Ofcom Dialler Rules - You can be a bit pregnant.

With metrics coming out of our ears and benchmarks upon benchmarks the line between achieving and not achieving has always been very clear.

After the DMA event in London this week the clear message coming from Ofcom is that choosing to run your dialler in predictive mode at any percentage of abandoned calls (<3%) is no longer a clear decision, it’s situational and is based on several influencing factors (to those later).

With this clarity removed I think what is making people squirm the most is that the trigger for an investigation taking place could be based on the number of complaints received about you. Of course there are many ways that you can minimise the number of complaints but…..

‘what if?’

What if a vehement group of consumers have a reason to take umbrage with your brand, or your sector? Then, with all your building blocks in place you won’t be in line for a fine, but you might end up in a potentially PR damaging situation, or with the board looking to you for answers.

So my conclusion is that for the board to sign off on adhering to all regulation then they need to understand that when it comes to Persistent Misuse and the use of predictive diallers it’s always about risk mitigation and never a clear ‘we are’, or ‘we aren’t’.

The board should also be clear though that running your dialler in predictive mode means improved employee satisfaction, a lower cost per acquisition and higher productivity.

Yep, I said it, there are commercial reasons that you would want to use technology to improve the performance of your contact centre. But, this does not mean that all your focus on improving your customer satisfaction scores has gone out of the window. Done correctly with your building blocks in place you can have both.

The building blocks are outlined in this guidance from the DMA (page 6 – Industry Advice)

There are an estimated 164,000 outbound agents in the UK today (Contact Babel). If you average 2 sales a day that’s over 6 million sales a month.

Over 6 million consumers every month saying “yes, I would like to do that”. Unlike any other channel, with telemarketing you can tailor the message to the exacting needs of the consumer, you

can build rapport, you can also make sure the sale is water-tight, delivered with all the right quality measures in place. And, if they aren’t interested you can understand what you could do to better serve them in the future.

The Contact Centre Council are going to continue to produce tools to help you get under the skin of what information is needed to support with the decision making process but perhaps, undertaking an audit such as TPS Assured, will make discussions with the board about how you progress a lot easier.

To understand more about the DMA, the Contact Centre Council or TPS Assured please contact Lizzy: Elizabeth.Knott-Simey@dma.org.uk.