Will Changes to CLI Rules Affect You?

Martyn King looks at how your contact centre could be affected by proposals from Ofcom and the ICO.

The number of nuisance calls being reported to Ofcom and the Information Commissioners Office (ICO) is continuing to rise. In 2014/15 the number of cases was up 11% over the previous year. To combat this, a number of initiatives have been set up, including the lowering of the legal threshold for taking action against breaches of the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations (PECR). To maintain this momentum, the ICO and Ofcom proposed a join action plan to combat nuisance calls.

In the latest move, Baroness Neville-Rolfe aims to rectify the issue of withheld CLIs on marketing calls. The major part of this plan is to amend the PECR. The consultation states that the PECR “currently confers a right of any person, whether an individual or a company, to withhold their CLI when making a call.” The concern is that this right is allowing rogue direct marketers to abuse the system and make nuisance calls with little fear of consequences.

How it could affect your company

The report identifies that, of the estimated 2,000 direct marketing companies, around half already show full CLI information on their calls. For the other half, the change would be easy to implement in most cases, with companies needing only to update equipment or contact their telephone provider.

The financial effect on the companies who are required to change should be minimal as well. The cost of moving to fully disclosed CLIs would likely only be for the wage of the person updating the systems, and in most cases, this could be done in a very short space of time. For those who require updated systems or hardware, it would be higher. The effect on revenue should be low as well; the DMA believes that few legitimate companies would lose money due to the change.

Both live and automated calls will be affected by any changes as long as they are involved with direct marketing. Other call types will still retain the right to keep their number masked when contacting members of the public. So, for example, a local health clinic could have a hidden CLI when calling patients about test results, but if they were to make any marketing calls then the CLI would have to be visible.

Potential fines for companies that break the rules

It has been suggested that the ICO is the single point of contact for complaints for breaches of the PECR. They will then work with Ofcom if the situation requires it. This partnership has been responsible for around £2,412,000 in fines since January 2012, with around £895,000 of that occurring since April of 2015.

The consultation ran for 6 weeks from 12 January 2016 to 23 February 2016. The aim is to amend the PECR directly to require the CLI on marketing calls. Failure to do so could be classed as a breach of the PECR and trigger an investigation by the ICO or Ofcom, which could lead to a fine of up to £500,000.

With thanks to Martyn King at Nexbridge