or whatever the heck it was they were touting, was over the line.

I finally gave up and went on line, where I had to wait (in silence) until a tech came on to help me, but from that point things went smoothly.

A piece of advice to companies; if you want to get new customers, or keep your existing customers happy, don’t install this system. If you already have it, please, oh please, get rid of it. You’re not making any friends with this technique.