Cell Phone Employees Were Told They Had To Read A Script To Customers, So They Decided Speed-Reading Was the Best Option

Matthew Gilligan

3 months ago

Source: Reddit/Wikimedia Commons

All I could think of when I read this story was the old Micro Machines commercial with the fast-talking guy.

Remember that one?

If not, look it up!

But first, check out this story from Reddit!

Fastest readers in existence.

“About 20 years ago I used to work for a mobile phone company (cell phones for you Americans) .

It was in a student town in the UK. We were the 2nd highest selling store in the country. The top sellers being in London.

We had a great team from the manager on down. Around 10 of us. Could sell to anyone. If we couldn’t close the sell we would swap to another salesperson and they would have a go. (Different techniques for different customers).

Sounds like that had it running well.

I would get a lot of sells from the older generation just because I took the time to sit down with them and explain exactly how the phone worked. How to text, how to make a call etc. Remember this was 2004 no iPhone, no touchscreens.

Well around summer we had another store cover for us as we went on a 3 day training course. They didn’t tell us what it was about or anything.

They put on a vid for us and it was something like ‘ The new and better way to sell!!!’ Audibile groans were heard and one ‘we should be teaching them’ comment.

Alot of corporate mumbo jumbo went on in this course. ‘ with these techniques you will sell, sell, sell’.

Ugh…

We were told what we could say and what we couldn’t say to customers. We couldn’t ask someone ‘how are you today ‘ because they could be having a bad day. Couldn’t say ‘I’m sorry ‘ .

‘I’m sorry’ in the UK is a phrase that you say basically for any bad news. ‘It’s raining ‘ oh sorry to here that. My goldfish passed away: ‘sorry mate’

We had to read off a sheet and ask questions off that sheet. This is where the fast reading came in. A colleague of mine came up with it.

Time for some speed-reading!

Basically what he would do is read through the sheet as fast as he could. He got very good at it and within a couple of weeks the whole store could read that sheet from memory.

Bear in mind this wasn’t a terms and conditions sheet or anything important it was something like. 1 greet customer using this phrase. 2 find out why customer is in store 3 did customer say yes 3 times?

We had to fill out this form each time and attach it to the contract if we sold a phone. This guy got fast I mean he could do the sheet in like 5 seconds.

Go ahead and get it out of the way!

He would basically grab a customer and just say to them . ‘I have to follow this sheet’ and show it to the customer. Then rattle through it while the customer is looking at the sheet.

He would then say to the customer something like ‘ now that I’ve fulfilled my obligation’ then go back to what would work for him normally.

That sheet lasted less than 3 months. We started printing already filled out sheets to speed things up.

Throughout the company sales went down as people weren’t allowed to be themselves. It was like the ways call centres are now. Run off a script. Nobody want to buy from a robot.

We did their script but nobody said we had to do it slow.”

Check out what people said about this story on Reddit.

This reader made a good point.