Predictive Dialling

How do you respond to events and occasions that peel your concentration off your writing?





Lately I've been receiving a lot of phone calls with no one on the other end. The phone rings until I pick it up.  I say 'hello, hello', but there is no one on the other end. I can sometimes hear a slight noise in the background, but nothing else happens.

This is particularly annoying because it happens in the middle of the day when I’m completely engrossed in writing. I usually have to clear my head and readjust my thoughts to what I was doing before I was interrupted – for no reason at all.

Lately I’ve found out that  call centres use something called the predictive dialer Your number is stored in the system and is not necessarily rung by a 'person' at the other end. With this automated system, it's sometimes possible to be called when a live operator is not in place to take the call. 

I find this appalling, especially since I do my writing work from home. Many times I ask for my number to be taken off their system. I'm always assured that this will happen, only to be called a few days later by the same company. And the cycle begins again....





Have you been caught in the wave of predictive dialling? As a writer working from home, how do you deal with this?