I have a general dislike for phone greetings in general (more on that in a minute), but I've been bothered because since I started, our phone greeting has been progressively longer.
It started with:
"Thank you for calling <store>, where you can get free games for your trades"
to
"Thank you for calling <store>, where you can trade in your games and reserve <new hot title>, this is CC, how can I help you?"
now it's
"Thank you for calling <store>, where you can trade in your games and pick up <new console A> or <new console B> , this is CC, how can I help you?"
At my usual pace of speech that greeting takes me about EIGHT seconds to get through, which is pretty quick. The problem is that eight seconds is a LONG time for someone to sit on the other end of the phone and listen through the spiel.
Corporate seems to think these greetings help to build business because they they make customers more aware of promotions and offers we are running.
Near as I can tell, these greetings (which my company has done for years now), haven't boosted business at all. Customers either ignore them, laugh at me for having to say all that stuff before I can help them, or get upset with me for wasting their time. I'm sure our sales wouldn't suddenly tank if we switched to:
"Thank you for calling <store>, this is CC, how may I help you?"
Although thank god they haven't had us start doing sales pitches in the greetings. Some places I call, I get: "Thank you for calling XYZ company, would you be interested in ordering <whatever hot new product we're hawking at the moment>?"
I've actually hung up on places like this before because I really hate being pitched to when I just called to ask a question.
It started with:
"Thank you for calling <store>, where you can get free games for your trades"
to
"Thank you for calling <store>, where you can trade in your games and reserve <new hot title>, this is CC, how can I help you?"
now it's
"Thank you for calling <store>, where you can trade in your games and pick up <new console A> or <new console B> , this is CC, how can I help you?"
At my usual pace of speech that greeting takes me about EIGHT seconds to get through, which is pretty quick. The problem is that eight seconds is a LONG time for someone to sit on the other end of the phone and listen through the spiel.
Corporate seems to think these greetings help to build business because they they make customers more aware of promotions and offers we are running.
Near as I can tell, these greetings (which my company has done for years now), haven't boosted business at all. Customers either ignore them, laugh at me for having to say all that stuff before I can help them, or get upset with me for wasting their time. I'm sure our sales wouldn't suddenly tank if we switched to:
"Thank you for calling <store>, this is CC, how may I help you?"
Although thank god they haven't had us start doing sales pitches in the greetings. Some places I call, I get: "Thank you for calling XYZ company, would you be interested in ordering <whatever hot new product we're hawking at the moment>?"
I've actually hung up on places like this before because I really hate being pitched to when I just called to ask a question.
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