Remove Outbound, Outsourced and International Call Centres

People’s quiet times are some of the most valuable that one wishes to cherish, we lead such busy lives these days and the last thing we want are people annoying us in our own homes on our days or evenings off when we are relaxing or watching the TV.

Basic Rule to adhere to: Treat others as you would like to be treated yourself.

1. Data Protection:  Why on earth would you participate and give personal information to often withheld / international calls to a number you cannot trace?

The person on the other end of the phone will always sound nice because they want something from you, never give personal information to someone unless you know them and even these days people do hack into banks phone calls to access personal data. Just be careful with your personal details no matter how good the offer or person at the other end of the phone sounds.

2. Telephone Preference Service: I am not aware of anyone monitoring the effectiveness of this service in the UK but feel this needs to be done and more so perhaps there needs to be an International Telephone Preference Service so Great Britain can be linked to the rest of the world to internationally stop those who try to exploit non-home country residents.

3. Trace Calls: All mobile and landline providers should provide a service to its customers and give a better online account.

This would be a free online account so if you receive an international call on 17th May at 4pm and it states international you would be able to put the exact date and time and the company would trace the caller and any subsidiaries of that company with your consent would be banned from calling your house by adding it to the Telephone Preference Service on your account.

If you receive lots of withheld and international calls if you are one of say 100 customers then the phone company on your behalf would take legal action in order to save their customers from being harassed.

Perhaps it should be these callers would not withhold their numbers and it is visible on every call.

4.  False Claims: One thing that really bugs me is that companies such as 02 outsource their call centres to other providers so when they make outbound calls they state “We are calling on behalf of” not “We are 02″. Our details should not be outsourced to these companies without our permission.

Anyone who is calling on behalf of someone should be banned because there is no verification as to whether that is true, it goes back to old fashioned customer service go to the person face to face, reputable high street dealer then you cannot go wrong if they have a building or landline its hard to get away with false calls for people pretending they are working for someone when they may be a market research company or perhaps someone who wants to set up a business getting vital details from people’s naivety.

5. Late Night Calls: Especially for the elderly no calls should be made by charities or any business making outbound after 8pm at night or before 9am in the morning. Anyone breaching this would be subject to personal and company fines. Perhaps that is not fair to those working on shifts however we have to draw the line somewhere.

6. Charities: Charities ring people and the very nature of charities means there is a good cause behind what they are talking about and if people if say no we are made to feel guilty about doing so. It is okay to say no without guilt trips being put or return phone calls pretending they have never called before.

7. No means No:  If a customer says they do not want what you are offering please do not give them attitude, annoy them or use pressure / guilt tack ticks just accept no and do not call them for at least 6 months, they will either forget you called or that person may have moved out, if they say don’t call again then it is simple amend the customers records and don’t.

8. Recruitment Sector: This sector is well known for making outbound calls, adverts state strictly no agencies so if agencies call companies and are not welcome there needs to be easier and stricter penalties in force to reduce anyone calling and the agency should have good database system to enable people to stop repeat calls as this sector has a high turnover of staff.