on IT sales calls

[anivair.livejournal.com]

a) Dear co-workers. Could you please ask people why they're calling before you put them on the line for me? If they say "to save you money on your backup solution" they're not a client, I promise.

b) Dear IT sales caller. Can you please wait till after nine AM? I've got things to do with my first hour and none of them involve pretending you can save me money on my (already free because I wrote the scripts) backup.

Not a great start to the day so far.

Comments

[manuka.livejournal.com]

Your IT sales calls don't go straight to voicemail? Sounds like you need to update rules processing on the phone firewall.

[anivair.livejournal.com]

I just yelled at the phone firewall. She is not pleased.

[dave-iii.livejournal.com]

If you can save money on a free system, doesn't that mean they have to start paying you?


But yeah, I agree with manuka, you may need to have a serious discussion about call screening.

[jecook]

Bah. When I was in the Support team at my place, I'd get all manner of crap forwarded to me, by either our phone firewall (i.e. the main number) or by my cow-orkers within my team.

Fun things like employment verification for people who quit/were fired over 9 months ago, random sales calls, or collection agencies.

The people in the office I shared were amused and surprised at my weapons grade vocabulary when I told these people where to go and what exactly to do in detailed terms.

(The collection agency was a fun one- I had to tell them that if they called any more looking for this person that I would refer them to our legal team because I had given them our HR number several times in the past. They stopped calling after that.)

[anivair.livejournal.com]

the weapons grade vocab is the reason i take them sometimes. the girls get a kick out of me dismissing people.

[tuba-man.livejournal.com]

That just made my day.

[wxgeek.livejournal.com]

HAHAHAHA.

Sales pitch

[unsupportedgeek.livejournal.com]

Well, you see.. time is ultimately money, am I right? So the time you need to write and maintain those scripts is more money out of the companies coffers. By buying our products you can save time and in the long run MONEY!! The more money you save your company, the more valuable you are.

You need to spend money to make money.

[cirobi.livejournal.com]

Ah misdirected calls. Love to hate 'em.

Thankfully we don't get very many sales calls forwarded to us, but we do get a lot of forwarded support calls that have nothing to do with us. Thankfully I'm internal support and not product support. People don't seem to understand the difference between real support numbers and the billing number. The poor goobers call the number on the bill, get to me and try to complain about software I know nothing about. Meanwhile, had they gone to the website and searched, the support numbers are *gasp* magically listed.

We also get support request calls from customers of a particular laptop manufacturer who can't seem to get their support partner list correct. We don't even use their machines let alone support them. Their customers have already just shown up at reception much to our dismay and our receptionist's confusion. One young lady was in tears because she'd been pointed to several incorrect places and another kid who barely spoke english kept trying to shove his laptop at us and insist we fix it.

[wolfhound668.livejournal.com]

The company I was at two jobs ago lost their receptionist right after I started. Since my cube was next to the door they never bothered to replace her. For eight years I joked that I was either a well paid receptionist or a poorly paid sysadmin.

So not only did I get all the sales calls that came into the building for IT on the phone, I had to deal with every jackass salesman who wandered in off of the street (I came to dread the first nice day in spring because they'd be out in droves).

One of the happiest days I had there was when my director told me, "you don't get paid to be nice to cold-callers". After that it became a sport. :)