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Call me, maybe, or how about never -
survey finds 66.5% of Brits hang up on cold callers!
IF there's one job that's tougher than being made to call
random people to try and sell them something they didn't want in the first
place, we've yet to hear about it. But cold callers are generally unwelcome,
with these beleaguered souls always having to sound bright and breezy to the
irate resident who answers the phone. Because there's never a good time to talk
to a cold caller, is there? Somehow they either manage to ring halfway through EastEnders, or when we're doing something tricky like feeding a baby/doing some
intricate DIY task/playing Minecraft (delete as appropriate).
But while these guys are just trying to make a living, many of us don't see it
that way, and resent this telephonic intrusion of our homes. Wired and wireless
telephone headset provider Headsets4Business.co.uk carried out a survey of 1,500
people, asking what really gets our goat when it comes to cold calls. But
firstly, they asked if we ever just hang up on cold callers, and the results
were most interesting!
On average, 66.5% of the UK puts the phone down on someone trying to sell them
something. But the people with the least patience in the UK & Ireland are the
Irish; a whopping 77% of them will immediately hang up on a conversation about
double glazing or insurance. As for England, it's the East Midlanders who are
least tolerant: almost 70% of them leave their cold callers listening to the
sweet sound of the dial tone… However, happily for them, cold callers are
guaranteed the warmest reception in the South East! Over a third of South
Easterners (37%) say they wouldn't hang up on a stranger who called them out of
the blue to discuss something like mobile phone tariffs (at least those who
don't slam the phone down are decent enough to give an excuse ; 36.3% are just
really honest, saying they're not interested; 10.8% of us say we're too busy,
and 5% of us pretend we're just about to sit down to a meal).
Actually, when it comes to the topic of conversation, phone deals are apparently
one of the least irritating; only 7.3% of people said that was the type of call
they had the least patience for. The biggest bugbear, for over a third of us
(38.9%) is people trying to help you recover PPI refunds, which is surely the
dullest thing in the world. Perhaps surprisingly, or perhaps because it jogs
people's memory to actually do something about it, pensions is the least
irritating topic, with only 1.9% of us finding them excruciating.
And while the majority of us don't actually feel sorry for cold callers, just
over a quarter of us (25.8%) do actually understand that it's just a job, and
they're only doing what they've been asked to. After all, if we're the ones
irritated by an unwanted call, just imagine how the cold callers feel, facing
rejection after rejection during an eight hour shift! "It's a tough job,
being a cold caller, but someone's got to do it. They're almost like unsung
heroes, really! So give these guys a break next time you get a call and you
never know; you might get a really good deal on your next mobile phone tariff." says David Whitehead from Headsets4Business.co.uk.
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