My first job at work release

My first job since I arrived at the Largo Residential Re-entry Center was in telemarketing. At this job, about 100 people worked in one big room and an automatic dialing system dialed potential customers in various states.

Telemarketing is a job spent dealing with endless voice mail messages and answering machines (which are seldom returned), being told the decision maker isn’t there that day, getting hung-up on, disconnected numbers and angry hang-ups.

Even when you finally speak to a live person, you have to get past secretaries and then haggle with a decision maker who already has a resistence to phone sellers. After all, what busy person wants to fight with yet another telemarketer on the phone promising to save him money?

I was crammed into a half-booth – calling it a cubicle would be too generous – at a small desk that didn’t really offer any privacy from the other telemarketers sitting around me. I put up with the laughter, cackle and screeching in the background as I tried to read a script without sounding like I was reading it.

And a telephone headset? Forget it. Try holding a phone up to your ear for eight hours a day, five days a week.

Some of the CSRs (customer service reps) do well in this environment and don’t become overwhelmed by the constant rejection. On the other hand, it stressed me out tremendously and I’m not sure learning to become numb to it is a good thing.

Many of those I called complained of repetitive calls from our company, sometimes two or more on the same day. One man told me he’d been called nine times in two weeks. The online computer system allows you to categorize each call (no answer, hung up, fax line, disconnected, etc…) but obviously some CSRs failed to take the time to do this in order to more quickly get to the next call. It results in significant time waste for others later calling.

Training was strange because the trainer said nothing about pay. Not even when payday was, the commission levels, nothing. You only know how much you’re paid for each week when you get your paycheck.

Some of the trainers would get on the phone and call some of us CSRs – pretending that they were customers that were going to sign up. Then they’d die laughing after they revealed that it was a joke. Not too funny when you maybe get to talk to only four or five live people in one day.

One supervisor said to tell people as little as possible and try to get an order without even quoting the price. I overheard a very successful salesman giving the impression to the person he was calling that “it’s my job to show you the savings plan” and that he was “required” to wait on hold while he or she got their last gas bill; he added that he’s paid hourly rather than on commission so he didn’t mind waiting. Of course this is false – most telemarketers are strictly on commission. I hate the fact that a lot of telemarketers often lie to get a sale.

While I now have a new telemarketing job, it’s a much different environment. There’s only a few of us working, the script is much simpler and everyone working there is like a family.