One of the companies that makes CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software is updating their product.  One of the changes is for a good reason:

The San Mateo, Calif.-based company discussed the new applications, which are shipping with Epiphany version 6.5, on Monday. One new software program is Epiphany Telesales, which is designed to help companies comply with the new do-not-call telephone regulations that went into effect earlier this month. The program also incorporates tools intended to help telemarketers create targeted calling lists and works with high-volume automated dialer systems, Epiphany said.  (Emphasis mine)

However, at the same time, they’re going to make things even more annoying when you call in for customer service.

A new version of Epiphany’s call-center systems includes programs designed to increase the sales savvy of call-center agents. When someone calls for customer service at a company, the software can prompt call-center staff to encourage the callers to purchase additional products, Epiphany said. The software also allows agents to book new orders and keep track of sales leads.

I’d heard that some companies were planning to increase the number of sales pitches when you called in for service to compensate for the do-not-call list.  I’d just hoped that they would come to their senses and not actually do it. 

When a customer is calling for service is most likely the worst time to try to market to them, given that the reason for the call is usually because the customer is having some kind of problem.  I know that I’m usually a bit more irritated than when I started the call by the time I’ve navigated the VRU maze to get to a live human (and now those even more annoying voice recognition systems—I absolutely positively hate and loathe these bastard demon-spawn abominations).  Do you really want to be marketing to someone who is calling because of a problem and is irritated about the horrible phone systems and long hold times they’ve just endured?

Since most of these damn VRU systems these days demand your account number or some other identifying information, they should add a flag to the customer’s account that says not to market to this person.  The “curmudgeon flag” would indicate to the calltaker that trying to market crap to this person will only irritate them further.  Of course, this only works if the company has fully integrated callcenters, where the data for the call is passed along with the call to all of the calltakers.  If a company is as disorganized as TXU Gas when it comes to their call centers, it would never work.  Their system makes you speak to it to determine who you are, then loses your information when you finally get to a point where you can say “agent” to speak to a live person, who asks you the same information all over again.