Rufus' Blog

What can you buy for 2 million quid?

noreply@blogger.com (Rufus Grig) — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 09:25:00 +0000

Silent calls are back in the news with what used to be the DTI (morphing through BERR to it's current name "The Department of Business, Inovation and Skills" - come back Prince, all is forgiven...) publishing plans to increase the maximum level of fines from the current £50k to a maximum of 2 million pounds. (Click here for press release).

If you can cast your mind back to last year's action against Barclaycard, Ofcom's chief Ed Richards said at the time "Had we not been limited by the statutory maximum, we would have imposed a larger financial penalty to reflect this misuse". Well, it looks like he may get it.

The plans to consult on the level of fines were set out in the controversial "Digital Britain" report published last June where I for one completely failed to notice the text in paragraph 50 on page 200 saying:

"A further growing area of concern for the Government is the disparity between the various penalties that Ofcom can impose under the Communications Act 2003 in relation to actions causing consumer harm. For example, where Ofcom has found breaches of the Broadcasting Code regarding phone-in scandals and the consumer harm they caused, it has been able to impose fines of well over £1m. Conversely, where Ofcom has found serious breaches of its rules on persistent misuse of a network or service, in particular in relation to extremely high numbers of silent calls (where the people receiving the calls had no method of knowing who had made them, with the resulting consumer harm), the statutory ceiling as currently set only allows Ofcom to fine up to £50,000. It seems to the Government that the discrepancy between these levels of fine is no longer sustainable or desirable. The Government will therefore consult on the penalties that Ofcom is able to impose for contraventions of the Communications Act 2003 and, in particular, the level of the fine it can impose in relation to persistent misuse cases."

(Download full report here (PDF))

So what does this mean?

It has long been argued that the level of the fine has not been the deterrent so much as the reputational damage to your brand. That's why Ofcom have always made it clear they'll go after the originating brand, rather than any outsourced contact centre that happens to actually make the calls. Loosing a bank only £50k in the last year would probably not have registed on the level of petty cash, given what's been going on, but £2m is enough to make even the most profilgate of spenders stop and think.

So, if the threat of 2 million quid fine is enough to sharpen most organisations' focus on managing their dialler properly, what will and what should happen? Well for my tuppenceworth:

(1) Answer Machine Detection (AMD) - we need to get heads out of sand on this one. AMD causes silent calls (fact). Silent calls cause nuisance and anxiety (fact). I'm sorry, but I don't understand why this is still being debated.

(2) Some further clarification on calculating silent call rates when AMD is and isn't being used would be helpful. The DMA has put together some excellent work on this (which I've been a part) and it would be helpful to have that endorsed.

(3) Everybody with an interest in this field should respond to the consultation. My response will be that I will welcome the increased level of fines but call for the publication of the AMD research carried out by Ofcom earlier in the year, and ask that Ofcom confirm publically and in print those clarifications on the silent calls calculations that they've made in public meetings organised by the TPS and others.

Meanwhile I'm wondering, what would I do with £2,000,000?

The Micro Men and the Connected Kids

noreply@blogger.com (Rufus Grig) — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 09:47:00 +0000

My past and my present collided in a happily nostalgic way his week. Firstly, I watched “Micro Men” on the telly. It was the tale of the rivalry between the two Cambridge-based home-computer giants of the early 1980s - Acorn and Sinclair. Geeks back then (of whom I was one) tended to wear their allegiances to each of those brands on their selves and I was an out-and-out Acorn man. Indeed, my first gig in the computing world was with a company that sold networking software and hard discs for the BBC Micro - the entire network operating system had to fit into less memory than the average logo on a website does now...

The real reminder was just how new computers were back then. When I first arrived at my secondary school, it owned one computer (an RML 380Z in case you care). You could book 15 minute sessions on it and write programs in a variety of languages, but frankly only a small number of us bothered. The computer lab didn’t appear until I was doing my o-levels and when I left there was still no such thing as computer studies - computers were only used to support teaching in maths and some science classes.

Fast-forward 25 years and I was at parent’s evening for my 4 year old. She’s been 4 for 3 months, and at school for 4 weeks. It is an ordinary village school (not some kind of NASA-sponsored academy) and I was told how she enjoyed ICT (that’s computers for the uninitiated). ICT! She’s 4! I was changing her nappies less than 20 months ago - now she’s being tought how to use Windows!

When she leaves school she’ll be computer literate in systems that now have not even been imagined. She will be familiar with, and probably own, devices that are networked she will communicate and collaborate with her friends and peers in ways that will probably have me harumphing about like a Luddite, bemoaning this “new-fangled technology”. Douglas Adams has a great quote about technology which I wholeheartedly endorse....

“I’ve come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies:

Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.
Anything that’s invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary, and you can probably get a career in it.
Anything invented after you’re thirty-five is against the natural order of things.”

So what’s this got to do with the price of fish? Well, another timely collision into my week was reading in Saturday’s Guardian about the amount of time teenagers and young adults spend on social networking sites (stuff that will seem as dated as the ZX81 to my younger daughter when she’s 18). The generation emerging from education into the workplace thinks, communicates, collaborates in ways their forebears simply don’t. They’re emerging into a world in which economic uncertainty will encourage greater scrutiny of their purchases and brand loyalties than their parents (at least I bleedin’ hope so - otherwise, we will have learned nothing from the last 18 months). Being so at home in their connected world, they will be expecting to use the same tools to communicate with retailers and service providers and local authorities and educators as they do with their peers. That was the point of a paper I gave, together with Peter Carragher of the essentiagroup, at the CCF conference last month. We looked at the internet and communication usage of different age groups and discussed how this needs to impact the way we run customer contact in the very near future. It was good fun to research and put together, & I’d like to hear what others thing. If you’d like a copy of the material, drop me an email via contact@callmedia.co.uk or post a comment on this blog entry.

Although terrifyingly old fogyish and rather unfashionably the wrong side of Douglas Adam’s quote, the geek in me is fascinated by what will come next in the world of communication. Just as long as I’m not expected to use it....

Callmedia User Forum

noreply@blogger.com (Rufus Grig) — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 13:38:00 +0000

Thanks to all of our customers, partners and friends who came to the Callmedia User Forum at the CC Expo this week - it was good to catch up. We had a lot of fun with our version 5 preview and the Facebook integration and look forward to working on some live projects soon.

We're currently thinking about next year's event and will soon be consulting amongst our user community about venue, time of year, content etc, but if you've got any feedback in the mean time - whether or not you attended this year - we'd love to hear from you.

Expo and the Callmedia Forum are just around the corner!

noreply@blogger.com (Rufus Grig) — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 14:04:00 +0000

Firstly, apologies for the absence. I had got quite into this blogging lark but somehow managed to get out of the habit with some aplomb...

However, I have news. Call Centre Expo 2009 is round the corner and as usual Callmedia is there in force. We’re running our 3^rd annual User Forum in conjunction with our sponsorship of the Call Centre Focus Conference. If you’re a Callmedia customer you should already have had an invite. If not then many apologies – it’s not too late to register – you can do it here.

During the first morning, we will be introducing Callmedia 5.0 including our new Expert Contact engine, and also demonstrating our integration with Facebook. All exciting stuff (see the CCF Coverage)

If you’re coming on the Wednesday then we still have our hospitality suite up on the Conference floor (go up the big flight of stairs in the entrance hall to the NEC and follow the signs) and I may see you at another couple of events I’m speaking at: The TPS Forum in the morning, and I’ll be co-presenting with Peter Caragher of the essentiagroup on the subject of new channels for communicating with younger people – we’ve called it “The A to Z of communicating with Generations X, Y and beyond” – I’ll be talking about the technology and Peter will be sharing his real-world experience of using channels such as Video Chat, chat rooms and SMS to reach out to young people.

Failing that, I hope to catch up with you at the dinner on Tuesday evening where we’re one of the award sponsors. Given that I’m talking about predictive dialling call calculations at 9 o’clock the next morning, I’m going to try very hard to be on my best behaviour.....

I hope to see you next week.

At the end of the day....

noreply@blogger.com (Rufus Grig) — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 17:42:00 +0000

Sorry for the interruption to your service - just too much going on to get an update on here.

The afternoon session started off with a view from Claudia from CCF magazine on her view of outbound. CCF have been a champion of good practice in outbound contact centres for ages, so it was good to hear her point of view. It was also good to hear her mobile go off while she was on the platform (pesky outbound callers!)

Next up, John Price and Elaine Lee from the DMA’s Contact Centre Council gave an update on activity relating to the Telemarketing Manifesto. This is an initiative launched last year designed to encourage sustainablity and good practice in outbound for the four key stakeholders: Consumers, Companies, Regulators and Agents. (It’s great to see the emphasis on the agents for once. As Elaine pointed out, they are the ones that take the rejection, that make the great calls, that carry the responsibility for the brand). Elaine also covered the impending arrival of the DMA’s Telemarketing Best Practice Guidelines, to be launched soon (when they’ve got through the DMA’s Governance procedures).

Steve Smith of Brookmead Consulting then took us through some research from the TPS Report I mentioned earlier. This report was a pretty extensive piece of work covering a number of areas: The Consumer Experience of unwelcome calls, the impact of regulation on the industry, the regulatory process itself, the view from the US and a personal comment from Simon Roncoroni. Steve’s research, some hot off the press from Mori, gave some very interesting insights into the thoughts of consumers receiving outbound calls, as well as some strong comment from the industy on the regulatory process. More interesting was the industry futures section, where it is clear that genuine cold calling is really in decline and that mobile marketing, integrated web response and much more targeted ofers are the order of the day.

In the afternoon Jasminder from Ofcom gave some clarification around the Ofcom statement issued last September. I’ll write a separate post on this when I get a chance, but the upshot was some confirmation of the definitions relating to the abandoned call formula. It is quite technical, but very important to anybody running a dialler so watch out for my post tomorrow on the subject.

Finally George Kidd from the Direct Marketing Commission (and formerly PhonePayPlus and the Cabinet Office) gave an interesting talk about how to “love your regulator”, exploring themes around the increased longevity, sustainability and profitability that regulation can bring to markets.

So what conclusions can I draw from today?

Well there were two key themes, I think. Firstly, the ever present regulatory theme. There is work to be done by all operators on making sure they understand the September 2008 Ofcom statement and its implications for their businesses. For those using Answer Machine Detection (AMD), the implications are really quite significant in that they have to come up with a robust understanding of the number of silent calls their AMD makes and factor that into their dialler management to include it in their abandoned call rate. In many (if not most) circumstances, AMD is simply not a viable technology, certainly not where it is used all the time. For those not using AMD, exporing Ofcom’s clarification will be important. As I said, I’ll post on that issue tomorrow, but the DMA will work to get a statement that Ofcom can endorse on its website soon.

Secondly, the theme of best practice and on the importance of respecting consumers came through loud and clear. Good targeting is clearly the watchword (or maybe even watchwords...) for successful campaigns in the future rather than the high volume “Spray & Pray” activity we still sometimes see today.

This live blogging lark also turned out not quite to be as live as I’d hoped. Perhaps I’d better look into Twitter....

Lunchtime

noreply@blogger.com (Rufus Grig) — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 12:57:00 +0000

Bit busy at lunch to write much, but a fascinating morning. Particularly the session by Simon Roncoroni on his personal vision of outbound.

The presentation on the use of automated messages by Steve Smith of Brookmead Consulting created a very interesting debate on the use of this technology. It's against the law for it to be used for marketing purposes, but the main worry is that if volumes increase it devalues the whole currency of th telephone a a medium.

Session starting - got to go.

Sustainable Future of Telemarketing

noreply@blogger.com (Rufus Grig) — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 08:11:00 +0000

Well, I'm here. Safely ensconced at the Wellcome Collection, awaiting the arriva of the coffee trolley (due to a mixup with a timetable and my diary and the clock changing, I've broken the habit of the last 40 years and turned up unfashionably early).

The conference agenda is full an diverse - from the arcane technicalities of the inner workings of diallers to the future of the industry via some research, regulation and a debate on the merits of automated messages.

It kicks of with a session on AMD. This is the absurdly technical bit which was originally going to be part of a separate lab session. I pitty the poor delegates who are going to get me and Roland (the excellent Roland Smith from JAM IP) giving them their first dose of double maths for many a year...

Then the always excellent Simon Roncoroni will be giving his personal view on the future of telemarketing - made all the more credible and relevant by the fact that he's also responsible for such a lot of its past.

Then there's a panel debate on automated messages chaired by the incomparable Claudia Hathway of CCF magazine.

After lunch, Steve Smith of Brookmead Consulting will be launching the publication of a report produced for the TPS last year on the state of telemarketing (I ought to declare an interst - I wrote some if it) .

Then the DMA Contact Centre Council Chair John Price, aided and abetted by Elaine Lee qill launch the Best Practice Guidelines developed by the DMA Council.

Then after afternoon tea and cake, Jasminder Oberoi from Ofcom will issue some clarification around the Ofcom guidelines published in September last year and George Kidd from the DM Commission will round the day off with a talk on the profitability of compliance.

I will log on a lunchtime with a review of the morning. Meanwhile, forget the end of year / end of quarter / last day of winter / eve of pranks / last day in London before the G20 and either enjoy the session or do some work.

Speak later.

Sustainability in Telemarketing

noreply@blogger.com (Rufus Grig) — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 05:18:00 +0000

Just a quick note to say I'll be at the DMA's event on the Sustainable Future of Telemarketing today and the Wellcome Collection in London. I'll be speaking on Answer Machine Detection (AMD) and the implications of the latest Ofcom Statement on Persistent Misuse. Hope to see a few people there.

I'm even going to try and post a coupleof updates while I'm there (not while I'm speaking of course - that would be rude...).

Trust and Trustibility

noreply@blogger.com (Rufus Grig) — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 09:59:00 +0000

Doing the washing up on Thursday night I heard yet another story of a security breach involving an off-shore contact centre. The BBC (in the guise of The World Tonight) secretly recorded an undercover reporter buying “leads” with names, address & credit card details.

This is nothing new, of course, there was a Dispatches programme in 2006 that found evidence of data theft in UK as well as overseas contact centres, but it is a little depressing to know that it is still going on.

The problem isn’t limited to off-shore contact centres, of course. Earlier this month, a manager in a UK call centre (Barclaycard) stole £11,000 from a customer having stolen his details when he called in.

The fact is that credit card fraud happens. It happens in shops, pubs, petrol stations, ATM machines (that’s Cashpoints in English), restaurants and anywhere else people use plastic to pay for goods and services.

What’s more, occasionally bad people work in call centres. And in banks, newspaper publishing, restaurants, petrols stations, shops, pubs etc.

So why the interest? Why the undercover operation and top billing for a report that might be considered a bit “dog bites man”?

Well, I think there are a three things in play here.

Firstly, the brand on whose behalf the transaction was made and from which the details were subsequently stolen, was Symantec (marketing strap-line, "Confidence in a connected world") taking payments for the renewal of antivirus software. Antivirus software is surely something you need to think you can trust. It is also one of the few applications that regularly (well, every year or so) pops up and asks us to feed it with money. The thought that the software you installed to protect your computer and your data is actually inducing you to pass your credit card details on in order that they can be stolen is unsettling at best.

Secondly, it happened offshore. In these days of “British Jobs for British Workers”, a tendency towards protectionism in governments about the world and, let’s face it, a considerable lack of love towards the financial services sector, a good old-fashioned off-shore bashing session was definitely on the cards.

Thirdly, and perhaps more importantly, our details are now (despite what it might say in the papers) more secure than ever before. Chip & PIN has stopped the dodgy waiter from double-swiping your card at the back of the restaurant. Initiatives like the Payment Card Industry (PCI)’s Data Security Standards (DSS) have made businesses more aware than ever before that they need to protect data, from their staff as well as from external attack, protect their networks and be open about how they handle sensitive information.

So, what’s to be done. Over the web we have services like “Verified by Visa”, WorldPay & PayPal that give consumers confidence. We have Chip & PIN in face to face environments and a mattress to hide our worldly wealth in if we don’t trust the banks. Call centres are one of the few remaining situations where we still hand over our card details to an individual. How do we get the trust back?

Technology can have a part to play – the transfer to an automated system for the collection of the sensitive credit card information before passing the call back to an agent – has been used successfully. However, if you don’t trust the organisation you’re calling, how do you know that their IVR isn’t bent too?

Perhaps there is a scope for an IVR version of a “Verified by Visa” scheme, or perhaps a more public awareness of an accreditation like the PCI DSS. If this trust issue isn’t solved, it’s not only going to be overseas call centres that attract suspicion.

Ideas, anyone?

Let it Snow

noreply@blogger.com (Rufus Grig) — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 19:35:00 +0000

Like most of the rest of Southern Britain, I woke up yesterday to the excitement of snow. Even as an aging adult, I still feel that frisson of excitement when I see snow falling and settling – and living in the woosey South of England, it’s the first proper snow I’ve seen for 10 years.

My kids were ecstatic, even before the news came through that their school was closed. We bundled on wellies & warm clothes and were out bundling snow at each other before breakfast. Happy days!

Now, I’d been due to be at our parent company’s Weybridge office for a series of meetings. All internal, but we were travelling because:
• We had staff from various parts of the country attending and it was reasonable central
• Sometimes it’s nice to see people face to face
• The Weybridge office has got a simply wonderful coffee machine.

With the snow, the prospect of the M25, A3, M3, ice, blizzards etc was not appealing so I did all four meetings as conference calls. My broadband line was working a treat (more that can be said for my mobile, which appeared not to enjoy the cold conditions), my VPN connected phone was working superbly, and from my desk in the study at home I could hear the sound of happy children playing and, in between the odd call, even sneaked into the garden to assist with snow man / woman / person of indeterminate gender building myself.

After a day of much documented happiness, I was left with two thoughts:
Firstly, curse this modern communication technology. 18 years ago (last time we had this much snow), I’d have been unable to get to work; conference bridges and VPNs didn’t exist and I’d have had a day of fun and a been a bit behind when the snow finally melted & I made it back to the office. Smash the spinning jenny!
My second, and perhaps less childish thought, was this: why has it taken an “extreme weather event” to make me leave the car on the drive and do the conference calls? I work from home a fair bit, usually if I have late or early meeting somewhere and it’s not worth coming into the office, but I came to thinking that I’m far too ready to get in the car. The advantages of my enforced day at home were:
• I had breakfast, lunch & supper with my family. Nice for them (I think...) and definitely nice for me.
• I got a shed-load done, without wasting time in a car
• I got to play in the snow
• I didn’t put my life at risk, unless you count receiving a volley of snowballs from a 5 year old
• I failed miserably to generate a load of CO2, particulates and other nasties into the atmosphere

The excellent Roger Jones of Avaya gave me some figures (he was presenting on Green IT at the launch of Azzurri’s Contact Centre Practice last week). The average car chucks out about 0.2kg of CO2 per kilometre. The seven people I was due to meet at Weybridge probably had average journeys of 50km each way. So that’s 700km all told – a whopping great 140 Kg of CO2.

It is important to travel to meet people from time to time. Just not every time.
Audio conferencing is pretty good – especially if you know the other people and (in the case of large meetings) have a strong chair. Tools like WebEx (we happen to use the excellent GoToMeeting from Citrix) mean that there’s something to focus on (my mind can wander – I am a man after all) – job done.

In the contact centre, the average commute is 8.7 miles (again, figures via Roger from the Call Centre Helper website) – even if 10% of us worked from home 1 day a week, it would make a terrific difference.

I’m back in the office now. It’s tipping it down with snow outside. My kids are still off school.

How I long for yesterday...

Political Contact gets Personal

noreply@blogger.com (Rufus Grig) — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 10:58:00 +0000

Happy New Year and all that. I think it’s going to be tough one for everybody, but in this bi-centenary of Darwin’s birth it’s worth remembering that difficult times are what cause innovation, adaptation and change that can have long term consequences for the better. Granted, that’s not much comfort when your livelihood is at stake, but there is always opportunity for some in every circumstance. It’s clear in times of economic trouble looking after existing customers is absolutely key for any business – and that’s what we’re in business to do.

Looking at the predictions for the year, there’s already a buzz about a General Election. The political whys? and maybes are for another time (probably over a pint..) but contact with voters, campaigning and marketing will play a key role.

In the US elections last year, social networking sites such as Facebook and Bebo played a huge role not just in the general election but in the primaries. The Labour Party have just launched a community site, LabourList.org to compete with ConservativeHome and LibDemVoice, and there is news of a “virtual phone bank” – effectively web-based access to home supporters of Labour’s canvassing databases to allow party supporters to make calls from home.

Nick Clegg, of course, already made the headlines with his automated calls, subsequently declared illegal by the Information Commissioner, and the Tories have been trying to get an upper hand in new media and web campaigning since the launch of WebCameron, the rather cheesily named Cameron video blog.

In the end the economy, the polls and his state of nerve will determine when Gordon Brown does eventually go to the country, but it will be fascinating to see how the political parties rise to the challenge of marketing to and contacting their potential voters.

A historic anniversary and a new beginning?

noreply@blogger.com (Rufus Grig) — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 14:47:00 +0000

Today it is the 50th anniversary of the first directly dialled trunk call. Ask anybody under the age of thirty what a trunk call is and they’ll probably give you a blank look and talk about elephants, but the ability to get hold of half the world’s population by pressing only 13 buttons is still an impressive engineering achievement. The Queen made the first directly dialled call 50 years ago today (and if you believe that you’ll believe anything - there is ZERO chance that such a high profile event wasn’t checked a zillion times by engineers before the big moment. I speak as someone for whom the disaster demo is an ever-present threat...) and you can watch her doing it here.

But this week also marks the launch of a new service that (its designers and owners claim...) could change the way we contact people and business. The .tel internet domain is designed to act as a global phonebook - but a phonebook that sits on the internet for everybody to see.

The .tel idea is that businesses register their names on the .tel domain (for example, callmedia.tel) and that, rather than publishing a web site there, the business stores its contact details within the domain management system itself.

The way the internet usually works is that a “phone book for the internet” (known as DNS) tells your browser how to find a particular website. This if your browser wants to find callmedia.co.uk, it sends a request to a DNS server which returns the underlying internet address of the website. In the case of Callmedia.co.uk, that’s 87.106.210.114 - you can see why the DNS makes it easier to remember. Your browser then goes to that internet address, downloads the pages and displays them on your screen.

The idea of the .tel domain is that the DNS system itself will return not just the internet (or IP) address, but also other relevant contact information such as telephone numbers, email addresses, mobile numbers, SIP addresses etc. For individuals, the sell is that you can keep all your information in one place and when your details change, you only update them once. rufusgrig.tel would then know my new numbers. If the system takes off, then in my Outlook or BlackBerry address book, I may only store the .tel information for a business contact, and then when I want to call their home number the BlackBerry will go to the .tel service, find out what the current number is, and call it for me. So far so good - but what’s this got to do with customer contact?

For a business, the .tel may become a good way of generating opportunities and steering your customers to contact you in the most appropriate way. Because the information is structured, it is easy for web developers and other manufacturers to integrate with .tel to find numbers, web addresses and the like - making global Yellow and White pages that is automatically integrated with mobile phones, laptops and even consumer devices like Wiis and xboxes.

It will be interesting to see if it takes off. And interesting to look back in 50 years time and see how quaintly old fashioned the whole thing seems!

Meanwhile, I wonder if the Queen will be an early adopter again, like she was with the trunk calls. It could be yourmajesty.tel, thequeen.tel, buckinghampalace.tel, lizzie.tel? Which will she go for?

Green IT & The Contact Centre

noreply@blogger.com (Rufus Grig) — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 16:17:00 +0000

Spent an interesting morning at the Green IT Expo conference in London (traveled by public transport - even getting the horribly early bus to save a drive to the station. Aren’t I good? The keynote speaker flew from the US. Figure that out...)

The buzz in the conference is all about the traditional candidates for the Green IT agenda - server virtualisation to reduce the number of machines required and their power consumption; the use of collaboration and conferencing applications to reduce the need to travel; the use of IT systems to reduce the amount of paper produced and the use of low-energy everything from desktop PCs to phones to air-con to coffee machines.

Contact centres are in some ways a bit of a green enigma. Their very existence enables a green way of doing business between an organisation and its customers: - less travelling to branches, less paperwork & forms - all the standard arguments for electronically mediated communication in place of more carbon-intensive traditional alternatives.

However, contact centres themselves are high energy users. Relying heavily on IT, the servers, telephony & LAN systems and buildings all represent some significant energy consumption.

What’s more, there are confusing choices about contact centre deployment. Is home working “greener” because you reduce the need to travel, or more energy intensive because of the need to heat 500 individual houses rather than one 500 seat contact centre? Do the green benefits of VoIP (remote working, multi-site operations etc) outweigh the increased power consumption of VoIP telephone equipment over its old-fashioned TDM forebears?

Of course, there are no simple answers - the justification will vary from situation to situation. But one thing is sure - the Green Agenda is not going to go away.

Currently a voluntary corporate activity, it will be the focus of legislation and regulation before long. What’s more, there will be “consumer-led” regulation where eco-conscious consumers will want to deal with organisations who can demonstrate a commitment to environmentally friendly operations as one of a swathe of Corporate Social Responsibility metrics. The ability to attract staff will be dependent on an organisations social credentials - including those to a green computing agenda.

The good news is that green IT should not actually be an investment - the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) arguments for reduced power consumption in data centres should be compelling enough - although there is always an argument about the replacement of existing infrastructure. Much of the carbon footprint of a server or a desktop PC is in its manufacture and the disposal of its predecessor, not just in the power it consumes during its working life. There is also more hot air than in the exhaust of a data centres air-con unit around the subject. Only last month, we were asked to attend an exhibition and distribute any product information on a USB key rather than on paper “to save the environment” (one shudders to think of the energy consumed in the manufacture of the USB key over the use of recycled post-card that can then be recycled again pointing at a URL!).

So, the Green IT Bandwagon has departed. Welcome aboard - and hold on tight. It’s going to be an interesting ride.

Call Centre Reform Campaigner Elected President

noreply@blogger.com (Rufus Grig) — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 16:32:00 +0000

It may not be what he is most famous for, but US President Elect Barack Obama has form on the issue of contact centre regulation - specifically on the use of telemarketing to mis-sell to vulnerable members of the community.

In a sentiment that nobody could disagree with, Obama, then merely Senator for Illinois, raised the issue with the American FTC (Federal Trade Commission) which, among other things, is also responsible for the US Do Not Call Registry, the American equivalent of the Telephone Preference Service (TPS) in the UK.

Now given the fact that (in the words of the Senator himself) the challenges he faces are "two wars, the planet in peril and the worst financial crisis in a century", this is not going to be top of his priority list. But America's 44th President is clearly a man for whom fairness, openness and the protection of the vulnerable are important issues and it is likely that those seeking tight, good regulation will receive a sympathetic ear.

Steel Yourself....

noreply@blogger.com (Rufus Grig) — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 11:46:00 +0000

Not exactly a first for a stand-up comedian, but Mark Steel – scourge of the the right and stalwart of Radio 4’s “The News Quiz” has launched a slightly funnier than the average rage-against-the-call-centre machine. He previewed it on the News Quiz itself (unfortunately no longer available on Listen Again) and then wrote it up in his Indie column last week.

It’s worth a read if you can take the pain of criticism because it’s quite a chuckle, but also because it does underline a truth that I don’t think we can articulate often enough – that the customer experience really does matter, and that what you say and how you say it while keeping a customer on hold is as important as what you say when you connect them to a live agent.

The pertinent passage is this:

So they were all sacked and replaced with the demonic call centre and hours of repetitive ambient trancey music, punctuated with a sinisterly smooth voice telling you they're doing ALL they can to answer your call, although the one method they never quite get round to trying is to pick up the sodding phone. Presumably when a phone rings they try blowing on it, sitting on it, spreading marmalade over it, then sit round gasping, "We've tried EVERYTHING and we STILL can't seem to answer it."

So if you have long queues (everybody does – it’s a fact of life sometimes with that confluence of absenteeism, unforcastable peaks and stingy Finance Directors that has yet to be defeated), think about the messaging. “Your call is important to us” makes me want to yell and, trying to sell me something while I’m in the queue is a big big no no.

So – a Friday thought – let’s get creative about our messaging (not too creative…) and liven up your customers’ queuing times - and their moods when they get through to your hard-working staff.

Have a great weekend.

Barclaycard "Boffed"

noreply@blogger.com (Rufus Grig) — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 12:22:00 +0000

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.

Lib Dems Done

noreply@blogger.com (Rufus Grig) — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 13:56:00 +0000

Well it would appear the Information Commissioner agrees with me! The Office of the Information Commissioner has, today, decided that the Lib Dem's automated calling campaign they instigated last week was direct marketing, designed to promote the Liberal Democrats, not to conduct legitimate market research.

The BBC even reported comments from the ICO that "The ICO has consistently made clear that the promotion of a political party counts as marketing.

"We have previously issued detailed guidance to all major political parties on this subject."

Perhaps even more telling, in the light of the recent Ofcom statement allowing messages not for marketing content, he also added:

"Many people find unsolicited automated calls particularly intrusive and annoying so it is important that any organisation making such calls ensures that individuals have given their consent before they are targeted."

You can see the press release here and the full enforcement notice here.

Good on the Info Comm for coming to such a quick judgment. Hopefully this will be a lesson to anyone else considering such a stunt. Automated outbound messages are so cheap and easy to do that they will become a complete menace unless kept in check. Anybody in any doubt should watch the Simpsons episode "Lisa's Date with Density" where Homer buys a second hand auto-dialler to call the fine folk of Springfield to try and get them to give him money. It may not be much of a lesson in Privacy Law, but it's very funny.

Hanging on the Telephone

noreply@blogger.com (Rufus Grig) — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 07:36:00 +0000

Well done us! Yet again the call centre world tops a poll of the "baddest of the bad" - this time a survey done for BBC2 about what makes us angry. When I first heard it I shrugged my shoulders, thought "here we go again" and got on with concentrating my rage on something properly annoying (resurfacing work on the road to Weybridge as it happened).

But then I got to thinking. The public have had contact centres to deal with for a long time now.

We know that sometimes it takes a while to get through (although we're getting better - see Top50 in Customer Service - 58% get through in less than 60 seconds). Yet that's still peanuts with the time it takes to actually go and see somebody face to face or write them a letter. Even, perhaps I could venture, than powering up the PC, finding their website, remembering your on-line password and navigating the website.

So why the rage?

I have two theories.

Firstly, the messaging we give people simply gets their backs up. "Your call is important to us" sounds less convincing the third or fourth time you hear it and "all of our operators are busy at the moment" is insulting - the only alternative being "we can't be arsed to speak to you at the moment because we're all playing on the new Wii Fit". Some honesty would be be refreshing here. "We're really sorry we can't handle your call straight away. We hope to get to you within 2 minutes, meanwhile here's something funny to listen to" would make me happy. Also, the increasing use of "call-back" technology that means punters can get on with their lives rather than listen to pledges of sincerity interspersed with royalty-free business-friendly musac.

Secondly, I fear that the phone itself is part of the problem. It's the "narrow pipe" scenario espoused by Guy Fielding all those years ago. A disembodied voice (human or machine) without the benefit of body language and a human face desensitises us to the impact of our shouty actions when we finally get through. We may get cross queueing at the bar or at the supermarket check-out, but we can see that the people we are waiting for are busy, and that they have a lot of work to do serving fellow customers. Accentuating the human nature of the contact centre will help here - and any ideas on how we do that would be very welcome.

Automated Calling Gets Political

noreply@blogger.com (Rufus Grig) — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 09:08:00 +0000

Being at Call Centre Expo where a big talking point was the new Ofcom guidelines and their prohibition of automated calling for marketing purposes, the news that the Liberal Democrats were planning to make a quarter of a million automated calls could have knocked most people there down with a feather.

The Lib-Dems, the party which campaigned vociferously against calls made by other political parties at the last general election, are claiming that the calls are not covered by the Ofcom Statement because they are "market research" not "marketing".

I think that there are two key questions here.

The first is that of whether this is a genuine market research call or not. Selling under the Guise of Market Research (or SUGGing ) is an often-used ploy by people wanting either to start a conversation with a consumer under false pretences, or to get around the "Do Not Call" regulations which mean that people registered on the Telephone Preference Service are not immune from receiving Market Research Calls.

I didn't receive one, but the media reports said that they were going to be from Nick Clegg with a 30 second message from him before launching into the touch-tone interview. That in itself is clearly promotion of the Liberal Democrats' aims. The Ofcom Statement published last week has a very interesting section defining a marketing call. In paragraph 4.5 it states:

"The concept of direct marketing that the 2003 Regulations rely on is very broad and applies not just to the advertisement of goods and services but also to the promotion of an organisation's aims and ideals. It therefore applies to political and charitable, in addition to commercial, organisations. However there may be types of unsolicited recorded messages sent by automated calling systems that cause annoyance or inconvenience but which, for whatever reason, fall outside the 2003 Regulations."

(The bits in bold are the relevant bits here).

Given also that the calls were announced in the context of the party conference and the leaders' speech, even if the calls were to pass the strict criteria for Market Research, they would appear to be part of a promotional or marketing campaign.

The second question is that of whether automated calls should be allowed in the context of market research. Personally, I have a big problem with automated outbound calling. It is so cheap to do that there could be so much of it as to make your phone almost unusable. Ofcom in its statement is also concerned that the abuse of automated calling systems will be watched carefully. I can not find anywhere any explicit guidance in the Ofcom Statement for market research and automated calling, and I think it will be interesting to see what the Information Commissioner and Ofcom rule in this case.

One thing is clear - people who use automated calling have a fantastic opportunity to seriously damage their brands. They can do that to a lot of people very quickly.

I think this story will run and run...

Expo Day 1

noreply@blogger.com (Rufus Grig) — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 21:25:00 +0000

What a day. We held our second annual user forum today at NEC in Birmingham, co-locating with the CC Expo and CCF Conference (which we are sponsoring). As with last year, it was great to spend some time with our customers, find out what they're doing with our software (they have so many ideas about things we'd never even thought of) and to catch up with old friends from the contact centre world. I also did a round of meetings with editors and journalists (5 in 2.5 hours.....) about the release of Callmedia 4.4 and its routing features.There was quite a buzz about that with lots of customers, as well as journos, keen to explore what it can do to improve a customer's lot when he calls into a call centre.

The heat around the new Ofcom regulations has not gone away. The TPS Forum had a good turnout with presentations from the TPS, the Information Commissioner's Office and Ofcom, but the understanding of exactly what Ofcom means by the new regulations and their implications regarding Answer Machine Detection are only just sinking in.

I'll be in the conference tomorrow speaking on keeping your technology ahead of the game in difficult financial times (after watching the news tonight that seems even more apposite than ever) and I do have a limited number of free passes for the session - come and find us in the Callmedia suite (no.19) on the concourse at the NEC before 11 o'clock if you're interested.

Thanks to everybody who dropped by today to say hello - hope to see more of you tomorrow.

Call Centre Expo & The Callmedia User Forum

noreply@blogger.com (Rufus Grig) — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 19:16:00 +0000

Can't believe another year has gone by already and it's the CC Expo time again. I'm sitting in the bar at the Holiday Inn with David (Groves - our Product Director) having just finished putting the slides together for the Callmedia User Forum tomorrow. If you're one of our customers then I hope to see you tomorrow. If you're not, then do come along and see us at our hospitality suite at Concourse Suites 19 and 20 at the NEC, just outside the door at the NEC.
The recent changes to the dialler regs are likely to be a big deal but I can't wait to see what the buzz is at the Conference and on the exhibition floor.
For us at Callmedia, the big excitement is the release of Callmedia version 4.4 with all kinds of customer-centric features to allow contact centres to get closer to their customers.
Hope to see you tomorrow.

Ofcom's Big Bang Day

noreply@blogger.com (Rufus Grig) — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 14:39:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Rufus Grig) — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 07:58:00 +0000

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.

Blended agents are happy agents

noreply@blogger.com (Rufus Grig) — Tue, 06 May 2008 09:53:00 +0000

A very interesting nugget was presented by Belinda Haden at the Verint Consulting Outbound Forum event last week. According to the recent Contact Babel report, the use of inbound and outbound blending can have a positive impact on staff attrition. Only 29% of contact centres using blending report a problem compared to 56% of operations where blending is not used.

This fits with a lot of what we’ve believed about the future of outbound for a while now – that more warm calling, more service-oriented calling and less cold-calling is going to change the dynamics of the outbound centre and also make it much more likely that inbound and outbound activity is going to be conducted by the same personnel. The historical personality differences which have characterised outbound (predominantly sales) and inbound (predominantly service) thus become less distinct, making outbound a much more key, much more central part of the contact centre mix. It will be interesting to see if this will herald a more integrated approach regarding location, in-house operations vs outsourcing or even a growth in customer-focussed outbound.

Either way blending – something close to my heart for years – is clearly an important part of the contact centre future. It'll be interesting to watch it grow - and also see how it develops in relation not just to inbound/ outb ound blending but also multi-channel too.

The Road to the Manifesto...

noreply@blogger.com (Rufus Grig) — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 17:03:00 +0000

The Telemarketing Manifesto I mentioned earlier in the month is quickly taking shape. The Direct Marketing Association (DMA)'s Contact Centre Council held a meeting open to all DMA members to discsuss the Best Practice in Telemarketing called for as one of the deliverables in the manifesto.

Clients, agencies, practitioners, consultants, suppliers - all were represented and a remarkably common aim of protecting consumers to protect the future of the industry prevailed.

You can see the first draft of the manifesto on the Contact Centre Council's pages on the DMA website here. Please get involved - if you are at all involved in outbound and have an interest in protecting the rights of the consumer.