Don't call me; I'll call you - telemarketing - column

Nation's Business, Feb, 1988 by Sharon Nelton

Don't Call Me; I'll Call You

It's a quarter to seven in the evening. I haven't been home from work very long. I'm starting to prepare dinner. Or I'm hustling into a leotard, hoping to get to my exercise class on time. Or I'm just trying to catch my breath and relax a little. Or if I'm lucky, I might actually be sitting down for a bite to eat.

The phone rings. I know who it is, but a little voice inside me says, "Maybe it's not who you think it is. You'd better answer."

I answer and, darn, it is who I think it is--a telemarketer. Someone trying to get me to buy something at a time when the last thing in the world I want to hear is a sales pitch.

I'm sure it's sacrilege to say this in a magazine that advocates business, but please don't call me.

Don't call me at home to try to sell me something. You're disturbing my privacy.

Especially don't call me at dinner-time. I'm eating. (Your mother told you not to call folks during the dinner hour. It's not polite.)

Don't call me after dinner, because I'm expecting a phone call from one of my children or my mother or a friend. Or I'm watching television or reading a sexy novel.

Telemarketing brings out the indignation in me. I hold no grudge against business-to-business telemarketing as long as it's done during business hours at places of business. But my rage gauge begins to climb when consumer-sales calls come into my personal refuge.

First, the ringing of the phone itself disturbs the peace and creates some stress, no matter how minimal. Second, there's the disappointment of not finding a friend or family member on the line but someone who wants to profit from me.

Third, there's the energy I have to use to fend off the sales talk. And the guilt I feel knowing that the poor man or woman on the other end of the line is being paid relatively low wages to do a job for which they must endure constant rejection and occasional abuse. I don't want to hurt their feelings, but I'm angry at the same time.

Fourth, there's the discourtesy I'm forced to resort to when politeness fails and a persistent caller won't take "no, not interested" for an answer. One caller pressed me to reconsider when I told her I did not want new cabinets for my kitchen, and she queried me insistently when I said I wasn't interested. My house was getting old, she said. (Nine years.) Weren't my cabinets looking pretty old-fashioned by now? (No.) She actually put me on the defensive.

Sometimes I resort to the ultimate rudeness. I hang up on the caller. I have to be really angry to do that. Unless, of course, the caller is a robot. If you are going to call me despite all I've said, why insult me further by sending a robot to do your dirty work?

If you're a business owner who uses consumer telemarketing, admit it: Doesn't it bother you when someone uses the same tactic with you? Don't you remember standing outside your door with two large grocery bags in your arms, fumbling for your keys in the rain, finally getting to the phone just in time to hear a strange voice announce the equivalent of "Have I got a deal for you"?

And how could you forget the Sunday evening that you and your guests sat down to dinner and your insurance man called with the suggestion that you upgrade your homeowner's policy? My agent actually did this. He gets the award for working odd hours but not for being sensitive to a client.

Since businesses continue to use telemarketing, it must get results. So I'll be powerless to stop it. But how many times does it turn a potential customer off? Is anybody counting?

Businesses, of course, are not the only telemarketers. Even my favorite and not-so-favorite charities have taken to the telephone campaign to drum up donations. Boy, I hate the guilt trip they put me through when I decline an opportunity to send 35 deprived children to the circus or buy lifetime-guaranteed light bulbs from the handicapped.

I think it's the way I end up feeling about myself that really drives me over the telemarketing edge. If I don't feel guilty, I think less of myself for being rude or lying outright (as in, "I can't talk to you now; I have company").

In my opinion, if you want to win customers and contributors for life, you make them feel good about themselves. You make them feel they're the smartest people on earth for buying what you have to sell. You make them feel special. You make them feel thin. You don't make them feel guilty or mean or small.

I have developed a standard line: "I do not make decisions like this over the telephone. If you wish to send me something through the mail, I'll be glad to take a look at it."

Most telemarketers don't follow up. Occasionally, however, a savvy caller will surprise me by sympathetically offering to take me off the telephone list--and that caller's organization has a way of sticking pleasantly in my memory when I do receive something in the mail.

Telemarketing has become such an annoyance in my life that I'm considering taking names and boycotting the businesses, charities and political organizations that use it. A sort of walking the Yellow Pages in reverse.