Welcome to Friday Fiascos...

A weekly look back at some of the f**k-ups and misdemeanors I've experienced and witnessed during my career...        

"Malcolm, I can talk the pants off anyone…"

Here are some "tales of the telemarketers" – am sure you probably have some too dear reader.

Back in the day when prehistoric animals roamed Earth and telemarketing was evolving, there were conferences dedicated to telemarketing and specialist streams within major marketing events.

These were as a result of technological advances that disrupted the marketing industry – automatic diallers, Toll-free numbers, real humans answering customer service inquiries et al. Nothing new in the disruptive space in marketing technology folks.

The growth in the category was so strong that there was a shortage of experienced telemarketers and training courses opened up. At seminars, newly minted experts would provide insights into the best type of people to hire as telemarketers. (You may have noticed AI is following the same pattern)

I kid you not, and while the language isn’t appropriate today, back then it was normal to hear an expert advise you to hire fat people, as “they have great personalities and love working on the phone because they are too shy to work in face-to-face sales roles.” Sad, but true folks – hire a jolly person was the call, excuse the pun.

Actors perform better

The smartest company that hired and trained telemarketers was Cellarmaster Wines. The office was located in a high-rise building in Bondi with great views of Sydney Harbour and Pacific Ocean. At Cellarmasters, you were promoted up to customer service and the best seats in the office. The management was very smart and hired actors as telemarketers, for good reasoned.

Firstly, the actors saw the job as an acting role and so didn’t suffer rejection like others did. They just threw themselves into the role and got on with the job. Secondly, the actors need flexible work hours due to auditions and contract work, so the shifts suited them, and they were happy to work nights as they needed the income. Many an actor now doubles as a telephone sales person.

Who'd have thought?

When I was National Marketing Manager for TNTGroup4 I created a small outbound telemarketing team to close leads to our B2B direct mail campaigns. It was a small team that worked mostly 10am to 3pm Tuesday to Thursday, as we found from testing that Monday and Friday didn’t pay for themselves.

One lady (let’s call her Marge) stood out from the others in her ability to close appointments at almost twice the close rate of the others in the team. She was extremely fit, aged in her early 40s and was part of our early morning squash team that played twice a week before work – she also played A-Grade competitive squash.

One day a staff member suggested to me that Marge had another job I should know about. I had no issue with this as her work with us was part-time. You couldn’t ask about such things now, but over breakfast after squash one morning, I asked her discreetly if she had another job.

Marge was straight up with me and said she did – she was an upmarket escort, working via a brothel and only for politicians and diplomats. Her husband was a former client and her job with us was for tax purposes and social proof, so friends and others believed she had legitimate employment.

I won’t get into the details of the conversation, but she had some amazing stories to tell about some very public figures. Certainly opened my eyes. She also drove a sports car with vanity number plates and a car-phone, when only emergency services had car-phones.

I asked her why she was so good at closing appointments, and what could she teach the other staff. Marge looked at me across our bowls of fruit salad and coffees and with a smile said, “Malcolm, I can talk the pants of anyone, so I have no problem closing appointments with businessmen.”

Suffice to say, I just grinned and nodded with (hopefully) an impressed look on my face. We finished breakfast and the subject was never raised again. Nor did I suggest she train the rest of the team.

Language barriers

A few years later, when Ogilvy launched unleaded petrol (ULP) for Shell in Australia, our office created an inbound call centre for people wanting to know if their engines could use ULP. I was responsible for managing the team, among other things.

We ran advertisements inviting the public to call and ask, rather than risk damaging their engines, if they could use ULP – tractors, ploughs, ride-on mowers, marine engines, vintage motorbikes and cars, two-stroke engines, planes, any model vehicle, etc.

The lady who ran the call centre (let’s call her Jose) had a deep husky voice, from a lifetime of smoking. One day a woman with a German accent rang wanting to know if her Datsun could take ULP. She had a strong accent and Jose had some difficulty understanding her. Both the caller and Jose were getting a tad frustrated with each other.

Jose was asking the caller what was the model of the Datsun? The caller didn’t know what she meant by model. "It's a Datsun." she yelled. Jose said “is at an SSS?” to which the German caller took umbrage “What you mean SS? You calling me Nazi?” This flummoxed poor Jose, who apologised and tried to explain, but they were both talking over each other and eventually the caller hung up. Nowadays of course, we’d build a website with all the relevant information, no need for a call centre.

Telemarketing is still a powerful channel in B2B for prospecting, though there’s an inexperienced generation who have no knowledge of it, as they believe digital thought leadership is the go. It is also excellent for B2C customer service – you’d be surprised how much your customers appreciate a call from a human, even if it is to sell something.

But the category shot itself in the foot, by offshoring the call centres to countries with English as a second language. I recently had to compete with roosters crowing in the background of an ANZ Bank call centre in Southeast Asia, while I was trying to activate a credit card – now there’s a telemarketing tale…

#telemarketing #training #callcentre