I just made one of the most stressful phone shops I have done so far. I have autism and it is hard for me to hear when there is background noise. My apartment is quiet with the occasional noise from my cats and if there is background noise on my end, I will wait to call my locations. I just called an automotive service department and there were several other employees with their own phone conversations taking place in the background. I had a difficult time trying to understand what my employee was saying, I made it through the call, but it was stressful for me! I haven't listened to the recorded call yet but if I can hear the background calls on the recording, would it be appropriate for me to mention the noise in the report and mention that it could make it hard for some customers to get the best service as possible?

I do not have autism and that call would have been very stressful for me as well. So, yes, I think that the client needs to know that the background noise makes it difficult for customers to understand what is being said and, therefore, to get good customer service.

*eta* You all were having your conversation while I was typing. But I will leave my response in place.

Based on one of my jobs, the unofficial answer is yes. I often re-schedule people who say they are hard of hearing or need to get their hearing aids and can complete an interview later. In my workplace, it is possible for people I interview to hear other interviewers' voices. I do not know if this makes it more difficult for people with hearing difficulty than for others. Sometimes, it distracts me! In other situations, I reschedule because I am no longer able to project my voice over background noises such as television, music, etc. Those people "should" turn down the volume, let their answering machine pick up, or be prepared for someone like me to re-schedule them in the hopes that an interviewer with a strong voice will contact them and overcome all that noise.

Because communication involves the participation of all parties involved, each party has a role in ensuring that what is conveyed has an opportunity to be received and understood. You are doing your part. If you can find a way to mention this information, the location can have an opportunity to do its part in reducing noises that could interfere with business communication. For these reasons, I believe that you should mention this wherever it fits into the survey and that the official answer is or will soon become yes. If there is no space whatsoever in the survey or report form, you still have options. Depending upon the reporting platform, you might use the Sassie "contact us" feature or explain this to the scheduler. Often, schedulers can forward information to the editors.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/15/2021 02:15PM by Shop-et-al.

@walesmaven wrote:

I do not have autism and that call would have been very stressful for me as well. So, yes, I think that the client needs to know that the background noise makes it difficult for customers to understand what is being said and, therefore, to get good customer service.

I did listen to the recording and the background noise can be heard. It is other employees with other customers but it makes it very difficult to hear. I did end up mentioning it in the report, I did not mention autism, but I just said in general it makes understanding difficult. The employee also spoke very quickly as well, which did not help at all. I will say that I got the appointment confirmation almost as soon as I got off the phone!

@Shop-et-al wrote:

Based on one of my jobs, the unofficial answer is yes. I often re-schedule people who say they are hard of hearing or need to get their hearing aids and can complete an interview later. In my workplace, it is possible for people I interview to hear other interviewers' voices. I do not know if this makes it more difficult for people with hearing difficulty than for others. Sometimes, it distracts me! In other situations, I reschedule because I am no longer able to project my voice over background noises such as television, music, etc. Those people "should" turn down the volume, let their answering machine pick up, or be prepared for someone like me to re-schedule them in the hopes that an interviewer with a strong voice will contact them and overcome all that noise.

Because communication involves the participation of all parties involved, each party has a role in ensuring that what is conveyed has an opportunity to be received and understood. You are doing your part. If you can find a way to mention this information, the location can have an opportunity to do its part in reducing noises that could interfere with business communication. For these reasons, I believe that you should mention this wherever it fits into the survey and that the official answer is or will soon become yes. If there is no space whatsoever in the survey or report form, you still have options. Depending upon the reporting platform, you might use the Sassie "contact us" feature or explain this to the scheduler. Often, schedulers can forward information to the editors.

There was a general question about the call experience. I did mention it there and hopefully it will get noticed. I have shopped this location before and I don't remember any problem with noise then. I did listen to the recording and it is noticeable on there as well.

I would have the same problem understanding the conversation since it does make hard to concentrate with all kinds of background noises. Your feedback will help the company understand that they need to avoid interruptions while talking to customers.

I have done several phone shops in the past and if here has been lots of back ground noise, I would mention it in my reports.

Especially if I get one of those people who can not speak English very well. With the back ground noise and the non speaking English person, sometimes it is hard to hear the other person on the other end.

Sometimes I have to ask the employee to repeat the information two or three times.

I stopped doing phone calls long time ago. The last one I did went to Far East call center. I could not understand even single word from female associate.

@gene wrote:

I stopped doing phone calls long time ago. The last one I did went to Far East call center. I could not understand even single word from female associate.

Right now phone shops are about my only option but I have figured out that if I use Google Voice on my computer with my headphones, I can hear much better!

I also stopped doing phone shops years ago. $10 or less is not worth the research time spent on most of them, and $10 or less is not worth risking something going wrong on the shop. As I said previously, phone shops are like a box of chocolates. . .

I enjoy some phone shops. I generally end up with 1/4 to 1/3 of a traditional on-site shop fee being used up as the IRS mileage deduction. So, a $5 phone shop is actually worth $6.25 to $6.67 (as a mark-up) to me and I have no travel time. Most of the phone calls take 5 to 15 minutes, so that is an hourly rate of at least $25. I aim for $20 per hour after expenses, so that is not bad at all. I started doing more phone shops during COVID when there was very little else in my area. I really like phone shops to inquire about new bank accounts. There are actually a lot of them in various parts of the country. If I find that XYZ Bank has great products and almost consistently great CSRs, I look at the bank fundamentals, and with little else to do during the depths of COVID, I bought stock in them.

I also like the calls to make appointments for physical therapy. The ones I have done have been great, and at the very end, I get to tell them I am a mystery shopper and to cancel the appointment. It takes some work to make sure that I have answers to everything they might ask, but to me, that is fun.

@myst4au wrote:

I enjoy some phone shops. I generally end up with 1/4 to 1/3 of a traditional on-site shop fee being used up as the IRS mileage deduction. So, a $5 phone shop is actually worth $6.25 to $6.67 (as a mark-up) to me and I have no travel time. Most of the phone calls take 5 to 15 minutes, so that is an hourly rate of at least $25. I aim for $20 per hour after expenses, so that is not bad at all. I started doing more phone shops during COVID when there was very little else in my area. I really like phone shops to inquire about new bank accounts. There are actually a lot of them in various parts of the country. If I find that XYZ Bank has great products and almost consistently great CSRs, I look at the bank fundamentals, and with little else to do during the depths of COVID, I bought stock in them.

I also like the calls to make appointments for physical therapy. The ones I have done have been great, and at the very end, I get to tell them I am a mystery shopper and to cancel the appointment. It takes some work to make sure that I have answers to everything they might ask, but to me, that is fun.

I do like the physical therapy shops. I used to work in patient registration for a hospital so I can put myself in the employee's shoes and I get to use some of my prior skills to create a patient profile. I also like law firm shops where I call and see what happens with a case. I do reveal myself at the end and some of the reactions I get can be interesting.