Tuesday, July 17, 2012

More Switchboard Tales

This has been one heck of a weekend, which leaked into Monday, but that’s behind us now, and we shall move on.
Saturday was a good day, but that’ll be a blog post for tomorrow. Sunday and Monday we are just not going to talk about. So that brings us to today. For today, is a new day. A bright, shining new day full of wonder, excitement, and people calling the switchboard with a fake sense of urgency trying to get our IT Department on the phone so they can sell them stuff.
I guess this kind of throws me into another Tales from the Switchboard sort of post. Most of the calls I get here are salespeople, and they will do whatever they can to get through to someone. Many times, that’s acting like it’s an emergency. I actually had one person say to me that someone told him “… and I quote, find her no matter what.” to which I responded that I was told by her “And I quote: I’ve never told anyone that.”
Another thing they like to do is ask for a first or last name only. “Hey, is NAME around?” They act real familiar, like our CEO or CIO or CFO is their drinking or golfing buddy. The problem is, they all have pretty common first or last names, and in a company with as many people as we have in the directory, that could be any number of people. I really love it when they act offended and frustrated when I ask for the person’s full name, and then have to remind them that we have a LOT of people in the company, and at least 8 of the name they are looking for in the system.
Seriously, if you’re going to be an impatient jerk, I could just say “He’s no longer with us” and hang up. No one would blame me at all.
Now, this is the exception, not the rule. Most of the people are really cool, telling me exactly who they’re looking for, letting me transfer them, and then not continually calling back every 20 minutes asking for the same person.
Make sure you’re the rule here, not the exception.
Tony

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