What is the atmosphere when you call a business for whatever reason?

@capirani (2715)
United States
December 28, 2008 1:49pm CST
When you call a business, what is the atmosphere that you present on your end of the phone line? Is it loud, brash, and noisy on your end, or is it quiet, calm, and peaceful on your end of the line? In other words, are kids screaming in the background, dogs barking, water running because you happen to be doing dishes while you call, or even worse, toilet flushing because you were you know where when you called? (Yes we can hear those sounds on our end of the line.) Or are you maybe holding a conversation with someone else while you are waiting on the call to go through so that you have been greeted maybe up to three times before you realize your call has gone through? Or is your television or stereo blasting in the background? Or, when you place a call, do you attempt to go to a quiet room where there are no bothersome noises and no distractions so that you can concentrate on the purpose of your call and the one you called can also concentrate and be able to assist you better? As a call center employee, let me tell you that being on the receiving end of noisy phone calls can get very annoying, not to mention that they can often be so loud that they actually hurt my ears! There are microphones in those phones and headsets. And we can hear almost anything and everything that is going on in the room and sometimes beyond where you are calling from. Then there is this one...are you screaming at your kids while you wait for someone to answer the phone? By the time you realize the call has been answered, you have been screaming loud enough and long enough for the person you called to hear everything you said, as though through a rock band amplifier. Then when you do realize, you speak so softly and sweetly that you just couldn't be that same person who was bellowing at your kids. Depending on how stressful the day has been up until that point, sometimes these callers just make me chuckle to myself. Othertimes, I just want to take my headset off and throw it across the room! Get enough of those calls in one shift and you can really end up with your eardrums pounding by the end of the day. We do have volume controls on our headsets, but usually by the time we realize we are going to be yelled at it is too late to turn the volume down. Other times, the caller may be speaking softly, but the background noise is so loud that to hear the caller the volume has to be up loud. Add to this noisy confusion are those callers who are calling to check up on job applications. Now really, if you were the person doing the hiring, would you be interested in talking to someone as a potential employee if this was the atmosphere of the call? You would not believe how many job applicants call in to check on their applications or to try to talk to a hiring manager while all that background noise is going on, including the screaming at the kids. What kind of caller are you?
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