Having (briefly) worked the other side , of being one of "the telephone operators standing by", what I remember was being trained to handle the calls for nine or ten different widely disparate products from vacuum cleaners to crap jewellry. WE were given little hand-outs showing what times the adverts were runing - so that we could predict what products 90% of the calls would be about at those times. (Obvious, really: they'd not pay for the TV advertising if it didn't make a difference.) So we weren't at any time actually "standing by" (ie, doing nothing to justify the mighty £4.40ph we were being paid). The company we worked for was being paid to provide telesale services for fifteen different product manufacturers - therefore if it wasn't a call for Product A (who were due to advertise at 10:40pm in ITV London, Meridian, South-West and Channel) then we were shifting people wanting Product F (advertising in ITV Granada, Borders, Tyne-Tees and Yorkshire at 6:15 pm). As well as a continual trickle for Products F, G and H (advertised that day in the Daily Mail and local papers in the north and Wales). Oh what fun we had....
Having (briefly) worked the other side , of being one of "the telephone operators standing by", what I remember was being trained to handle the calls for nine or ten different widely disparate products from vacuum cleaners to crap jewellry. WE were given little hand-outs showing what times the adverts were runing - so that we could predict what products 90% of the calls would be about at those times. (Obvious, really: they'd not pay for the TV advertising if it didn't make a difference.) So we weren't at any time actually "standing by" (ie, doing nothing to justify the mighty £4.40ph we were being paid). The company we worked for was being paid to provide telesale services for fifteen different product manufacturers - therefore if it wasn't a call for Product A (who were due to advertise at 10:40pm in ITV London, Meridian, South-West and Channel) then we were shifting people wanting Product F (advertising in ITV Granada, Borders, Tyne-Tees and Yorkshire at 6:15 pm). As well as a continual trickle for Products F, G and H (advertised that day in the Daily Mail and local papers in the north and Wales). Oh what fun we had....
Edited by AgProv