This volunteer thinks parties' tele-sales strategies are a little outdated

This blog post was submitted by a party member who asked to remain anonymous.The first time I volunteered for a political party, I did not expect a swanky office, or that I’d be put in charge. I expected to make buttons, sort the mail, get people coffee, and generally lighten the burden of the over-worked, under resourced staff. I certainly didn’t expect to be thrown into the deep end.On my first shift I was making by-election calls. I was given access to the party’s database, a desk with a phone, and a couple of minutes of training during which I was told how to find the script and input call results. With a pat on the shoulder the trainer told me to “ask questions if I had any” then went to ‘train’ the next volunteer.I was about to represent a national political party and get to work asking Canadians how they vote, all with less than 5 minutes of training.Professionally, I do tele-sales. I’ve done tele-sales over three years for a variety of for-profit organizations, mostly smaller firms. I’ve done mostly business-to-business calls, with some consumer work. I am familiar with some of the best practises in the industry such as: always smile when you call, take notes, have the script and answers to ‘surprise questions’ in front of you, always check the call history, and read the account to know everything you can before you call. All of these things make the process better both for the caller and the person being called.Knowing what I know, as I sat in the campaign office and prepared to call my first voter, I was struck by three things:1)No one even told me the smile trick (there is a large amount of research that states smiling on the phone makes you sound happier and helps you to be more effective). I was given a page with additional information in case a voter had questions, but the information was all for softballs – points like how to answer “tell me more about the candidate.”There was nothing on what to do if someone started screaming, or expressed anger at the party’s views. Should a voter try to express a policy position, I had to distill it down to one of the options on the drop-down menu, with no training on how to make those judgement calls. For example, if a voter says “We need to invest in a green economy” is their issue ‘the economy’ or ‘environment’? Is “We need to kick those corrupt senators out!” ‘Senate Reform’ or ‘Accountability’?2)If I wanted to see whether or when the party had previously called an individual, the manager had to give me extra permissions on the database – we did not get that information by default.This is an enormous problem. Not having this information leads to worse call experiences, as the caller knows nothing about the person to whom they are speaking, and is at risk of making incorrect assumptions. Further, it hurts the organization’s brand because the person being called will resent the organization forgetting who they are. In a world of increasing mass personalization people expect organizations to know them - particularly organizations that they may have invested in emotionally, like a political party.The lack of call history also explains that particular habit of parties of calling and calling and calling. When a call is missed, volunteers (like me) are told to register it as ‘call back’ which means the number gets added back into the queue without a cooling off period. Then, another volunteer, unable to see that you were called 3 hours ago, calls you again.3)The purpose of