I've decided after talking with many people that unless something goes drastically wrong, I'm gonna stick out my internship. I'm now 1/3 of the way done, and next week I actually get to start taking classes! Woo hoo! I'm excited to finally learn Avid and After Effects.
But, I wanted to get everyone's opinion on the most recent assignment I have been given: to make 10 cold calls per day. Now, this could be much worse - the other interns have to make 20. But I have explained to my superiors how much I severely hate cold calls. I feel like they are an invasion of privacy, and if I wanted to be a telemarketer, I certainly wouldn't be working for video editing classes.
Anyway, the creepy part about it is we have to use this online software called "Genius Tracker" which I have dubbed "Genius Stalker." It shows us when someone is looking at a mass email that we've sent them, and we can even replay their visit to our website. The owner of our company has decided that we should ideally call them AS they are looking at the email to ask them if they're interested, without letting them know that we can see that they have it open.
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| The ethics of business....AHHAHHHJRHJGGGHHHH!!! |
What do you think? Ethical or unethical?
This is an interesting one and I think of it in two perspectives that paint different pictures.
ReplyDelete1 - it's ethical
Think of this communication as a window advertisement or a storefront at a car dealership. If you walk up to the storefront and gaze through the window or linger for 30 seconds you're likely to get some salesman to come a runnin'. You could argue that it's the same with reading that email and giving in to your inquisitive nature instead of just deleting the unsolicited message.
2- it's unethical
If someone sends me some mailer by way of USPS and I decide to read it before deleting it then I would be furious if the sales guy was walking behind the mailman and peering in the front window to wait until I had just read the first paragraph. I'd kindly give him a WTF look and send him away, continuing to be annoyed for at least the next 5 minutes.
In the end it's annoying from either angle. But if you view it from the perspective that the Internet and everything running on top of its backbone is the new public domain, then it's not only ethical but it's good business. However in my mind, I'd still be giving the sender a WTF response.