I just saw this post on the Yahoo! Developer Network Blog about the launch of their new site, Yahoo! Live.
With all the recent news about a potential acquisition of Yahoo! by Microsoft, it’s kind of funny that Yahoo! has a property called Live (Microsoft Live anybody?).
Maybe it’s just me.
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“Pick the low-hanging fruit”. It’s one of those buzzword-compliant phrases that gets thrown around in meetings, business books and articles. It might even seem like a good idea, just don’t follow this advice if you are actually picking fruit.
Experienced fruit pickers know that it’s best to pick the fruit growing high in the tree first. There are a couple reasons for this. Firstly, the fruit that’s high in the tree gets more exposure to the sun and tends to ripen faster than the low hanging fruit. Secondly, fruit pickers use bags to hold the fruit as they pick it. By starting at the top of the ladder, they don’t have a full bag until they get to the bottom of the ladder. The bag is the heaviest at the shortest part of the climb.
It’s pretty clear that it doesn’t really make sense to pick low-hanging fruit.
…But thanks to this tip from lifehacker, they can be tricked into never calling again. If you have a robot pest problem like I do, check out the tip and get the robots to stop calling.
I hate telemerketing!
I’m not a big fan of automated response systems.
I’d like to meet the super genius who decided to put the two together and create the automated telemarketing call… and punch him in the face!
When my phone rings, I expect to answer it and hear the voice of a person. I prefer it when that person is somebody I know. I can tolerate it if it is a sales person of some kind, especially if they listen when I say I’m not interested. But when there is a machine asking me to press 1 for English and 2 for Spanish in order to put me in a que to speak to a person, I have a major problem with that.
If I am important enough to call, I am important enough to at least receive that call from a human being. Automated response services work because if I initiate the call, there is probably a pretty good reason. Since I have a reason to be on the phone, I am more likely to wait and listen to that awful music for 5, 10, 20 minutes than if I didn’t have a good reason.
I hang up on the machines. I would expect that most people hang up on the machines. In fact, I’d be shocked to learn that somebody actually waits for the person for any reason other than pure amazement and profound curiosity.
Has this ever happened to you? Did you talk to the machines? If you have, I would love to hear about it in the comments.
I very rarely use my landline phone, so on the rare occasions that it rings, it is more than likely a telemarketer. I recieved a call the other day from a satellite TV company that I have done business with in the past. The person on the other end of the phone was trying to talk me into returning to them for my TV service. I explained that I was not interested and that I was quite happy with my current service. The person on the other end of the phone proceeded to ask me what I was paying for my current service. I told this person that cost was not my main concern and that I had no interest in switching services. He proceeded to read the next response from his script. I explained that I was never very happy with their service and that I didn’t want satellite dishes on my house again. It would seem at this point that the phone wasn’t sending sound from my end of the connection to his because he started with his canned speech again. I hung up.
I have issues with telemarketers as it is, but when the victim (that’s right, I said victim) says “I’m not interested” that should be the end of it. The correct response to “I’m not interested” should be “Thank you for your time sir/ma’am, have a nice day” (or something along those lines). No means no people!
If you are a telemarketer, listen to the person on the other end of the phone. If you are in charge of a call center and you write the scripts, include the “…have a nice day” option and encourage your staff to use it.