Commenting Counter Thingy, take three!
Well, I've done this before, in 2009 and in 2010, but I'm always curious about this kind of stuff... so without further ado:
( Who comments the most on this journal? )
( Who comments the most on this journal? )
You were sick? I'm sorry to hear sweety. :(
I hope your kitties kept you good company. Wish we lived in the same part of the planet so I could have helped you... I know how depressing it can be to be sick and feeling miserable and not have someone there to pamper you (the woes of being a strong, independent woman).
Thank you for the offer of an invite, but as it happens, I managed to set up an account during that weeks that there free no.invite accounts (or something like that) that you told me about. I'm in there with the same nick, do you have the same over there, too, so I can add you? :3
Me, I'm doing fine, fine...getting a bit better at handling obnoxious customers and a bit better at handling sales... it turns out, there's a way to do moderately well even if I'm not a very good salesperson, if I manage to tweak my sales goals. I wasn't aware there was a way, and it has consequences on my other goals, but once I was instructed on how to do it I've been able to survive without my supervisor glaring at me too often because I refuse to sell lines by lying to the customers. It's not so much about how many lines I sell, just keeping to the goals, and if I can manipulate those, myr supervisor won't have anything to complain about... it's not even cheating; I simply have to call the customers back. The goals are set by how long I stay on the line with potential customers, not how many calls I take, so if I call them back in five minutes, my goals don't get as high as if I stay on the incoming call the full twenty minutes a sales call can take. The best seller in the team has been giving me tips like this one, and it has helped me a lot. :)
That guy in unbelievable, though. He's the kind of guy who could sell you canned air at exhorbitant prices, and leave you happy you made the purchase... I definitely don't want to become that kind of person, but I'll take any morally acceptable tip he can dish out.
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*shines it*
Yeah, I had the flu. It wasn't so bad, in the sense of pampering--I'm pretty good at taking care of myself even when I'm sick. The worst part was that I missed three days of school, and I missed a stats quiz (automatic zero) and I couldn't turn in the worksheet or journal I'd done (more zeros), and the day I got back my biology teacher announced that she had to move up the test.
That sucked.
Thank you for the offer of pampering, though, it's sweet. :D The kitties did the best they could, being cats. Honestly, I was pretty feverish, I don't remember if they did too much comforting or not.
Yay! I thought you might take advantage of that. I'm over there as juniperfan.
Also, yay on the sales tips! That's fantastic! I'd hate to be in a job where they expected me to do morally questionable stuff just to sell the product, so fantastically awesome that you've got a way to do your job without making your supervisor glare at you or feeling like you're lying. Yay!
That guy sounds dangerous. :P Morally acceptable tips for the win!
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That's awful... but I have faith in you. I'm sure you will be able to make up for it. :)
Yeah... believe it or not, there's a point where you can be too nice for a customer service/sales rep. If you empathise too much with the customer, you will try to do what's best for them, not for your goals... and if you don't meet your goals, you get less money at the end of the month. That and your supervisor glares at you, and your coworkers start to resent you because you're not pulling your own weight in the team. If you stay double the time on the line with a customer that has a difficult concern to resolve instead of shipping him off to another department after resolving his concern half-way, that means that the people next to you will have to take the call you didn't while you were helping them. I have to put up with a lot of peer pressure as a result (generally in the form of a coworker hissing at me to hurry the f*ck up and be done with that customer already, there are five other customers waiting in the line, and one of them might be a sale). It can be hard to remain ethical in a job like that, but they won't get the better of me! I just have to try harder to meet my goals without compromising customer care.
He's a salesman. All salespeople are dangerous... at least the good ones. That guy sells double what anyone else in the call center does, I kid you not. If I follow at least some of his tips, I'm guaranteed to get better at sales. :)
(now if only he didn't like to brag so much... hearing him boast about how much money he's making as top seller gets really old, really fast)
uhm, btw, quick question... do you have access to Skype?
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Having compassion/empathy for the customers = bad things doesn't shock me, honestly. I think it's the same everywhere--if you empathize too much with them, you want to do something nice like cut a deal or give 'em a discount or something. (I used to have a business selling things in a farmer's market, and I had a few customers who wanted to bargain me down from my already pretty low prices, I know the feeling.)
You'll do awesome balancing the two, anyjen!
It is true that salespeople are dangerous. I've never worked in retail or sales outside of my business, and that really wasn't on the same level. (Plus I'm no longer in business...I wasn't one of the good ones.)
People boasting about their money is indeed very annoying.
I don't believe I have Skype. I...don't even really know what it is. *would be a Luddite in another time*
*...or possibly five-ten years....*
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I'm a very nice person by nature and I don't have trouble sounding cheerful and helpful on the line, or sincerely sorry when a cutomer states a concern (though having to say "I'm very sorry to hear that" thirty times or more a day makes it harder and harder to sound truly empathetic every time), so people tend to listen to me when I offer them something, but I find it hard to keep pushing once they state their initial unwillingness to buy something, or try to sell them more than what they're asking for (an additional line or two on top of the main one, for example. Your telephone bill can get positively huge if you have an additional line, even if you don't use it). I know I hate it when salespeople just won't take "no" for an answer, so I hate to have to do it to other people. :(
I only have bare knowledge on what Skype is, but apparently it's a program that allows you to make phone calls from your computer to another phone anywhere in the world for ludicrously low rates, or to another computer anywhere in the world for free. As long as you have an internet connection (dsl or broadband if possible, though it even works with dial-up, albeit somewhat brokenly) and a microphone you'll be able to use it. A webcam is nice too, if you want the full video-conferencing experience, though it's entirely optional. Just a crappy microphone should be enough. The software is free and easy to install (apparently. I've yet to do it).
Nothing wrong with being a Luddite. The only reason I'm confident enough to try to use Skype now is because I work daily with programs that are a hundred times more complicated and that I have direct knowledge of how horribly expensive traditional international calls are. Since we don't have special plans with reduced international rates in my country, Skype is really the only option for me if I want to talk to my friends in the other side of the planet... and I really want to do that now. After a few months of taking calls from strangers, I realized I want to hold a conversation with people I actually like and who I don't have to keep calling "sir" or "ma'am". ^^U
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It really is difficult to seem like you're empathizing when you're tired of saying that you empathize every day. ^^; Poor anyjen! This is temporary, you'll get an awesome job you love soon enough!
Huh, interesting! I kind of figured it was the video-conference call thing, but I've never really known what it is. I don't have a microphone, though, and I don't know if I can get one any time soon.
I can definitely understand wanting to speak with people you actually want to talk to! I haven't answered many phones in my occupations, but I can definitely see your point!
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Awwww. Well, no hurry. I'm not going anywhere. ^^
If you decide you want to go for it, though, my advice is to go for those that come with headphones. A proper headset can make talking on the computer very easy and comfy, particularly if you go all out and get a webcam as well (though like I said, this is entirely optional). Standalone microphones limit your movement a lot; though speaking with a headset feels a lot like having a leash (in that you can't get very far from the computer or it gets unplugged), at least it goes with you every time you move, instead of having to stay close to it in order not to get out of range. It doesn't even have to be very high-tech; even crappy, cheap headsets have decent sound quality and capture your voice often better than regular phones (and definitely better than cellphones). Best of all, a headset leaves your hands free to knit do something else while you talk. ;)
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So, yeah, hopefully moving soon.
I shall look into it! We'll see what happens when I get up there. My funds are pretty low, and I will get some defered comp. from the county in the summer, but...yeah. Tight budget. Doesn't stop me from wanting to splurge on old out-of-print hippie books like this though. (I read it in high school, and I was so so disappointed when I began work at the library and realized it had been weeded/stolen/otherwise removed from the collection.)
(And yes, that is the author's legal name.)
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What are you going to do about the house while you're away? Will you rent it out, leave it empty, have someone look after it for you? And what about your kitties?
(That... is truly an epic name. Though you wouldn't believe the kind of names that I encounter daily and that people expect to know how to write without spelling them for me. It may tak three or four times to get them right at times. ^^U)
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The house...is kind of up in the air right now. I think I'm going to need a lawyer for probate, and I don't know if I will be able to afford the fees. I think my sister will help if I need it, but I just don't know yet. We'll see what happens.
The kitties are coming with me! I'm going to live off-campus, and I'm going to look for a place that's cat-friendly.
(Isn't it! And I probably would--I did work in a public library for more than half a decade. I saw my share of strange names...and people. I still miss the guy who thinks he's Superman, and I sort-of-not-really miss the guy who thought he was God.
(No, really. His introduction began with "I am the Alpha, the Omega....." etc. He even put it on his print jobs, so we'd know they were his.)
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Good luck with that, sweety!
The kitties are coming with me! I'm going to live off-campus, and I'm going to look for a place that's cat-friendly.
Ah! good to hear that. I was starting to get worried. :)
I still miss the guy who thinks he's Superman, and I sort-of-not-really miss the guy who thought he was God.
(No, really. His introduction began with "I am the Alpha, the Omega....." etc. He even put it on his print jobs, so we'd know they were his.)
*snort!* Boy, the weirdoes sort of grow on you, don't they?
Just last thursday, I had a call from a guy who insisted he was Royalty, and who claimed all current economic problems in the US were because he got in a row with the owner of the US central bank and refused to send them more money, or something like that. And it wasn't even a prank caller, he was a legitimate customer! I had to work hard to supress the giggles and steer him back to his concern and what I could actually do to help him.
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Ah, no worries about the cats. I'm entirely too attached to them for my own good. (More than once I've thought of buying a VW bus and reducing all my possessions to fit in the back, but the question "What about the cats?" inevitably pops up, and then I think about leaving them, and then I just set that little thought aside.)
We do get attached to our weird weird people. I liked both of those guys, but the Superman guy never bothers any of the patrons or the other staff, and he's kind of gruff but generally pretty polite. The Alpha-Omega dude apparently made some unpleasant comments to some of the staff though, so I'm okay with not seeing him.
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