Bad Predictive Dialler Practices

November, 2011

Sytel calls for an end to the widespread disregard in the UK for the Ofcom rules on predictive dialling.

Call follows warnings issued by Ofcom to household names such as TalkTalk.

Sytel Limited, a global supplier of contact centre solutions, today issued a challenge to UK companies involved in telemarketing and outbound dialling to stop breaking the law or face an increasing consumer backlash.

In 2003, the UK communications regulator Ofcom published rules for predictive diallers, including a limit on the allowed number of abandoned or ‘silent’ calls. In 2010, penalty levels for non-compliance with the rules were raised from £50k to £2million.

Sytel CEO Michael McKinlay commented “Recent notifications served on TalkTalk, Homeserve and Npower by Ofcom have brought outbound calling back into the spotlight. There is unfortunately still widespread disregard in the UK for the Ofcom rules on predictive dialling.

A key reason is that many diallers are not built to perform well under compliance, so in the search for good performance, many users work outside the rules.

But it doesn‟t have to be this way. Call centres can be compliant, stay out of trouble and still get excellent performance. Sytel offers an alternative that boosts agent productivity with zero risk of penalty.”

“Uniquely, Sytel’s predictive dialler has been designed to give maximum performance under compliance and allows users to get up to 50% more talk time than with the alternative of progressive dialling. And the dialler ships in the UK with compliance limits in place, so that there is no scope or opportunity to operate outside the Ofcom regulations.

“The proof is in the pudding. If you want to know how it feels to get great productivity, without aggravating your customers or losing sleep over compliance, just ask our UK users”, McKinlay said.

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