Ma Bell: The Elephant In the Room
Before we could add any equipment to any customer request, we had to learn all the codes. Remember, we had a form that we wrote everything on during a conversation. We had to order it in technical language for time constraints and getting the order transmitted from our hands to the customer's home. An old ugly yellow dial desk phone was an EXTYC, translation; a yellow extension rotary dial desk phone. We had to remember all of the codes and the features and benefits of each item. We practiced over and over, writing fake orders, on fake phone calls, with fake people.
Once we got that part down, the Elephant reared his charming head. We hadn't learned enough yet to take orders for new service. We could only add to or remove items from existing accounts. The big-nosed Sales told us that we always had to try and sell something more than what they asked for or if we were removing something, we had to try and save it. We had nanoseconds to mentally prepare a sales pitch and give correct pricing information for what we offered and what they asked for. And we had to make it sound smooth. And if they refused, we had to ask open-ended questions to ask what they objected to and try and overcome those objections. It was a lot to learn, and some of us could do a piece of it but maybe not the entire process. You could sound great, but if you couldn't write it down in code right or quoted wrong information, you were busted. Sales demanded perfection of every piece of the process.
We were in class for nine weeks. We were supposed to be in class for eight weeks. Sales extended our training by adding one week. I think we spent almost three weeks learning this part of our training. We laughed at each other quite a bit on our practice calls. We spent more time in the classroom on this one section than any other part. The reality was that the number of real opportunities with a customer was limited for this type of practice. Most calls were for new services or dealt with other matters. All of the supervisors and manager came down several times for Sales. Jim's boss came for two days. It was grueling.
This part of the training was just a small piece of Sales. The big Kahuna was tying all of our training together plus taking orders for new service, which would be the crowning glory and lead to graduation if we passed the Sales exam and moved on to the big Kahuna. If.
I didn't think we were all going to make it to the end. For the first test exam, we took only one person out of the class passed. I'm not bragging, but that was me, and I was really concerned about my friends. One of them made a nasty nice, you know, a snide remark about me passing, and they laughed, haha, just joking, no, they weren't, but that was okay. My stress was over; they had to sit there and take it over and over and over.
I was banished to take calls in the real world. Jim would come up at some point and tell me to stay upstairs on the phones until everyone else passed. It was a couple of days before the next person joined me. The other 50% were still struggling. It was the written part of the test, the codes and writing and pricing the orders that everyone was caught upon. Jim had told us that every class had problems with this part of the training. Maybe the other guys let that psych themselves out.
At last, after several days, a final count of eight exam takeovers and finally we were all back together again. But I always felt a tinge of resentment, a little coolness after that section of training that lasted for the remainder of our class time.
That was okay with me. At the very beginning of my transfer, I had made up my mind that nothing was going to hold me back. This was a big pay increase and a better job. I was a single mom with two little kids who received zero help from my family or ex-husband to help raise them. I was not looking back, only forward, and failure was not an option for me.
" Out of my way, I got this!"
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