Switchboard as Microcosm.

[entelein]

One of the most irritating phone calls to take during my 9 hour day is the call that begins like this:

"Is Jack in?"

Imagine, if you will, a male salesman's voice - cocky, energetic, demanding, no-nonsense, all-American. It's the kind of voice that is smoothed over fratboy with the wisdom of three dotbombs under its belt. It's the kind of voice that is 20% entitlement, 30% condescension, and 50% bluffing. Allow 5% margin of error for elements of coy faux politeness, blunt efficiency, or assholery.

I work the switchboard for an office of over 400 people. I also happen to know who the caller means when he so blithely and confidently asks for "Jack." He wants to speak to our CEO. He is trying to tell me without telling me that he is on the inside, that he's on a first-name basis with the guy that runs the place. He wants a direct line to our corporate God, and by golly, he's not gonna let some phone girl stop him. He's wheelin' and dealin', folks, and that's all there is to it. He's very V.I.

"Jack," as it happens, is often not even in the office. When he is, he's not sitting at his desk, sipping slowly at awful coffee from the kitchen down the hall, shuffling through invoices piled high in his In tray. He's out and about, he's in meetings. He has an admin. Any calls that come in to the main number get routed through to this admin. No exceptions. Without fail.

These guys often push the issue, never really giving a reason why they need to speak to Jack. They act almost offended at my gentle screening of the call.

Namedroppers waste a good deal of my time every single day. They are not going to get through me, and I don't know why they should expect they ever should, from the first moment they hit my Wall of Bullshit Detectors. I can hear the keggers in their recent past, how can they not hear the bricked-up door in my present moment?

As is often the case on the switchboard and in real life, people use names as a way to create or maintain their own relevance. It's Who You Know, after all, and the more casually you can toss off someone's name, the more points you score in this game. "Oh, him? He's great." It always used to crack me up when I'd get calls for our former CFO, Edward: "Is Eddie around?"

Around my desk? Around this quadrant of this floor? "Eddie"? Who are you trying to fool? Cos it ain't me.

When you really know someone, and you've got the security of that connection, their name ceases to have power over you. No longer enslaved by the urge to blurt it out in close proximity with your own, the freedom of actually relying on connections that are already there is palpable, sane.

If you're calling for "Jack," and you feel familiar enough with him not to use his surname, why is it that you're not calling him directly? Why is it that you don't have his direct line? Why is it that you're trying to impress little old me, who tends to forget you 2 seconds after I've terminated your call?

Oh, that's right.

You must be selling something.

Comments

[amiev.livejournal.com]

It's true, in much of the 'sales' training I have read, they say to ask for first name, so that the receptionist may get fooled into thinking you know them. I will tell you right now that even though I am in sales, I do not do this. I simply ask for them by first and last name, and if I have to speak to an admin in between, I will. If I have to leave VM, I will. I never expect that trickery is a good sales technique, no matter what the training says. Another 'trick' I have seen other salespeople use, which I won't, is when they are cold calling in person, to say they are here to meet with 'so and so' as if they have an appt. People have done this for my boss, and it pisses him the hell off, so I don't know why any right thinking salesperson would even attempt this technique.

[entelein.livejournal.com]

Dude, you're the sort that I like. I'd be so nice to you. :)

[amiev.livejournal.com]

Hee hee! :) Cool!

[ozy-y2k.livejournal.com]

Hey, is Krystyn there? :D

[thunderclap8.livejournal.com]

can she come out and play?

[entelein.livejournal.com]

And does she paint her toenails?

[ozy-y2k.livejournal.com]

[starts furiously scrambling around office trying to remember exactly where he put Krystyn's number at the switchboard]

[brfitzgerald.livejournal.com]

Love the writing on this one. Have you considered submitting some of your posts to magazines or newspapers, either in print or online?

[entelein.livejournal.com]

I've considered other ways of using my writing! :)

[coffeejedi.livejournal.com]

A few years i ago i was forced to go on a business trip that i really didn't want to go on. My only consolation was that it was Florida, and my boss promised i'd get a day off to go to Walt Disney World.

At any rate, it was to the John Deere expo (they were our biggest customer) and i had to "sell" our web-based junk direct mail promotional package to tractor dealers. Naturally i was thrown in with the sales guys. Those smarmy, overly friendly guys who preface every sentence with your first name, stare into your eyes creepily, and touch you warmly on the shoulder cuz hey, you're their buddy, with a look on their face that betrays their true intentions- "how can i use this person to further my own ends?" Instead of selling the product, i tried my best to just be a web-support kinda guy and help our existing customers, or walk through potential customers to show them how easy it was. This pissed off the sales guys to no end, because i wasn't pushing some gooey sounding statistics of how they could improve their sales by snail-spamming farmers with postcards.

When the dealers would tell me about bugs they encountered on the site, i'd write down the problem and tell them that i'd look into fixing it as soon as i got back. The sales guys, on the other hand, would actually lie to the dealers, bold-faced, and tell them all manner of stories, making up excuses for the bug. They advised me to do the same, i just couldn't.

Then my boss, Josh, a weasly little 29 year old prick with an eye on an MBA and a sweet spot at the top of the food chain (regardless of how many people he stepped on to get there) informs me that some other marketing company down there wants to take us all out to dinner; they want to strike up a business relationship with us. OH MY LORD, I'd never seen such fake posturing in my life. These guys with their moderately priced gold watches, and Italian suits from the discount rack, smiling, "laughing" (if you can call it that when it sounded like they practice their "laugh" for 20 minutes a day in front of a mirror), telling "personal" stories, trying to one-up each other by ordering the most obscure and expensive wine or liquor (for the record, i was the only guy who ordered beer). It was all i could do to stop myself from getting up and screaming "do you have idea how idiotic you people sound?!?!?!"

[entelein.livejournal.com]

omg omg I think I am twitching just from reading all of that. That shit drives me nuts. And it always has.

[thunderclap8.livejournal.com]

This reads rather like a nightmare.

[phaedra-amunet.livejournal.com]

Heehee, I crashed an Amway thingie once. That sounds a lot like it.

[amiev.livejournal.com]

Ewwww, ICK! See, it's smarmy guys like this that make my job extremely difficult. I always take a consultative approach, find out what their needs are, and if we can meet them. I try to work within their budget, even if it means doing our work in phases, and I NEVER ever try to sell them something they don't need. I also make it a point to stick to business and be as brief as possible. If they are chatty, I will be chatty back, but I never ever waste their time with personal stories during a business call. I figure they have friends already. I would have punched those guys if I had to spend that much time with them.

[anton-p-nym.livejournal.com]

I have some experience on the other end of that telephone. Heck, I've trained some of the people on the other end of that 'phone.

The "Can I speak with Bob?" guys are doing it wrong.

If you have to trick your customer into buying, then you're not a salesman. That's what we train our reps on here. Sure we don't want reps getting themselves filtered out, but clumsily pretending to be a personal friend of someone you don't know ain't the way to get that done.

If nothing else, it's counterproductive. (As you note.)

The way to work, in any meaningful sense, is to be perfectly above-board and briskly professional. That will get you past more often than the "three layers of greasy sleeze" approach.

-- Steve's always taken the high road on this... and has the commendations (and had the commission cheques, back in the day) to prove it.

[entelein.livejournal.com]

Absolutely. If you let me do my job, I may let you do yours in return. ;)

[anton-p-nym.livejournal.com]

Out of curiosity, to you picture them in full Herb Tarlek regalia when listening to them too?

-- Steve finds it fruitful to review the classics from time-to-time.

[entelein.livejournal.com]

Heh, sometimes. Heheheheheheheh.

Script Suggestion

[ratnix.livejournal.com]

"I'm sorry, but Jack is a fictional character from the television series 24. If Jack, or, as he's more commonly known in our reality, Kiefer Sutherland were here, believe me, I'd be making out with him and wouldn't let him come to the phone to talk to you. But we appreciate your call! Have a lovely day! *click*"