I just hung up on a call from a Susan who said she was with "WRA, a national consumer research firm". I normally hang up on such calls. But I hung up especially quickly because she started out loudly at a high pitched tinny voice that was very grating. My reaction: phone calling banks ought to screen for voice quality and they ought to choose callers whose voices won't immediately turn off callers.
My other reaction: Why should I give some of my time for free to help some for-profit company make money selling info about my preferences to other for-profit companies? Why should anyone bother?
Do you answer questions from phone pollers? If so, why?
It occurred to me that I ought to go and renew my donotcall.gov phone registry entries. If you live in the US of A and haven't done this or haven't done it lately then here's your chance to start clicking your way to greater solitude.
| Share | | By Randall Parker at 2009 August 03 07:38 PM Off Beat And Odd |
I worked at one of these places for a while. The place I worked didn't screen people in any particularly meaningful way, but they did have a sort of quota system that weeded out the useless people. And yes, I did feel like having a pleasant voice and demeanor helped me rope in more participants.
It was actually a political push-pull survey center rather than a consumer research firm. Very odd place. Very secretive.
I've learned to hang-up even before the first word is spoken. You can hear the boiler-room buzz in the background and there is always a slight delay before a voice comes on the line.
And when the voice does come on, as often as not it's with an Indian accent.