Car insurance call centre staff

book12

It's surprising that car insurance call centre staff are not pushy, as bank call centre staff, in terms of selling stuff.

The staff wanted to sell me some extras, which I politely declined. Asked me why I don't want it, and I told them the reasons. They just said, ok, if you need them, just give us a call.

Do you guys get the same experience?

InsideInsurance

The FSA rules are fairly strict on insurance staff's commissions (I cannot say if they are or aren't on personal banking staff - certainly they aren't on commercial banking) and so whilst there is often an SLA aspect to it there is rarely a case of if they get the sale they get £5 (or whatever).

Of cause it could also just be you were lucky/ the person you spoke to wasn't very good at sales

I was more surprised recently when discussing possibly doing a change of vehicle that the customer service/ sales girl was more flirty than anything else with statements like "sounds a beautiful car, its a pity I see you're already married"!

lisyloo

An intelligent sales person will realise there is no poin t flogging a dead horse.
I try to stop people in their tracks rather than waste both their time and mine.
For example I tell the chuggers that I'm already committed to the max to charities.
This is the best thing all round and an intelligent sales person will realise there is not point spending time on someone whose not interested.

They might have been intelligent, not focussed on their target (beginning of the month/quarter) or had other things to worry about.

huckster

People that work in call centres have a target for average call duration, so they won't extend the call to try to sell extras to customers that the have initially said no. They would rather gain the sale of the policy or not and then move onto the next calls. Insurance is probably the most competitive product, so the number of sales and therefore commission earned in any day would not be much. If they spent 15 minutes on every phone call, they wouldn't earn much and would probably get the 'tin tack'.