Anyway, there's another girl I work beside and she's in charge of verifying customer details. One of the details we take is place of birth, but when we ask for it it's always as "town or city of birth". It's not uncommon for customers to mishear this as "time of birth" but they are usually prompted for the correct answer, but when this girl was new a customer replied with "seven o'clock" which she duly recorded and was genuinely surprised when I asked her where that was. And it's not just the people,the customers are idiots too (but everyone in customer services knows that), they just agree to anything. One of the products we offer over the phone insures people for up to £750,000 for a few pounds a month. All our sales are recorded and audited by me and my team so we've heard a few good ones, but there was this one customer and we wondered what sort of salary he was on to agree to PAYING £750,000 per month without missing a beat! As I said our calls are recorded and we've had to discipline and let go a few people for games they've played on the phone. There's the classic may I please "sleep" with rather than 'speak' with and if those customers aren't in the calls are closed with I'll "bone" them later instead of 'phone'. We've had people introduce themselves as "Michael Jackson" (which is possible) and "Tony Blair" (again possible) but you wonder how much customers just don't listen when someone sells them insurance calling themselves "He-Man Master of the Universe"! Most of you will also be aware that many call centres employ a rebuttal list to help them overcome your objections. Some however choose to deviate from that slightly. The standard response to "I'm not interested" is "Well, what might interest you..." then into features and benefits, one guy decided to get the customer's attention by saying "Well, what might interest you is that I am 100ft tall and made entirely from gold!" Interesting indeed but hardly appropriate. He went on to become a MD. True story.