Bingo Caller Speed Can Be Helped with a Timer
Having confidence and speaking clearly are important qualities for every bingo caller. Knowing the game and having good customer skills are also important. However, one sometimes overlooked quality that’s important with bingo callers is consistency.
Bingo callers must call games in a consistent manner. Bingo players rely on their callers to maintain the same speed of calls from game to game so that they can get a feel for how much bingo paper they can play. That’s not to say that a caller won’t have certain games called faster and certain games called slower. It just means that the callers should call the fast games at the same speed every time and the slower games at the same speed every time.
We’ve seen many instances where an experienced bingo caller who spoke clearly, was friendly, and had a good rapport with the bingo players, still caused unhappiness by varying his pace too much. This is why a timer or timing device is extremely important.
Without a timer, a bingo caller will often lose track of where they are and start to call too slowly. This will cause players to have to wait, and players want to play. Then, of course, the bingo caller will accelerate their call speed and potentially cause players to miss numbers as they frantically try to keep pace.
A timer is simply a device that will alert you every so many seconds when it’s time to announce your next call. Many of today’s bingo machines come equipped with timing devices which will establish a steady pace for the callers. If your bingo machine doesn’t have a timer, many times you can make do with a simple and inexpensive metronome. If nothing else is available, a bingo caller can check their watch or monitor the seconds hand on a clock. While not the best solution, it’s better than a bingo caller simply winging it on their own.
Remember, bingo players sometimes like to grumble. And, almost nothing will make them complain faster than an inconsistent caller. Variable calling speeds are going to annoy them, or maybe make them extremely angry if they miss a bingo because of it. Don’t let an inconsistent caller get out of hand. Little problems can become big problems and cause a bingo to lose players.
