Author:  Jim Mitchell

Last month, I wrote about Do Not Call legislation, specifically in Australia, Canada, and the United States.  There is some other somewhat recent, and much more restrictive, legislation in the United Kingdom that affects all types of outbound contact regardless of the business process they handle.  This legislation, which was proposed by the U.K. Office of Communications (Ofcom), took effect March 1 of this year. 

The main difference between DNC and Ofcom legislation is that Ofcom outlines how companies should handle silent calls.  It requires that when a contact center makes an outbound call to someone and is unable to transfer the call to a human agent within two seconds, they must play a message that states who they are, and then hang up.  This is true even if an agent frees up during that time period.

Contact centers that conduct business in the U.K. must ensure that their suppliers and their technology can comply with this new legislation.  They must ask tough questions such as:

• Can your dialer adjust the pacing rate of your calls?
• Can your dialer adjust the ring value of your calls?
• Does your technology record a hang up as an abandon?

I don’t believe that this legislation will become pervasive in other countries because it is too restrictive.  But, if you operate in multiple global locations, I recommend that you keep abreast of legislation as it is issued, and work closely with your service providers to ensure your systems can help you maintain and demonstrate compliance.

 

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 13th, 2007 at 8:05 pm and is filed under Compliance/Regulatory, Dialers, Sales and Telemarketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.