Barclaycard "Boffed"

It's been a busy couple of days for regulators. Hot on the heels of the Lib Dems telling off for making automated marketing calls without consent, Barclaycard has been fined the maximum possible £50,000 by the regulator, Ofcom, for making silent calls with a predictive dialler from its call centres. Ofcom hasn't yet published the full details (the website says that it is preparing the details and they'll be published soon here) but it is clear from their press release that Ofcom consider this to have been the most serious case of abuse yet. And that's up against some pretty serious competition.

The offenses occurred between October 2006 and May 2007 - i.e. a whole 6 months after the rules requiring an information message, CLI and the 3% limit on abandoned calls were introduced in March 2006. I think a couple of things are intersting here.

Firstly, that an organisation the size of Barclaycard could allow this to happen. Banks, in common with all financial services organisations, have regulation and compliance issues effecting everything they do. This is not a double glazing firm - but a serious multi-national business. While implementing an information message was always the most difficult of the new regulations to comply with, and 6 months may not have been enough time to enable this change, switching on CLI and limiting the abandoned call rate to 3% of live calls would not have required a change to systems. I expect there'll be some tough questions asked as to how that was allowed to pass.

Secondly, Ofcom have clearly been riled by this case. I've spoken to people in Ofcom who have priavely expressed extreme irritation that within days of first investingating a complaint, the contact centres appear to be able to make themselves compliant - showing that there really had been no reason for them not to comply. This frustration has come out in pubic in this case. For a regulator to use language like "Had we not been limited by the statutory maximum, we would have imposed a larger financial penalty to reflect this misuse" in a press release is pretty strong stuff.

Ed Richards, Ofcom's new Chief, has clearly got the bit between his teeth on this matter. Good news for consumer, great news for call centres who take good practice and their committment to responsible dialling seriousy. Bad news for the bad guys. Here endeth the lesson.

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….

Ofcom in Action Again

Earlier this week Ofcom, the UK's telco and broadcast regulator, named and shamed another call centre operator for making silent calls. This time it has gone for Barclaycard, a not insignificant brand, owned by Barclays, an even less insignificant brand. The details have yet to be made public but it adds to the major-league brands nailed by Ofcom (the others being Abbey and Carphone Warehouse).

I think three things are interesting here:

Firstly, despite all the publicity in the general media and specialist press, these large organisations still failed to take compliance seriously. We all know that implementing change in these big businesses can be like executing a 3 point turn in an oil tanker, but one would have thought that compliance in a financial services organisation might be able to pull some levers and make change happen faster.

Secondly, Ofcom are still investigating alleged misuse from 18 months ago - the period they've named Barclaycard for starts just six months after the first statement to regulate diallers was published on 1st March 2006. There may well be more to come.

Thirdly, the brief report on the Ofcom site says that "Ofcom has extended this programme of monitoring and enforcement for a further six months". It's not over yet guys!

While we await with baited breath the results of the latest consultation (now expected in early July) where issues such as Answer Machine Detection and automated calling (i.e. calling with a recorded message with no live person to speak to) are expected to be handled, it is still as important as ever to comply with the existing rules.

That's not just so you don't get caught, that's because it's the right thing to do - for fair treatment of consumers and for the long-term viability of the call centre.