It’s nearly Christmas and retailers around the U.S. are undoubtedly suffering the verbal wrath of consumers who have put their holiday shopping off for too long. Retail, however, is not the only profession that has to deal with colorful language from customers.
A new survey from market research firm Marchex has examined customer phone calls over the past two years, comparing 20 different industries that it classifies as being reliant on such phone calls. The firm found that satellite TV providers are the most cursed-at profession, with one in every 82 phone calls made to those companies eliciting curse words.
Satellite TV companies were closely followed by housing contractors (one in every 90 calls had a curse) and their fellow unpopular cable TV providers (one in every 123 calls). Auto Repair and Tow Truck companies round out the survey’s top 5.
Marchex’s findings, in general, show that professions dealing with customers’ homes or automobiles need to have solid temperaments to deal with cursing customers. The firm believes that long hold times and ridiculous pricing schemes put satellite and cable TV providers near the top of the list. The automotive-related businesses, however, may simply receive more cursing due customers who curse their situation and the expense of such services rather than at the businesses themselves.
On the other end of the list, Veterinarians were the least cursed-at profession surveyed. Only one in every 2,634 veterinarian calls were found to contain curse words. Senior living centers (with one in every 1,742 calls) and Hotels (one in every 1,486 calls) were next on the list of least cursed-at businesses.