During my recent period of job hunting I was at home a lot more, so took the opportunity to help out a relative who rents out a flat nearby. Told her she could use my number on the ads that she was placing on Gumtree and I could take calls and arrange viewings for her. She did use a lettings agency once, a few years ago, but in recent years has been happy to find tenants directly. There is a willing pool of potential tenants reachable through online advertising.

She thanked me for offering to help out, as she said that the worst part of advertising directly was fielding the calls from agents, many of whom were quite devious and often didn’t own up to who they really were.

The ad was published online, and with an hour the calls started. About half were people looking for a flat to rent, most of them wanted to view, whilst the rest of the calls went like this:

Them : I’m calling about the flat in xxxxxxx Street, is it still available?

Me : Yes it is, are you calling for yourself or are you calling on behalf of an agency?

Pause

Them : er, well I’m calling from ******* and we have a lot of people registered with us who are looking for flats in your area. Continue reading “Customer 2.0…Social Calling…So what IS the point of a cold call in 2011?” →