Outbound Call Center Featured Article

Sytel Urges UK Companies to End Bad Outbound Dialing Practices

By Raju Shanbhag
TMCnet Contributor

Calling the UK companies involved in telemarketing and outbound dialing to stop breaking the law or face an increasing consumer backlash, Sytel (News - Alert) Limited has issued a challenge to these companies.

Offering a limit on the allowed number of abandoned or “silent” calls, the UK communications regulator Ofcom published rules for predictive dialers in 2003. In 2010, penalty levels for non-compliance with the rules were raised from £50k to £2million. To get excellent performance, call centers can be compliant and stay out of trouble. With zero risk of penalty, Sytel offers an alternative that boosts agent productivity, the company stated in a press release.

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

Allowing users to get up to 50 percent more talk time than with the alternative of progressive dialing, Sytel’s predictive dialer has been designed to give maximum performance under compliance. Making sure that there is no scope or opportunity to operate outside the Ofcom regulations, the dialer ships in the UK with compliance limits in place. The proof is in the pudding. Just ask UK users how it feels to get great productivity, without aggravating customers or losing sleep over compliance, the company stated.

In April 2010, the company signed a contract with Wind Telecom S.A. to become an integration partner in Poland and Central Europe. McKinlay said Wind Telecom's (News - Alert) considerable expertise in the field and 24/7 Polish support will prove very attractive to potential customers throughout the region, whether hosted or premise based. Sytel Limited delivers secure, resilient IP telephony and media infrastructure software for carriers, enterprises and hosted contact centre providers, connecting and managing calls and media sessions without boundary.