The Customer Service Survey
VocaLabs' weblog providing news and commentary on the challenges of providing good customer service.
"How Are You?"
Thursday - November 13, 2008 09:37 AM in
by Peter Leppik
I'm not sure when or why this happened, but somehow the question "How are you?" has become a surefire tipoff to telemarketing calls.
The script invariably starts like this:
ME: Hello?
CALLER: May I speak to Peter Leppik?
ME: This is.
CALLER: Hello, Mr. Leppik, how are you?
This seemingly-innocuous question is invariably followed by some sort of pitch which I have absolutely no interest in. Legitimate callers (defined as people I actually want to talk to) normally immediately identify themselves (and the company they're calling from) and unambiguously give the reason for the call. None of this scripted awkward friendliness, just right into "This is Bob from Shade Tree Mechanics, and your car is fixed as ready to pick up."
It wouldn't surprise me if this script oddity showed up occasionally, but I'm mystified as to why it seems to happen in every single telemarketing call I get.
It's as though every telemarketing script was written by the same guy, who decided at some point that it was necessary to ask "How are you?" to get past the awkward moment when the called party expects to hear the reason for the call, but the caller won't state the reason because then the called person would hang up.
So instead there's this awkward moment when the telemarketer asks me "How are you?" and I immediately know that I don't want to talk to this person, but I don't yet know why, so I'm forced to answer very tentatively, "Ooooookay."
And then the caller dives into the rest of the script while I hunt for a less-rude moment to hang up.
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