Ofcom's Big Bang Day

I woke up this morning full of excitement about the switch-on of the LHC at Cern, a throwback to my old physics days. I was a student when the last big particle smasher was turned on (LEP) and the LHC and the search for the Higgs Boson was already a glint in the professors’ eyes.

According to the latest news from Cern, LHC is working well and that illusive boson will soon be finally shown to exist (or not exist!) and I for one can’t wait.

Then along comes news of another big bang – Ofcom’s long awaited revised Statement of policy on the persistent misuse of an electronic communications network or service. Although seemingly innocuous at first glance, it contains some explosive phrases that could cause some pretty big bangs in the outbound contact centre industry.

It has four main findings that I think are really significant.

Firstly, it effectively says that outbound call centres should not do answerphone detection, because of the issue of "false positive" detection where the system things the call has been answered by an answering machine and disconnects it, but in truth the call was answered by a live person. It doesn’t quite "ban" the technology in so many words, it actually says (in paragraph 2.23) “Ofcom’s intention is not to ban the use of AMD technology; we consider this could inhibit future innovation in this sector and would be intrusive. However, in the light of responses on the current accuracy rates for AMD technology, Ofcom recognises that at present, and until accuracy rates improve, it will be very difficult to use AMD technology without breaching the three per cent guideline. We consider this is proportionate, at least for the present, in light of the risk of anxiety caused to consumers from AMD false positives and that it may in fact act as an incentive for improved accuracy rates which should minimise the risk of possible consumer detriment.”

Combined with the next few paragraphs, this is basically saying “we don’t think you can comply with our rules and use AMD. If you think otherwise you’d better be bleedin’ sure of our facts mush”. It would be a brave company who soldiers on with AMD in the light of this. Anybody who’s interested in more on AMD can look at our white paper which you can get hold of here.

Secondly, Ofcom have changed the way that abandoned calls are calculated to take account of the fact that if you’re not using AMD, you can include all calls you pass to operators in the live call part of your calculation. This is a bit of a help to people will have to stop using it as it will help them “ease the pain” of transition.

Thirdly, there is a change in the definition of a campaign to widen the net; for example, allowing organisations to include calls made over multiple call centres for the same end result. Not sure how this helps a dialler manager – he or she will still have to try and hit the 3% rule, because they won’t know what the other centres are doing, but does provide some slack for the odd unplanned lapse.

Finally there is a ruling on the use of automated messages in service and collections. I’ve not really had a chance to delve into this in any depth, but anyone who tries playing recorded messages in the Grig household will soon find their contract terminated pretty pronto.

For Callmedia customers, we’ll be unpacking what this means for you and your system at our User Forum at the CC Expo next week – register here if you’ve not already done so. I’ll post again once I’ve had a chance to properly digest the news.

In the mean time, let’s hope any sign of that pesky boson is real, and not just another false positive….