Real-Life Decision Making
You are a telemarketer working at a call center. You are assigned to make
calls to people to get them to sign up for subscriptions for a local newspaper.
The newspaper is doing a promotion. They are offering the first month free.
After that subscribers will be charged for the rest of the year.
Your shift today is four hours long. Your quota has been set for six successful
subscriptions. Yesterday you were able to make 11 subscriptions. You feel
confident as you begin your shift on the phones.
You are not having very good luck today. Three hours have passed and you
haven't had a single successful call. You only have one hour left to make
your quota.
You keep at it and make the next call. The woman who answers
seems interested and she starts to ask you some questions about the subscription.
At first her questions are easy, and you have no trouble answering them.
She wants to know if she can cancel the subscription if she moves. She asks
about the different sections of the newspaper and who writes for the paper.
You have all the answers.
But she keeps asking questions and they become more unusual. She asks what
your favorite section of the paper is. She asks you where you like to read
the paper. She asks you if you know where the editor of the paper was born.
You look at the clock and you've been on the phone with her for 10 minutes
already.
You only have another 50 minutes to make your quota of six successful subscriptions.
When she asks you what column you choose to line your birdcage with, you begin
to suspect she's wasting your time on purpose. You know that some people like
to play tricks on telemarketers.
"It's hard to know when to draw the line of being messed with and serious
people who are interested," says Meghan Zugibe. She is a telemarketer in Rockland
County, New York.
It has now been 12 minutes and she's still asking questions. Most of your
calls are over in two minutes.
What do you do?