Member Article

Important Telephone Calling Regulations Announcement for Business: “How to Stay Legal”

Due to the rise in the number of complaints made by people regarding nuisance telemarketing calls, the government have stepped up measures and brought in more resources by involving Trading Standards departments across the country to police every business that carries out any kind of telemarketing as part of its organisation.

Whilst this is good news for those of the general public who were constantly being hounded by these unwanted cold callers, it’s a worrying time for some small businesses who could now be landed with huge fines if mistakes are made when calling up potential new customers.

For some businesses telemarketing is a valuable sales tool, with many relying on their ability to convert telephone numbers and contact information into potential customers for their products and services.

For these companies it’s not an option to simply stop making these calls, rather it’s about ensuring that the calls they do make, stay within the new regulations and it’s this important factor that we would like to draw your attention to.

So how do you stay legal and avoid getting fined?

The most important thing for every business to do is to find out exactly what the law is andstick to it. There is no grey area in this new legislation and it’s made perfectly clear to all business, that if you breach regulations, you will be fined. Control the calls your staff make – this ensures they’re not repeat calling customers and making a nuisance of themselves. Businesses should ensure they are using reliable technology that is appropriate for the task. There are many flavours of CRM and dialler systems on the market today but as with all technology not everything does exactly what it promises. Unless you can be certain that your supplier is selling compliant software, don’t use it. Use call recording wherever possible not only is it a good thing for any business to have in order to monitor the customer service of your employees, it also means you can prove when and how often you called someone and even what was said to a customer should you need to prove yourself following any complaints. If you don’t use call recording, then you should at least be using some form of call logging giving you the ability to see what calls for certain where made by your organisation and at what times to which specific numbers. This can prove most useful if you find yourself falsely accused and fighting to defend your position.

If you would like any additional information on this subject including how much these systems might cost to implement then please don’t hesitate to give us a call us on 0800 50 533 50

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ian Hilton .