Outbound Slapdown

While speed to market is generally a good thing, the current market environment has caused some loss of momentum in the industry, particularly in the form of privacy protection legislation. “The outbound calling and outbound voice-messaging industry has been impacted by a string of regulations in recent years–FCC, FTC, FDCPA, FCRA, GLBA,” and on and on, observes Andy Gilbert, VP of Operations at SoundBite Communications (www.soundbite.com), which produces automated voice-messaging solutions for some 240 customers worldwide.

According to Lindsay Kintner of Tadiran Telecom (www.tadiranamerica.com), “Companies that were contemplating an outbound call center are having second thoughts. They are [seeing] if gains on implementing outbound-call business are worth the overhead and maintenance required to stay within U.S. regulations.” Kintner is the Senior Director of Product Marketing for Composit, Tadiran’s IP-based contact center management solution. Despite the burden of legislation, he feels that there are a number of basic housekeeping steps that can be taken to ensure compliance. “These include monthly updates of published do-not-call (DNC) lists, CTI implementation of telephone systems so manually dialed numbers are compared against those DNC lists, business processes to update DNC lists manually upon customer requests, and capturing call records to repudiate DNC changes.”

Generally, most industry participants see considerable upside in how the DNC registry is transforming the industry. “There is no question that the National DNC Registry has impactedthe outbound call business; however, the program’s influence on consumers may not be entirely negative,” says Oscar Alban, Principal Market Global Consultant with call-recording technologysolutions firm Witness Systems (www.witness.com). “Early statistics show that even though the pool of prospective outbound recipients has declined, the per-customer sales average has increased. Some companies have started using outboundcalling as part of their proactive customer-service initiative to ‘touch’ their high-value customers more often. And since these are existing customers, the Registry rules don’t apply.”

Jon Silverman, CTO of Calabrio Software, (www.calabrio.com), acknowledges that the “do-not-call” era has caused the outbound industry some pain and suffering, but it is possible towork through that pain. “‘Do-not-call’ lists are driven by privacy desires, [and are] possible to legislate around.” In other words, technology is not going to be the primary lever. That said, thereare applications emerging that do help outbound operators complete calls under regulation-constrained environments. “IP can assist the outbound operator in the implementation of applicationslike predictive dialing,” says Atwood. “An agent has less than 2.5 seconds to get to the line; when IP is implemented properly, the quality of the signal allows for sufficient clarity to allow outboundsystems to distinguish between voice mail and a real person.”

Some silver lining-ists even feel current restrictions in the outbound space may inadvertently bring out a whole new level in both inbound and outbound customer service fromcall center operators and their technology developers. “While it may appear that regulations restrict or pose a bottleneck to outbound calling and outbound voice-messaging providers, in reality it benefits [the industry],” says SoundBite’s Gilbert. “These regulations have helped the industry evolve from sending intrusive telemarketing calls at dinnertime toensuring that voice messaging campaigns are customer friendly, welcome, and provide incremental value to enhance the customer-service experience…. Most consumers know to callan 800 number to seek customer service; however, more and more customers are demanding fast, friendly, and real-time customer service. They are frustrated with complicated IVR trees and the inability to reach a live human in a timely manner.These customers want real-time information about pastdue payments, approaching credit limits, local power outages, notifications that a technician is arriving in the next 30 minutes, and even survey options following a service call. [This] helps customers to better manage their time and prepare for unexpected events.”

And while there are not as many regulatory challenges that impact the inbound contact center operation, there are changes in the landscape that are driving an even deeper technologyimperative for them, in the form of acquiring enabling tools to fine-tune their customer service expectations and overall call experience. Silverman notes that customers’ (negative) perceptionsof an offshore contact center “may impact the perception of the service provided by an enterprise [that uses an offshore center]…. To facilitate high quality from an offshore agentstaff, an enterprise needs tools that allow supervisors within the country of the enterprise’s customers to monitor and manage the agents in real time. Quality-management programs thatwork in a distributed VoIP environment are crucial to ensuring that agents provide high-quality customer service.”