Abandoned and silent calls still major compliance issue

Research demonstrates that only 40% of respondents using software diallers were tracking abandon calls at campaign level; essential to ensure compliance to Ofcom’s regulations on abandoned and silent calls.

The research presented by the Professional Planning Forum at last month’s National Outbound Forum also found that no one using an in-house solution could supply this data, although all respondents with a physical hard dialler were tracking abandoned calls at this level.

Some of this can be explained by the rapid take up of technology in this sector, as manual dialling fell significantly to 14% of respondents (43% in 2008). This indicates that outbound technology is now more prevalent in the smaller operations but that they have a long way to go to ensure best practice and compliance.

As a result of the considerable change taking place in this sector, a unique collection of key vendors, industry bodies, such as Ofcom and the Direct Marketing Association and contact centre managers came together to discuss best practice, latest research, new technology and key challenges at the first National Outbound Forum in London last month.

Further key findings from the survey were:

• 31% now specifically plan their outbound calling (up from 14% in 2008). This still means that a sixth of respondents do not plan for this function.
• Outbound operations still tend to be smaller than their inbound counterparts with 38% of respondents running centres with fewer than than 30 full-time employees.
• The role of an outbound planner is still very specialist, with 78% of respondents having between 1 and 2 outbound planners.
• There is no change in the proportion of centres considering the use of outbound text messaging, despite regulatory clarification from OFCOM.
• Blending of inbound and outbound calls remains a key challenge in contact centres. For 39% of respondents this is not yet achieved.

Full details of best practice and compliance can be found in The Guide to Outbound Planning published by the Professional Planning Forum and Rostrvm Solutions Limited.