Birmingham 29 January 2008 – “The UK Contact Centre Operational Review (5th edition)”, a recent major study of over 200 contact centres, carried out by ContactBabel, has found that legislation curtailing outbound telemarketing has as yet made little impression on the overall volume of outbound calls being made.

Findings within the ‘Outbound and Call Blending’ chapter of the report, sponsored by Infinity CCS, show that proactive customer service - such as informing of delays and arranging deliveries - accounts for one-third of all outbound activity. Sales calls to existing customers make up 20% of outbound calls, with cold calling still accounting for 14% of activity.

“Legislation against outbound calling is cutting more deeply in the US, probably because the UK has a stronger service ethic. Only 4% of survey respondents said that they had reduced their outbound activity a great deal, with a further 17% saying that it had reduced slightly since legislation. These figures are less than half of their US counterparts,” said Carl Adkins, CEO, Infinity CCS.

The report’s author, respected call centre analyst Steve Morrell, said: “The relatively low impact of legislation on outbound activity can be attributed in large part to the considerable amount of service and sales related calls made to the existing customer base, which generally do not fall under legislation against outbound calling.“

Proactive outbound calling, especially for reasons of customer service, is a powerful and effective branding technique, as well as having the added benefit of avoiding unnecessary calls. For example, a business that calls its customers to let them know the time of a delivery is providing a useful service to its customers, reducing inbound calls on the same subject, and saving the wasted cost of making deliveries to addresses when no-one is in.”