The Constant Buzz Of The Telemarketing Calls- A Bitter Sweet Relation

By Awanish Shahi:

It’s time to sleep and we reach for the remote to switch off TV, flipping channels furiously. “Kya aap motape se pareshan hai?” a Hindi-dubbed non-Indian ad flashes on screen and we watch it slumbering. We see anorexic blonde girls lined up, selling body slimming tea to sex power booster powders. No matter what they sell, they ardently bring delight to a seedy man resting in his bed room and needless to say give food for his dreams. So right from pesky calls to late night funny Hindi-dubbed foreign ads, telemarketing ever-present in our lives, both irritating and benefiting us.

Telemarketing revolution has swept Indian subcontinent as today we live in a mobile information society. Having more than 900 million mobile subscribers, India has witnessed a great upsurge in teledensity in both urban and rural area. So with this great increase in teledensity, telemarketing too is witnessing a great time. With changing economy, targeting the new customer groups is making telemarketing more effective and thus aiding them in keeping pace with the taste and likings of customers. Which age group likes what? – Such queries are the priorities of these telemarketing companies and customized product based on needs are developed.

A customer can be happy receiving such calls or may be unhappy, agitated or mentally frustrated by many such pesky calls during a working day. A research conducted on telemarketing revealed following results:

– Approximately 50% people prefer ignoring any kind of telemarketing calls.
– Recorded voices and SMS are frequently received.
– People targeted by telemarketing companies are usually young.
– Majority of people find the telemarketing calls irritating and time consuming.
– Those who respond most to these calls are then called even more often.
– Young people are more comfortable in dealing with pesky calls than elderly people.

Telemarketing besides impacting customers also has a socio-psychological side. This side helps the telemarketing companies to decide the potential customer keeping in mind factors like taste, purchasing power, their background, social setup etc. All these factors assist the telemarketing companies to increase their market.

It basically is a low cost solution to direct marketing and it’s a customer response based process. Robocalling too is telemarketing as it is a form of voice broadcasting which is commonly associated with political messages. So telemarketing has now emerged as a cardinal tool for marketing and understanding the consumer behavior. Dynamically changing Indian consumer behavior is the biggest challenge for the Indian telemarketing companies.

Image courtesy: http://new-business-lists.com/