Does the name Richard Herman ring any bells? He might be a customer of yours – or he might be on your list of potential customers. What you should know though is that he has just won his argument against AAC, which sells referrals to management companies, for receiving nuisance cold calls.

On his new website,'www.saynotocoldcalls.com', Richard says: “Like all of us my wife and I get phoned at home by people wanting to claim back PPI from the banks ... I was feeling oppressed ...”

Richard got so angry when the same company kept calling, even though he’d asked them to stop and was registered with the Telephone Preference Service (TPS), that he started recording the calls and took his case to the small claims court. He settled out of court and got £195 for 19-and-a-half minutes of calls, plus a £25 court fee, which, some say, may open the floodgates to further claims from homeowners plagued by similar unwanted calls.

It isn’t just PPI. Those contact centres which continue with outbound campaigns with no controls, thinking that little fines such as this are a small price to pay, are misguided. The whole contact centre industry is threatened – and there are going to be more claims until either contact centres comply with the regulators’ rules – or regulators impose more stifling legislation on everyone.

It really should be enough of a deterrent that consumers clearly get annoyed – and worse, some get frightened, by repeated nuisance calls. The banks currently have a reputation for being ‘banksters’ – what name will your business be given if you get caught – even if you can afford the fine?

It is not difficult and it doesn’t have to be expensive to comply with current legislation and still run a successful campaign. Think of it this way, if you are calling thousands of people weekly, how much would it cost if you had to pay some of them £195 each?

rostrvm software helps contact centres meet specific regulatory needs via features like:
CallGuide scripting, sophisticated redial rules, limiting the number of dialling attempts made in a campaign and voice recording control to support FSA & PCI needs.

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), provides guidance on opt-in, opt-out procedures for consumers. rostrvm supports this with easy-to-use facilities at the agent desktop to record ‘do-not-call’ requests. Additional administrator controls are provided to fine tune “Do Not Call” processes.

Also, in systems that combine rostrvm inbound support with the dialler, call centre agents can be pre-warned via CallGuide scripting that any call received from the called person may be the result of an outbound call attempt.

Rostrvm provides real-time information for easy call monitoring and also maintains historical records of activity and a log of configuration changes. This information can be used to support the dialler user’s record-keeping.

Lastly, rostrvm OutBound provides facilities to dynamically cross check your data with that of organisations such as the TPS as calling lists are loaded and/or updated during the course of a dialling campaign.

For further information on the rostrvm suite of flexible and robust applications please contact Rostrvm Solutions on 0800 6122 192 or visit www.rostrvm.com

*Ofcom’s “Revised statement of policy on the persistent misuse of an electronic communications network or service 2010” is available at http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/binaries/consultations/silentcalls/statement/silentcalls.pdf