Seeking to take advantage of problems presented by a 7-year-old federal law that limits telemarketing calls, a Beaverton, Oregon-based information services provider today is launching a product that will aid call centers’ efforts to gather more residential phone numbers.

 

Officials from Metro One (News - Alert) Telecommunications say their product, the “Do-Not-Call Cleanse” application, will identify telephone numbers in telemarketers’ internal files that have been surrendered, and return those numbers to active prospect pools.

 

The company’s chief executive officer, Jim Hensel, says the product is a first-of-its-kind way to systematically update internal do-not-call lists. In the past, it’s been time-consuming for telemarketers to discover which previously registered do-not-call numbers have been given up, for example, because the number’s user has moved, and to transfer those numbers back onto a list of “to call” residents.

 

“We have solved this dilemma through our IDNC Cleanse product that leverages our historical directory assistance listings database and our ability to do rapid, large-scale data processing,” Hensel said.

 

The need for an automatic “cleansing” product stems from the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991. Two years after the law was passed, in 1993, the Federal Trade Commission opened the National Do Not Call Registry.

 

The registry gives U.S. residents a chance to avoid telemarketers. Under the law, telemarketers – with some exceptions, including those conducting surveys – have up to 31 days from the date a number is registered to cease calling that number.

 

Last year, Congress passed the Do-Not-Call Improvement Act of 2007. Under that law, consumers need only register once to maintain their phone numbers on the registry – previously it was five years. Also, the law increases to several times a month the frequency with which the FTC (News - Alert) must purge the registry of disconnected and reassigned numbers.

 

That makes things tricky for telemarketers seeking to keep their rosters “active.”

 

According to Hensel, Metro One’s new product can process a client’s list regardless of size.

 

“Now that a quick and easy tool is available, we expect that periodic reconciling of do-not-call lists will become a normal step in list hygiene,” Hensel said. “In a competitive marketplace, companies want the best possible lists and the largest possible universe of prospects.”

 

 

community comments powered by Disqus