![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Not so clever marketers
Jan. 27th, 2009 07:42 amOne of the things that must drive sales staff mad is when the marketers give them shit databases to work with. A week or so ago I came into work to find a message left at 8pm "on behalf of Ancaster Penge" and the upcoming service and MOT that was due on my car.
Which would be fine, if it weren't for the fact that I had bought a new car from Ancaster Penge on December 22, and that new car had an MOT through to July and wasn't due for a service by that date. Clearly this somewhat non-minor fact hadn't got through to the sales staff.
In addition, Ancaster originally had my work number as my home number, and vice-versa (hence the 8pm call). Then, yesterday, when I was at home, the phone rang again. Yes, it was Mark "calling on behalf of Ancaster Penge, about your car, which is due for a service".
"Is it about my white Nissan Micra?" I asked.
He confirmed that it was.
"That would be the white Nissan Micra that I sold to Ancaster Penge in december when I bought a blue Nissan Almera."
"Ahh, well we are in the customer service department (((Hah!!)) so that wouldn't have been updated. If you could just give me the registration number and details of your new car..."
Now, quite clearly, the man didn't realize the Kafkaesque lunacy of the situation. Here was someone claiming to be calling on behalf of Ancaster Penge (this is a weasly way of saying "a third party representing Ancaster Penge, rather than Ancaster Penge itself") asking me to supply details about a transaction I had undertaken with the self-same Ancaster Penge. Marvellous (He would in fact have been in a third-party "renewals" department, making sure that regular customers didn't toddle off somewhere else for an MOT or a service.)
I told him to phone Ancaster Penge and to get all of the details from them. Oh, and to have a word with his bosses about keeping databases up-to-date if they didn't want to piss off their customers with time-wasting phone calls.
_____________________
Which would be fine, if it weren't for the fact that I had bought a new car from Ancaster Penge on December 22, and that new car had an MOT through to July and wasn't due for a service by that date. Clearly this somewhat non-minor fact hadn't got through to the sales staff.
In addition, Ancaster originally had my work number as my home number, and vice-versa (hence the 8pm call). Then, yesterday, when I was at home, the phone rang again. Yes, it was Mark "calling on behalf of Ancaster Penge, about your car, which is due for a service".
"Is it about my white Nissan Micra?" I asked.
He confirmed that it was.
"That would be the white Nissan Micra that I sold to Ancaster Penge in december when I bought a blue Nissan Almera."
"Ahh, well we are in the customer service department (((Hah!!)) so that wouldn't have been updated. If you could just give me the registration number and details of your new car..."
Now, quite clearly, the man didn't realize the Kafkaesque lunacy of the situation. Here was someone claiming to be calling on behalf of Ancaster Penge (this is a weasly way of saying "a third party representing Ancaster Penge, rather than Ancaster Penge itself") asking me to supply details about a transaction I had undertaken with the self-same Ancaster Penge. Marvellous (He would in fact have been in a third-party "renewals" department, making sure that regular customers didn't toddle off somewhere else for an MOT or a service.)
I told him to phone Ancaster Penge and to get all of the details from them. Oh, and to have a word with his bosses about keeping databases up-to-date if they didn't want to piss off their customers with time-wasting phone calls.
_____________________
