Rejoice, new changes have been brought into being in order to combat the evils of telesales calls.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6145013/Rogue-cold-call-firms-fined-500-000-pester-people.htmlYou may want to take cover now....
*Takes deep breath and gets ready to rant*
Every time I see one of these 'breakthroughs' it just pisses me off. In this case these so called new rules and fines will have no effect whatsoever because they ignore the most important aspect which is data procurement and the only way that is going to work is if it is made a legal requirement that the 'tick if you do not wish to receive' box is for opt out only and not a sneaky way to get people to opt in where they haven't read that paragraph before agreeing. Not to mention that the 'prior business relationship' argument is still viable as that avenue hasn't been touched by these changes.
I will say here that while a large proportion of data supply companies are legitimate and follow all of the relevant rules and regulations there are certainly those that don't and those that I came across professionally over the years soon found themselves blacklisted by whichever company I was working for and a suggestion to take a look at them along with my suspicions and any evidence I had sent to the office of the Data Commissioner.
Plus, let's be honest here. There are still over 400 call centres in the UK alone ranging in size from around 30 agents to 3-400. Now depending on the hardware used, the product being sold, the competence of the sales agent and how clearly the data has been targeted (ranging from 'virgin' data where there is just a name, address and phone number which may or may not be out of date all the way up to guaranteed sales data for the product where you have everything you need to get a sale out of that person from spending habits to financial products previously used etc) an agent will connect to somewhere between 20-140 people per day, not including false positive answerphones (which is a governed by a whole different kettle of completely useless arcane technofuckery using convoluted formulae to manually calculate how many silent calls you are allowed each day (a number which can change hourly depending on the total number of times the call centre connects to an actual person that day). Now think about how many of these calls you actually receive in a day, does that tally with OFCOM's figures and the media coverage you see about evils of sales calls and telemarketing. While I am the first to admit that there are problems in that industry and God knows I saw and dealt with enough of them while I worked in dialler management, every call centre is being tarred with the same brush. Plus the most important factor, one that gets sidelined often, is that the vast majority of the genuine rogue call centres are based overseas and while technically they can be fined the chances of getting any of that money is slim to none.
If you genuinely want to deal with the nuisance calls then there are 3 simple steps to take that will cut down the issue by at least 90%.
- Work with the telecoms companies, reputable call centre consultancies and companies and the dialler manufacturers to create an industry standard beep code to play before voicemail messages. Diallers are already programmed to filter out beep code calls which frees up lines faster, makes it a hell of a lot easier for dialler managers to control the speed of the dialler and drastically reduces the risk of someone getting a silent call.
- Give OFCOM their teeth back in a meaningful fashion instead of making a grand show of ramping up fines to companies that can easily afford them. In case you think they can't afford £500k, a company I once worked with that had around 350 agents across 3 sites was able to make £300,000,000 of sales in one month selling sub prime mortgages and secured loans and would usually average out at about £200-250,000,000. If you are hell bent on using fines then work with Inland Revenue to find out what the company is making and then have a blanket 10-15% fine of not only their annual profit but the directors/owners earnings as well. Plus if they were, as I've heard, quietly dropped then reinstate the potential prison terms for all management levels as well as the lesser fines for lower tier staff. Combine that with starting a program of unannounced spot checking of all UK call centres and this would be enough to have a noticeable impact on a call centre company without leading to mass redundancies not to mention hitting directors/owners who either are negligent in making sure their company is compliant or deliberately flouting rules, regulations and laws (even more so when you are talking about major companies who don't outsource call centre operations - Imagine say BT getting fined 10-15% of their overall earnings).
I know from personal experience just how bloody terrifying the possibility of fines and prison terms can suddenly become when some gormless alpha type sales manager turns the dialler up to full speed without telling anyone and dropped called go through the roof (over 40% of total live connects instead of the regulated 3% max). Just as said gormless sales manager found out just how terrifying I can be when someone is stupid enough to really piss me off and I decide to go all out on them. Trust me, go down this route and dialler managers will be the only ones pacing the dialler, they will be damned certain to follow the rules and nobody will be stupid enough to try and go around them.
- As I said at the start of this rant. Regulate the bloody opt out message so it can only be used for opting out of marketing. Use the same blanket fining system as for call centres but also make the sale of data an industry that requires a licence to operate in. Then you have the leverage to come down on companies that don't follow established DPA, DPA and TPS regulations like a proverbial ton of bricks.
It may be the cynic in me but I doubt the second one will ever come into being as I suspect that there are a number of government departments that would lose significant funding gained by selling their data on to the supply companies. Not to mention the hugely incestuous relationship between OFCOM and the call centre industry. When I walked away from working in call centres I did consider applying for OFCOM so that I could try and work to help the consumer until I realised that most of what they do doesn't have a real effect since their powers were nerfed.
In my opinion this is little more than a public relations exercise that will change next to nothing other than helping a few civil servants justify their salary. Breakthrough my arse!!
I've been out of the industry for years now but even so mealy mouthed bullshit like this still has me seeing red.
Rant over. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand relax....
