Should the CBI lobby Ofcom to re-consult on the regulations for silent calls?

As sign posted, briefly, in the Telephone Preference Service (TPS) forum at CC Expo, the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) is assisting members who have raised concerned about the business impact that the changes to the governing regulations are having on outbound call centre operations.

As “the UK's top business lobby organisation” with the mission “to help create and sustain the conditions in which businesses in the United Kingdom can compete and prosper for the benefit of all”, the CBI has stated in its’ briefing document of July 2009 [‘Business concerns about Ofcom’s policy statement on silent and abandoned calls’] that it is seeking views from members on the impact of the Revised Statement on the use of AMD with a view to lobbying Ofcom to re-consult on the regulations.

In particular, the CBI is concerned that:

1. The change to the ‘2 Second Rule’ appears to have had a very significant impact on the effectiveness of AMD. It is argued that, requiring a message to be played within 2 seconds of a call being picked up does not allow AMD sufficient time to operate. As a result, AMD is less effective, even to the point where it may be unusable if a business wishes to be fully compliant with the regulations. The CBI document suggests that Ofcom did not understand the impact of this rule change, the affect of which appears to have banned the use of AMD software in the UK. There is a suggestion that Ofcom should allow operators to play a message within 2 seconds of ‘salutation’

2. The consultation process was unfair as it did not allow businesses to give their views on the effect of the change in the 2 second Rule. Prior to publication of the Revised Statement, Ofcom had simply proposed clarifying the 2 seconds rule so that it was clear that the requirement to answer within 2 seconds “of answering” under the 2006 Guidelines, meant within 2 seconds of salutation. However, following consultation, but without previously suggesting this was a possibility, the rule was changed to require a message to be played within 2 seconds of pick up

3. The Revised Statement had the effect of placing many users of AMD immediately in breach of the Ofcom regulations. This was as a direct result of users having to factor in AMD False Positives (where the dialler believes that a person is an answer machine and drops the call) in their abandoned call rate calculation and from the change in the 2 Second Rule. However, despite the impact, no transition period was afforded to allow businesses to assess the impact of the Revised Statement, assess what steps they needed to take to get compliant, and to provide time to implement those steps. The CBI document suggests that this was unfair and was not in accordance with good regulatory practice. Significant changes to regulations which have operation and compliance impacts should be accompanied by an appropriate transition period to allow business to get compliant.

4. There is confusion around how rules apply to AMD False Positives.

While it is important that the original intentions of the policy statement (to address concerns about the impact on consumers of silent and abandoned calls, particularly on vulnerable members of the public) be addressed, CBI members are concerned that the Revised Statement has put in place requirements that are unworkable and/or have a disproportionate affect on outbound call centre operations.

Some organisations have stated that their conversion rates and sales per hour have increased after turning off AMD. There are many reasons for this being possible: some positive, some less so. For example, agents may be increasingly and intensively ‘managed’ to achieve better results or the turning off of ‘poor’ technology may give beneficial results (some diallers ARE better than others, especially, their AMD capability). My experience is that many responsible outbound users are being penalised by productivity reductions of more than 25%. Coping with such a business change with little notice is not easy, even in the best of times. These are not the best of times.

Indeed, while DMA research claims that “AMD causes most silent calls received in the UK today” [DMA, TPS, Ofcom event, 31st March 2009], it should be remembered that not all solutions (people, process and technology) are equal. It is arguable, therefore, that responsible organisations that have invested in ‘industrial strength’ solutions should not be penalised for the irresponsible implementation of solutions by others. The responsible user now has an additional channel for the presentation of this argument. The CBI offers an enquiry service to members only who may contact it through the CBI network of international and regional offices for information on all current policy work (see www.cbi.org.uk).

The view of the DMA, for very good reasons, is that Answering Machine Detection by dialers (AMD) should be turned off, but if you can’t get the answers you want there, well why not find another national body to lobby on your behalf, even though they have no experience in the issues? Perhaps we might be told who exactly is behind this initiative from the CBI?

Let’s have a closer look at some of the facts/opinions here.

1. The two second rule. “There is a suggestion that Ofcom should allow operators to play a message within 2 seconds of ‘salutation’” By whom? This is a very bad idea and unfortunately was adopted by the FTC and the FCC in the US following some powerful lobbying there, but without either body really understanding the issues. Here’s what happens in many cases. You answer the phone and the salutation may go “Hello…hello…hello” on this basis, before the two second rule applies, meaning a holdup on the call of many seconds. This was never the intention of the FTC or the FCC and is not a position that any responsible participant in this debate would wish.

2. There is an implication here that systems which are of industrial strength, with AMD turned off, can incur productivity reductions of more than 25%. If by productivity decrease is meant loss of revenue say in Collections, then is simply an unbelievable statement. Or if it is true, what price industrial strength?

3. It may well be that some dialers do not cope that well when AMD is turned off, because their dialing algorithms aren’t much good, but even such poor dialers should not lose 25% productivity – but if that is the case, there are other solutions in the market that deliver excellent performance, with AMD turned off. After all these years of regulation, there is really no excuse for any end-user to say that their dialer isn’t up to it in this respect.

4. But the more fundamental issue is that AMD just doesn’t deliver, any which way you look at it. Ofcom was slow to pick up on the issue of false positives but was quite right to do so. No matter what the hold up period is, false positives will swamp the allowable abandoned call allowance of 3%. No amount of consultants’ briefing, dialer vendor claims or call progression simulations based on irrelevant data will change this.

5. It is time for the outbound industry to grow up and be responsible. Let’s stop trying to bully Ofcom on supposed harm to businesses. Let’s recognise that (i) Consumers actually respond to being respected and respond positively when AMD is turned off (ii) In the very unlikely event that end-users who turn off AMD suffer a big drop in productivity, then they simply have the wrong dialer and should be man enough to recognise it. Or perhaps they don’t have the right controls in place to manage agent responses to answering machines – but that’s in their hands.

6. And the message for Ofcom continues to be – have the courage of your convictions to effectively ban AMD, recognising that false positives are silent calls which are all banned under your regulations. Then we can all go back to running an effective outbound industry in the UK for the benefit of consumers and businesses alike.

It looks as though the lobbying may be a bit late. There is a major clampdown planned on silent calls with fines of up to £2 Million a possibility.

http://www.callcentrehelper.com/silent-calls-clampdown-6811.htm

The consultation document related to raising the maximum penalty to tackle the problem of silent and abandoned calls to consumers is available at the Departmentfor Business Innovation & Skills web site http://www.berr.gov.uk/consultations/page53310.html

This document provides the information needed to respond to the consultation.

I too couldn't find anything on the CBI website. I think that this is to limit approaches from non-CBI members but this does beg the question of how do people get to hear about these things? Just hope that they are looking at web sites like this one!

In a similar vein, Ofcom announced on 30/10/09 an important "Amendment to the statement entitled Revised statement of policy on the persistent misuse of an electronic communications network or service – published 10 September 2008". As reproduced below, the previous method of calculating the two second rule can be used!! Hence, reopens the debate that some diallers suppliers' AMD will be better than others and may be useable.

Following preliminary research carried out by Ofcom and representations received from industry, Ofcom has found some evidence that the timing of when an information message needs to be played in the event of an abandoned call in its present form may diminish the effectiveness of Answer Machine Detection technology.

Ofcom is therefore amending paragraph 4.16.2 of the Revised statement of policy on the persistent misuse of an electronic communications network or service published in September 2008 (the 'Statement) to allow different call centres who use different types of technology to choose from two options with regards to when an information message needs to be played in the event of an abandoned call.

As at the date of publication of the amendment, a recorded message must be played either no later than two seconds after the telephone has been picked up or no later than two seconds after an individual begins to speak (please follow the link below for the formal change to the Statement).

In addition to the change referred to above, we are currently considering other issues with the Statement that industry stakeholders have raised with Ofcom. With regards to these issues, Ofcom will be focusing its analysis on two key areas:

i.whether there are any parts of the Statement that could be expressed more clearly; and
ii.whether there are further refinements to the Statement that could secure a reduction in harm to consumers, which also considers the practical operations of dialler technology.
Given the extent of existing harm, however, our current assumption is that we would not be reviewing the more fundamental components of the existing rules, such as the 3% limit on the abandoned call rate as part of our considerations.

For the avoidance of doubt, all other requirements within the Statement remain unchanged. For example, Ofcom will continue to expect that a reasoned estimate of AMD false positives is included in the calculation of the abandoned call rate. We are also maintaining our monitoring and enforcement programme and will continue to undertake both informal and formal investigations which may ultimately lead Ofcom to issue a notification under section 128 of the Communications Act 2003 where it identifies persistent misuse of a network or service.

The contradiction between the Telegraph and Ofcom is indeed interesting.

Whilst I am engaged in this argument about more or less (having started it), it simply highlights Ofcom's failure to get to grips with the issue, which is that there should NO calls made where the caller fails to identify themselves or remains silent.

One interpretation of last year's change to allowing false positive AMD Silent Calls to count as "abandoned calls" (which are otherwise not Silent, because of the Informative Message) was that this amounted to a ban on AMD in effect, because nobody would be able to keep within the three percent. Apart from misunderstanding the calculation (the easy way out), the only way of doing so would be to slow the dialler down to below an effective rate, or increase the size of the AMD sample to around 10 seconds so as to be able to detect the tone of desperation from a live person. (The latter would work because Ofcom now ignores direct complaints and only investigates those who breach the 3% limit - so it would never find out about the breach of the 2 second rule.)

AMD as we know it is yesterday's technology. As an inevitable cause of some Silent Calls it simply cannot be used. Ofcom is only looking to keep down the number of Silent Calls, through fancy rules and massive potential penalties. It does not regard the simple practice of making Silent Calls as the "persistent misuse of a telecommunications network" that most of us recognise it to be.

It follows its light-touch market-focused consumerist philosophy; allowing the bad boys to destroy the outbound industry, through building consumer resentment.

If detecting automated answering is so important to the industry, where is (or has been) the lobbying of the telco's and equipment manufacturers to provide a clearly detectable signal? I would purchase a machine that detected it to use on all of my calls to contact centres, so I that I could play an automated message requesting a call back when someone was available, whenever I was answered by a machine on the number I was given to speak to a person.

I am campaigning for parliament to refuse Ofcom's request for an increase to the maximum penalty unless it undertakes to comply with the rules it was given when the previous increase was granted - "We expect you to use your powers to eradicate the nuisance of Silent Calls". Permitting use of AMD is a clear breach of that duty.

Lots more on my Silent Calls blog

The issue of efficiency is obviously of great concern to the industry and Ofcom seems to share a delight in detail and issues of technology and complex regulation.

There is however an underlying issue that must not be forgotten.

IS THE INDUSTRY CONTENT TO HANG UP IN SILENCE WHEN PEOPLE ANSWER CALLS?

This discussion is largely predicated on the assumption that the answer is "Yes". Ofcom is clearly content to tolerate such behaviour. Is anybody prepared to take a stand by saying that this behaviour is simply unacceptable, without equivocation?

The BIS department has not yet responded to the consultation on the increased penalty for Ofcom, which means that the necessary SI to put this into effect will be unlikely to come before the present parliament. We may therefore wonder how a possible new government will deal with the issue. I retain my view that Ofcom should not be granted any increase to the penalty until it has indicated that it will start to use its powers properly - "to eradicate the nuisance of Silent Calls", as demanded by this parliament when granting the previous increase.