However, if you work in contact centres and you were around from 2017 to 2018 when the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the last Data Protection Act went live, you may be less excited about the prospect of more change!

Following the previous Bill, millions of working days were spent trying to figure out what it all meant in practical terms; changing processes and procedures; ditching databases; confusing consumers with millions of ‘would you still like to hear from us’? emails; and preparing for a tsunami of data rights request contacts which never really happened.

Well, the good news is that the recently proposed Bill looks a lot more like a sensible tidying up of the rules (and the slightly vague promise of less data protection bureaucracy and admin), rather than a radical overhaul. The fundamentals will remain the same. The post-Brexit UK version of the GDPR will remain in place, alongside the 2018 Data Protection Act. For a business this is doubly reassuring, not only does it suggest fewer revisions and re-work to existing policies and processes, but it also means that it’s less likely that the UK’s rules will deviate so far from the EU’s that we lose our prized ‘adequacy’ status, which allows UK firms to process and transfer personal data with the EU with little friction.

There are many areas covered by the proposed Bill, but for most of us the key elements are:

If you would like to discuss these forthcoming changes and review your current approach to ensuring data protection and privacy, please drop us a line.

Source information: Data Reform Bill

Just before revealing that the new domestic energy bill price cap in October would rise by another £800, on top of a near £700 increase in April, Ofgem said that it was ‘minded to’ change the frequency of the price cap setting. From October the price cap will be set quarterly, partly in the hope that when energy prices do eventually start to go down consumers will be able to benefit more quickly.

So, what does this mean for energy providers, which are already struggling with the consumer impacts of a massively challenged – and arguably dysfunctional – market and high contact volumes?

The cost centre

If you are responsible for an energy supplier’s contact centre you can forget about engaging in the old profit centre versus cost centre discussion. Your operation is now firmly in the cost centre category. The market is effectively dead, with little or no customer migration between suppliers and E.ON warning that 40% of its customers will be experiencing fuel poverty by the autumn.

The support centre

That level of financial exposure amongst consumers means that the high degree of vulnerability awareness that Ofgem has long required will only increase still further. Energy firms’ agents are right in the front-line of the cost-of-living crisis. An increasing proportion of contacts will be looking for support and enquiring about the suppliers’ own schemes as well as the growing range of government support measures. Keeping the front-line team resilient, protected and engaged is a massive challenge for contact centre leaders to add into the mix.

The Insight Centre

But – as we all know – there is one area in which the contact centre excels and that’s acting as the organisation’s ‘eyes and ears’, benefitting from thousands of interactions with customers every day. That insight might now be redundant from a customer acquisition and revenue generation perspective, but it’s more vital than ever when it comes to understanding the customer experience and reducing costs.

In most organisations, one of the biggest drivers of customer contact (and confusion) is the communications the organisation itself generates. With the price cap being adjusted every 3 months then it is almost inevitable that contacts will rise. And this is where the contact centre can really help.

A quarterly price cap will inevitably just put more strain on the contact centre and its staff, but if the rest of the organisation can be engaged it might just help spur some process and experience improvements along the way.

If you are facing these sorts of challenges, in the energy sector or elsewhere, and would like to talk them through, why not get in touch.

That’s a familiar piece of advice which is credited to John T Chambers, the former boss of Cisco. It’s a comforting mantra for your boss to repeat; it combines displaying respect for staff with a degree of humility.

In the old days, most leaders in the ‘customer world’ could not only say they would be ‘willing’ to do what they asked of their contact centre employees, they could do it too. Technically they might have been a bit slow, but when it came to understanding, empathy and the resolution of customer problems or commercial opportunities they would be confident of their ability to effectively engage with consumers.

That was then. What about now?

Last week a client shared with me some analysis they had done which showed that their frontline advisors were having to use 20 different systems, applications and third-party portals. 20.[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text css=”.vc_custom_1659441626817{padding-bottom: 30px !important;}”]Just think about that for a moment. I’ll be honest, I’m not the world’s greatest multitasker – but even if I was, 20 applications would be about four times the number I’d be confident in using. So, in my client’s contact centre I know I couldn’t do an advisor’s job and if I was the boss I wouldn’t pretend that I’d be willing to either!

It’s a truism that contact centre agents’ jobs have steadily become more difficult over the years. The number of contact channels available and the range of activities undertaken have steadily increased. At the same time the emotional state of customers has often become more heightened either due to their frustration at failing to successfully self-serve or external environmental factors. We all know that the ‘cognitive load’ frontline staff work under seems to have steadily grown and the technology and processes they work with just make matters worse.

So, what can we do about it?

For one, we can start to acknowledge that our people are increasingly doing technically and emotionally challenging jobs that most of us couldn’t. Recognising this fact won’t change anyone’s reality, but it does show a degree of genuine understanding and empathy.

Secondly, we can ensure that the needs of the frontline are front and centre every time new tech, propositions and channels are being planned. There’s a direct line between employee experience and customer experience, so we need to start to make reinforcing that relationship – and helping our frontline people – a priority.

The primary reason for these firms being fined was that they were calling prospects who they didn’t have a prior relationship with, whose numbers were registered with the Telephone Preference Service (TPS). This, as most of us should well know, is illegal. As covered in our previous articles – ICO flurry of fines and BTB sales and marketing ops compliance.

However, when the ICO levies a whole series of fines on firms in the same sector, with similar sales and marketing models, it’s evidence of other underlying concerns. Although the ICO’s Enforcement Notices only refer to 67 consumer complaints, these kinds of collective enforcement actions are invariably evidence of alarm bells ringing at the ICI’s Wilmslow offices about widespread misbehaviour. Here, the ICO has highlighted these firms’ targeting of vulnerable consumers, in this case the elderly.

Targeting the vulnerable elderly

Undoubtedly, judging by the evidence presented by the ICO, this is exactly what these businesses did. While it’s arguably unfair to judge a firm’s sales and marketing practises based on relatively little information, I think we can be confident that these firms were all at the malicious end of the ‘Ignorant vs Complicit’ spectrum of compliance awareness. They seem to have known exactly what they were doing, which is to deliberately target the vulnerable; selling on the basis of worry and fear, not value and consumer benefit, to those least well equipped to make informed decisions.

Scammers stick together

In an interesting example of geographical clustering, 4 out of 5 of the firms were located in East Sussex on the South coast, presumably showing connections to the biggest name in appliance warranty insurance, Domestic & General in Brighton (about which there is no evidence of the ICO having concerns, I hasten to add). So, even scammers like to stick together!

The vast majority of firms don’t set out to exploit or deceive, but

  1. Being a legitimate, respectable firm – even a blue-chip brand – is no guarantee you won’t be snared by the ICO, as the Royal Mail, American Express and Saga, which have all recently been hit by enforcement actions and fines, can attest
  2. Awareness of the prevalence and importance of vulnerabilities has grown. An understanding of vulnerability had increased before Covid 19, but the pandemic has accelerated it massively. Firms need to be able to both recognise and adapt to prospects and customers who are exhibiting signs of vulnerability

So, what can we learn from this raft of ICO fines? Does the rise of vulnerability awareness just mean that we can no longer sell to older people?

We sought the opinions of some members of the wider Contact Centre Panel network.

Are older consumers too ‘risky’ to market to?

Senior Response is a long-established outsourced contact centre “dedicated to communicating with the older consumer market”. So, what conclusions does Managing Director Michael King draw from the ICO’s slew of fines? Can firms still confidently market and sell to Mature consumers?

“We find that firms which utilise direct mail or online activity prior to commencing telemarketing activity not only have better results but give the customer and prospect the opportunity to know a little bit more about the business and ultimately be more receptive to being contacted.

We work very closely with our clients to ensure that we have a shared Vulnerable Customer policy, which outlines the process if we believe we have a vulnerable customer and what steps to take.

The other point I would stress is that firms should be aware that the adult children or grandchildren of many mature consumers are often part of the decision-making process and therefore your customer journey from marketing to sales, should incorporate this. We often arrange call-backs with our client’s customers to speak with the family member where permission is granted by the customer and requested by the family member. We all want to ensure our parents and elderly relatives are not being taken advantage of by the very things that the ICO have acted on.  It is our view that firms who are proactive in the examples I have mentioned, are more successful in marketing to this rapidly growing market.”

What really is vulnerability?

“Circumstances impact people in different ways – what makes one person vulnerable may affect another quite differently. Age, mental and physical health and financial pressures are all subjective. We believe it is important to communicate with people in the most tailored way possible according to their circumstances and use the tools available to determine what is appropriate.” Helen Lord, CEO, Vulnerability Registration Service

You can find out more about the Vulnerability Registration Service by clicking here

How can technology help?

Can the new technologies of machine learning and artificial intelligence play a part in helping firms identify vulnerable prospects and customers – and serve them better, too?

Keith Shanks of Vorth Technology Solutions helps make contact centres work more effectively through the application of AI (artificial intelligence) tools. Can they support centres involved in sales and marketing, especially when they are targeting groups which may contain vulnerable consumers?

“Advances in AI and Machine Learning (ML) now mean that all contact centres are able to highlight potentially vulnerable customers. As has already been highlighted, vulnerability comes in many different forms and it is the responsibility of companies to understand these and act appropriately.

The truth is there is insufficient attention given to vulnerability and if you consider the current economic climate, responsible companies should be paying more attention to the welfare of their customers and the right technology will have a huge impact on this.

We expect a mini-revolution in this field over the next few years as regulators also start using technologies to review and monitor call centre services.”

Financial services: What’s the FCA’s perspective?

Elanev provides dynamic scoring services to contact centres including propensity and best time for contact, propensity for purchase and propensity for financial resilience / vulnerability with no GDPR implication.  Elanev’s John Willoughby gives his practical guidance for the future of such financial product sales and marketing, in light of proposed regulatory changes:

“Financial product sales will be bound by the FCA’s proposed Consumer Duty requiring marketing firms to “deliver good outcomes for retail clients”. The FCA expects all reasonable steps to be taken to avoid causing foreseeable harm to customers. Harm being primarily financial, but may also include mental health effects.

The FCA is requiring firms to have a better understanding of their customers calling out the need to understand customer propensity for vulnerability and to harm. The FCA expects firms to predict behaviour and monitor outcomes recognising the need for data to support this. Common data sources include:

 To properly identify, quantify and assess vulnerability a combination of data sources may be needed. The specific combination depending on the depth of customer insight that the organisation has and the level of customer consent granted.”

So where does this leave us?

Helen Lord of the Vulnerability Registration Service makes clear that vulnerability isn’t simple or clear cut. The scammers recently fined by the ICO deliberately targeted older people, but not all older people are vulnerable. So, we all need to be more vulnerability aware and unavoidably some customer and prospect groups are likely to contain a higher proportion of people with vulnerabilities. Senior Response is dedicated to engaging and communicating with older people, but as Michael King explains, they do so in a sophisticated way. Senior Response and its clients make use of multiple contact channels and embrace more varied and flexible customer journeys. This might point the way for other sales organisations – and not just for those targeting the ‘grey market’.

A growing role for technology and the insights it can provide seems to be unavoidable and desirable. Vorth Technology Solutions’ Keith Shanks has explained how technologies like his can help identify the ‘growing’ number of vulnerable consumers. John Willoughby from Elanev shows that in the regulated financial services sector, especially, the smarter use of data across a combination of sources is now essential.

The ICO’s fines of exploitative scam marketers doesn’t mean that older consumers are now ‘off limits’ for responsible, ethical firms. But the fines do help highlight the growing importance of being able to recognise and respond to consumer vulnerabilities; not just as an ‘add on’ but in a way that is embedded into processes and customer journeys.

If you require guidance on any of the areas discussed in this article, please contact us.

At the same time, Covid especially has driven significant growth in the demand for multilingual customer service as more and more firms have exploited to shift online to enter new overseas markets.

This is a trend which Contact Centre Panel has been acutely aware of over the past two years, both in the UK and globally. So, if you need to identify and recruit staff who can support customers in languages other than English what are the options available to you?

1. Employ people who are already here

Most multilingual contact centres are supporting European languages, so native language speakers originally from the EU are the most obvious candidates. EU residents who were in the UK by 2021 should have achieved Settled Status so can be employed just like any other resident. However, as nearly all contact centres are reporting massive recruitment and retention challenges, that’s far from easy.

2. Recruit new staff from the EU

This may help, but remember that to do so you will almost certainly have to take advantage of the Skilled Worker Visa Scheme which entails a lot of administration, being approved as an employer by the Home Office and meeting the minimum salary level of £25,600.

3. Recruit Remote Workers in the Country

With the widespread adoption of contact centre homeworking, employing foreign-language speakers to work for you remotely in their own country is now entirely technically feasible. However, the costs and complexity of doing so – especially if you don’t currently employ any staff outside of the EU – can be considerable.

4. Outsource

Outsourcing contact centre customer service isn’t always the right solution for every organisation. But as many of our clients have found, done the right way outsourcing can be a sustainable, affordable solution to the multilingual resourcing challenge.

Please get in touch if you would like to discuss any of these options.

Whether you provide outsourced services from overseas or are a client planning to use an outsourcer with delivery locations outside of your home market, you will be used to planning and managing lots of tasks. For any new outsourcing activity or contract you will have a long list of activities and factors that you need to scope and understand.

Naturally, this will encompass numerous areas under the heading of People, Process and Technology. But for some “getting your head around the costs and risks of foreign exchange management” will need to be added to the list for the first time.

Traditionally, outsourced contact centre providers and business process outsourcing (BPO) firms would handle the foreign exchange currency risk of delivering services from abroad themselves. When the first wave of UK offshore outsourcing started, with the use of India 15 to 20 years ago, this was invariably the case. As time has gone on, though, BPO companies have come to realise that being responsible for delivering ‘flat’ UK prices in the face of variable exchange rates is fraught with risks and potentially an unattractive option. This is even more the case as commonly used locations have expanded to include the Philippines, South Africa and a growing number of central and Eastern European locations outside of the Euro zone.

The range of foreign exchange management approaches agreed between BPOs and their onshore clients is very varied. What they all have in common is both client and provider facing the challenge of who should carry the currency risk, to what extent and for how long.

Options may include:

  1. The client is billed simple, ‘flat’ pricing in its local currency (Sterling, say) for the duration of a contract
  2. Periodic – usually annual – reviews of pricing, partly or wholly adjusting according to the change in FX rates
  3. Every monthly invoice being adjusted to your local ‘paying’ currency – or, more unusually, clients agreeing to pay invoices in the delivery location currency
  4. And every variation in between

You might imagine that the larger global BPOs, with both their financial scale and range of operational locations to help defray FX risks, would be more willing to offer clients simple, local currency pricing. However, broadly speaking the opposite is the case and the larger the BPO the more likely they are to look to pass more variable pricing onto their clients. This is probably a function of both:

For some BPOs, as they either enter new territories directly or in partnership with local firms, managing foreign exchange (FX) risks is a new challenge. Both they and their clients will need to take a view on:

  1.  The risks of their particular situation (the currency involved and its anticipated volatility, the current and future value of the contract and its duration)
  2. The costs of mitigating those risks (e.g. through currency ‘hedging’) as opposed to the potential impact of doing nothing

And finally, it’s worth remembering that currencies can rise as well as fall. There can be a significant upside if the value of a delivery currency falls and thus becomes far cheaper in real world terms for both onshore clients or the BPO business entity in the client’s location.

Still, you might feel that playing at being a Forex trader, with only one deal to your name, may be a stretch too far on top of the day job…

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) ‘never said’ that charities were exempt from all or most of the data privacy and protection rules that govern sales and marketing, however many people in the charity sector thought they had an exemption. Plus there were never any enforcement cases or fines of charities, so there was no evidence that the ICO did care about charities’ rule-breaking. 

Then, from 2015 and 2016, in the wake of the death of Bristol poppy seller, Olive Cook, charities’ fundraising techniques came under a lot of scrutiny and criticism. Inevitably, the ICO became involved and its investigations culminated in fining the following big-name charities in 2017 – see more. 

The International Fund for Animal Welfare, Cancer Support UK, Cancer Research UK, Guide Dogs for the Blind, Macmillan, the British Legion, NSPCC, Great Ormond Street, WWF, Battersea Dogs & Cats Home and Oxfam. 

This was a ‘shot across the bows’ of the whole charity sector, specifically highlighting the charities’ undeclared, hidden sharing of supporters’ data and income profiling (wealth screening). The total amount of the fines levied – £138,000 – wasn’t that great, but the reputational damage of what should be some of the most trusted organisations in the country was considerable. And the knock-on impact on charities’ fundraising business models contributed to millions of lost revenue for their causes.  

Incidentally, the ICO’s focus on charities’ marketing practises has diminished, but it’s not gone away as evidenced by this recent fine of a charity sending SMS appeals without consent. 

So what? 

That was and is a very challenging experience for charities, but most of us don’t work in the third sector. So, why the brief history lesson? Because commercial B2B sales and marketing may be about to go through a similar experience.

B2B’s wake up call 

Again, the ICO has ‘definitely’ never said that B2B sales and marketing isn’t covered by the data protection rules, though some aspects of the regulations are less stringent for business communications. However, a lot of B2B players certainly act like they’re excluded from the compliance considerations of their informed and professional B2C peers.  

Why? Well, partly because the ICO never fines organisations for B2B marketing failings. Or at least not until now. 

We all aspire to do the best for our prospects and customers, treat them with respect and in accordance with the law. But, inevitably, when these questions seem to be rather nuanced and not simply black and white, rational organisations will apply a risk assessment to guide their degree and prioritisation of compliance with regulations. So, if you operate B2B and the regulator seems to ignore your sector and business area then it’s reasonable to think that the level of regulatory risk you are exposed to is a lot less than in B2C.

All change 

A fine imposed by the ICO in late December suggests that things have changed. This case, described here, not only created considerable disruption to the operations of Northern Gas & Power, a business energy brokerage company based in Gateshead, it’s resulted in negative publicity, reputational damage and a £75,000 fine.

Northern Gas & Power largely sells its brokerage service to businesses through outbound calling to businesses from its two contact centres in Gateshead and Leeds. Northern operates – or operated – at scale, with over 4 million calls attempts made in the year from May. However, irrespective of volume there are a couple of clear lessons we can all draw from Northern Gas & Power’s experience.

  1. Northern failed to screen its calling data against the Telephone Preference Service (TPS) or the TPS’s little-known business number equivalent to the Corporate Telephone Preference Service (CTPS). As you will probably know, the TPS is the national ‘opt out’ register which needs to be referenced before undertaking any ‘cold’ or unconsented sales and marketing calling. Most B2C organisations are very aware of the TPS, B2B firms often less so – and the CTPS is largely forgotten by nearly everybody.

That will need to change.

  1. When the GDPR arrived here (as the 2018 Data Protection Act in the UK) there was a lot of talk about the fuzzy lines between individuals and companies. You can email hello@contactcentrepanel.com and that’s a business address, but sullivan@contactcentrepanel.com is my personal data. Similarly, the Contact Centre Panel office number 0114 2096120 isn’t anyone’s personal data (though it could be registered with the CTPS and thus off-limits), but my mobile number is. And for many companies, personal email and mobile will be the only way of making contact.

All these aspects need to be thought through, understood and managed.

  1. Northern purchased prospect data, but did not undertake appropriate due diligence of its suppliers to ensure they were compliant and reputable. It failed to ensure robust, defensible contracts were in place with its suppliers and didn’t test or audit the data supplied.

Buying third party data is now one of the most potentially fraught and risky activities an organisation can undertake and needs to be handled with deliberation and care. 

  1. As the ICO’s enforcement notice makes clear, Northern’s operational management, internal controls and processes were poor. Added to which its contact management systems – and Northern’s team’s ability to manage them – was very deficient, directly leading to poor data management and ensuring suppression requests were actioned.

Northern Gas & Power has experienced considerable growth and apparent success, but without sound operational, data and technology underpinnings, continued success is increasingly difficult to sustain 

Whether you exclusively market to businesses or do so in combination with targeting consumers, the ICO’s latest move strongly suggests that B2B has lost any real or imagined status as a data protection compliance exception.

Contact Centre Panel boasts many years of collective experience in B2C and B2B customer targeting, acquisition and service, supplemented by a deep but pragmatic understanding of how to design and operate business models compliantly. Contact Centre Panel can offer clients

Lesson 3 – Who’s calling?

About a quarter of all ICO fines – and half of the phone-based enforcement cases – involve the incorrect use of Caller Line Identification (CLI) numbers. As you probably know, there are the numbers presented on the customer’s phone when you call them.

Again, it’s Ofcom that sets the rules and regulations about the use of CLIs, but it’s the ICO who are pushing fines and enforcement. Misusing CLIs is a red flag to the regulator.

Simply put, CLIs should clearly identify the recipient of the call, be dialable, consistent and not confuse or mislead the consumer. In addition, if the customer rings the CLI number back you need to be able to inform the customer who you are and why you were ringing them.

That probably sounds very straightforward and you may be very confident about your use of CLIs. But that might not always be the case even when you feel you are being reasonable and fair:

Sadly, the answers to these questions aren’t always clear, but you need to work out your approach and justification if you want to avoid damaging legal action and fines. Need a hand? Let us know.

And for those of us in the world of contact centres and customer experience services, offshore locations are frequently part of the service infrastructure – in which South Africa is of growing importance. Contact Centre Panel’s involvement with clients and partners, as well as anecdotal feedback, suggests that despite Covid-19 the South African contact centre sector’s rate of growth has increased still further than the annual 34% recorded in 2019.

The reasons for the growing popularity of South Africa, in particular, as a location for offshore contact centre services (both outsourced and in-house or ‘captive’) are well-established:

For a combination of reasons – encompassing cultural and management style factors, client preferences and the continued low penetration of domestic broadband – South African and other offshore centres have mostly been keen to push a return to the office-based delivery model, or certainly a hybrid approach which is centred on agents mainly working from the contact centre.

So, how will these offshore operations respond to an almost certain growth in Covid restrictions and lockdown measures? And just as importantly, what 5 steps should you take to minimise risk, optimise customer outcomes and preserve good working relationships with offshore contact centre suppliers or colleagues?

  1. Have you already updated the Business Continuity contract schedules or Standard Operating Procedures in the light of your Covid experiences? If so, that’s great so now ensure they’re followed and amended and updated as required; there’s no test of a plan like reality! Plus if you haven’t done start developing a shared approach as you work through it with the contact centre operation over the next few days and weeks.
  2. Make sure that the standard reporting and management information includes data on the split of office and home-based agents. If there are going to be behavioural and performance variations based on location then you need to be able to identify them quickly and reliably.
  3. Data and payments security is almost inevitably made more challenging when homeworking. The quasi-official degree of tolerance displayed by regulators and banks in 2020 almost certainly won’t apply today. Covid is now ‘Business As Usual’, so you need to be confident that security is robust.
  4. If you need to shift your operating model, either due to reduced overall capacity in a particular offshore location or a limit in the channels which can be serviced, then you need to very carefully consider how you inform customers. The public’s tolerance for “please bear with us” Covid messaging ran out long ago. You will need to work smartly with your proposition and digital colleagues to ensure that customer experience disruption is minimised.
  5. Finally, you have a moral and practical duty to do all you can to support your frontline teams overseas. In countries that typically have full vaccination rates of just 24% well below those in Europe and North America (32% in India, 27% in the Philippines and 24% in South Africa),  the emergence of this new Covid strain will be particularly unsettling, especially if allied to a disruptive shift to working from a less than ideal home environment. Make sure you communicate directly and ensure that the contact centre management structures are adjusted to do all they can to support agents through challenging times

At Contact Centre Panel, we have complete visibility of the contact centre outsourcing market. Our network of over 140+ outsourcers includes operators from South African, India, the Philippines and other emerging and more niche offshore locations, this means we are ideally placed to provide expert assistance on partner selection and management. So, whether you need help or guidance on the points above or any other aspect of contact centre management, technology and outsourcing just get in touch.

Even though none of these fines (which you can read about here) have had quite the amount of publicity you might think they deserve, they have all resulted in a degree of reputational damage, disruption to business plans and a chunk of unbudgeted costs. What do Boris Johnson, Len McCluskey, Philip Schofield and Mike Ashley all have in common? The thing that links this peculiar group is that their organisations, parties, or companies have all been fined by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) over the past few months for illegal marketing activities. Even though none of these fines (which you can read about here) have had quite the amount of publicity you might think they deserve, they have all resulted in a degree of reputational damage, disruption to business plans and a chunk of unbudgeted costs.
Boris, Len, Philip and Mike are unlikely to form any one person’s ‘top 4 favourite people’ list, but each has their fans and supporters who might be surprised to see them involved in breaking the law in terms of how they market to consumers. Contact centres are squarely in the ICO’s line of fire and you should focus on making very sure that your brand or operation doesn’t find itself in the same position as Boris, Len, Philip and Mike.

We’ve been carrying out some analysis to help you do just that. Helpfully, in 2021 (to date) the ICO has imposed twice as many fines than it did in the whole of last year; part of a steady increase in the ICO’s enforcement action. (Incidentally, hardly any of these fines are imposed under the 2018 Data Protection Act – which is how the government turned the GDPR into UK Law – but are infringements of the far older and less well-known PECR rules. However, that’s another story)

Lesson 1 – Voice still rules (when it comes to breaking the rules)

[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]We live in a multi-channel world, but when it comes to rule-breaking the phone is still the leading communication channel. Very few contact centres have phone calls as at least part of their channel mix, but those which make outbound calls need to be especially conscious of the rules.[/vc_column_text][image_with_animation image_url=”17959″ alignment=”center” animation=”Fade In” border_radius=”none” box_shadow=”none” max_width=”100%” margin_top=”25″ margin_bottom=”50″][vc_column_text]The rules include those governed by Ofcom which contain, but aren’t limited to, the use of predictive diallers. An area that we will be covering in a future article.

However, most enforcement is carried out by the ICO and invariably when companies are fined for their live calling its because they haven’t screened outbound calling lists against the Telephone Preference Service (TPS) register.

“Well, that’s obvious.” You might say “People have been doing for that for over 20 years. Only crooks and scammers wouldn’t TPS screen!”. That’s partly true, but it’s not just the scammers who have been fined.

Sometimes, firms think they have a prior relationship or permission that means they don’t need to screen against the TPS. In some cases, having an existing relationship does trump the need to TPS screen, but not always and the criteria aren’t always black and white.

Need some help navigating the ‘TPS or not?’ question? Give us a call

In other cases, firms have been reassured that the external calling data they have been provided has already been TPS screened by the data provider, when in fact it hasn’t. The ICO has repeatedly made clear that it expects brands and data purchasers to undertake the checks and due diligence needed to ensure that data is compliant and legal. “Don’t expect; inspect!”

Contact Centre Panel can help with this unenviable challenge, too. See Lesson 2, below[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text css=”.vc_custom_1637692624887{padding-top: 25px !important;padding-bottom: 25px !important;}”]

Lesson 2 – 3rd Party Data? A first party problem

[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]The incorrect or inappropriate use of third-party data – which is typically bought or rented to allow firms to access new potential customers – is a very common feature of the ICO’s enforcement cases, specifically mentioned in nearly half of them.

The whole area of the law and regulations around the identification and management of consumers’ personal data is complex and potentially fraught – especially when the data is provided by a third party.

As previously mentioned, as far as the ICO is concerned the compliance onus is on the data purchaser. Users of third-party data must undertake thorough due diligence of data providers to ensure they have a sound legal basis to use the data for marketing purposes, as well as having robust, enforceable contracts in place. This cannot be a ‘one and done’ or tick box exercise and should start with a thorough audit of the legal and compliance standing of the data provider.

Fortunately, Contact Centre Panel can help. We have undertaken a lengthy and detailed rolling audit of the legal and compliance status of over 50 data providers. As a result, Contact Centre Panel has identified a small group of providers – which offer data for use in a variety of channels – who we feel are well-placed to potentially offer legal and compliant assistance to contact centres and brands.[/vc_column_text][image_with_animation image_url=”17963″ alignment=”center” animation=”Fade In” border_radius=”none” box_shadow=”none” max_width=”100%” margin_top=”25″][vc_column_text css=”.vc_custom_1637692877224{padding-top: 25px !important;padding-bottom: 25px !important;}”]

Lesson 3 – Who’s calling?

[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]About a quarter of all ICO fines – and half of the phone-based enforcement cases – involve the incorrect use of Caller Line Identification (CLI) numbers. As you probably know, there are the numbers presented on the customer’s phone when you call them.

Again, it’s Ofcom that sets the rules and regulations about the use of CLIs, but it’s the ICO who are pushing fines and enforcement. Misusing CLIs is a red flag to the regulator.

Simply put, CLIs should clearly identify the recipient of the call, be dialable, consistent and not confuse or mislead the consumer. In addition, if the customer rings the CLI number back you need to be able to inform the customer who you are and why you were ringing them.

That probably sounds very straightforward and you may we be very confident about your use of CLIs. But that might not always be the case even when you feel you are being reasonable and fair:

Sadly, the answers to these questions aren’t always clear, but you need to work out your approach and justification if you want to avoid damaging legal action and fines. Need a hand? Let us know.

At Contact Centre Panel, we have heard that question being asked with increasing frequency over the past few months, by clients using customer management outsourced service providers (OSPs), which deliver contact centre services. All business operating models have been tested and altered since the start of the Covid–19 epidemic. Customer management and contact centre frameworks and approaches are no exception and the question of whether to consolidate or diversify suppliers is frequently addressed. 

The argument for rationalisation – it’s obvious, isn’t it?

If an organisation is utilising more than one OSP to deliver or support its customer management efforts, then that alone might provide an obvious and compelling argument for consolidating this provision. 

1. Leverage scale and cost consolidation

As any procurement professional will tell you, consolidating work currently divided across a number of suppliers offers an immediate opportunity for cost savings. These can be both: 

2. Enable partnerships

If an organisation wants true partnerships with its OSP suppliers, it will find it easier if there is just one. Partnerships are always underpinned by relationships and cultural alignment and – if the client chooses carefully – these can be best identified and achieved in an exclusive supplier. In any event, using one customer management supplier will make it easier for clients to enter into an ‘outcome based’ or ‘vested outsourcing’ relationship. When a supplier has intimate knowledge of its client, its processes and customer base it can establish the confidence to contract on the basis of outcomes and outputs, not costs and inputs.  

3. Consistency and the elusive ‘Single Pane of Glass’

Most customer experience and customer management professionals regard consistency of experience as a fundamental building block and measure of customer management effectiveness. Consistency is, of course, much easier to achieve when one supplier handles all of your customers’ interactions.  

All organisations seek the elusive ‘single pane of glass’ – the ability to anticipate, observe and understand customer contact needs and experiences. To do so is typically reliant on the development of a sophisticated, integrated but flexible ‘tech stack’ of contact channels, tools and data repositories and flows. Unless an organisation has its optimal tech stack already built, ready to deploy and encompassing all customer channels and interaction modes, the challenge will be made just harder if it uses multiple customer management OSPs. 

4. Exploit internal change

The legacy use of multiple customer management providers is typically an indirect function of two features of clients’ business: 

  1. Internal divisions and silos within the client organisation which demand or tend towards requiring separate providers for separate sets of activities or segments of the total customer overall base. With separate business units or cost centres, it is natural for decision making about the use of customer management OSPs to be localised to the business unit level. 
  2. Technology or proposition differences which historically made it impractical or impossible for one supplier to meet all the client customer management needs.  

Organisational, product and proposition or technology change may make these historical decisions redundant or outmoded. The rate of business change has rocketed since the start of 2020 – correctly exploited by the business owners of customer management and customer experience, these changes can help underpin the business case for supplier rationalisation. 

The argument for diversity

So, the rationale for rationalising customer management OSPs and consolidating service provision might appear to be clear and overwhelming. However, this is not always the case. 

1. Flexibility and business continuity

In the broadest sense, Covid has underlined the need for all businesses – and all their critical functions – to be resilient in the face of challenges and interruptions. As a result of recent experiences, often – but not exclusively – to do with the relative ability of OSPs to deliver rapid, effective and secure home working, a number of Contact Centre Panel clients are actively seeking to expand their portfolio of OSPs in order to provide greater resilience and flexibility. This is a recognisable trend, especially amongst larger clients using global networks of OSPs and customer management providers. 

2. Innovation and Competition

One of the reasons to outsource customer management is to leverage and benefit from both deep functional expertise (the OSPs should be the experts) and a dedication to interacting with customers. Along with this expertise and the insight that a ‘fresh pair of eyes’ brings to any situation, newly outsourcing an activity or contracting with a new supplier can create innovation. Contact Centre Panel will always encourage clients and OSP suppliers to explore new and innovative solutions, not just outsource or change supplier for the same old approaches and techniques. Ongoing, sustained creativity and innovation is hard to achieve, but is more likely in an environment of supplier diversity and competition. 

In addition, managed competition between OSPs can allow real-world benchmarking of costs, resourcing, performance metrics and customer outcomes. 

3. Horses for courses

There are over 140 outsourced customer management providers in Contact Centre Panel’s network. They cover the widest possible variety of locations, scales and areas of specialism – from generalists to centres with very narrow, specific areas of expertise. For some organisations, the performance, experience and expertise of a niche provider will always place them ahead of a generalist OSP, which can turn its hand to any customer experience activity across a client’s whole customer base. The challenge of managing multiple providers, avoiding customer experience friction and disconnects, is unavoidable, but for many clients, it’s a price worth paying. 

Conclusion: which way to go?

Each client’s motivation for using OSPs to provide customer management services will vary. Their business and customer experience goals, history, internal structures and culture will all have a part to play. In times of challenge and change all these factors are subject to review and alteration – and that includes whether to adopt a consolidated or diversified OSP supplier approach. 

Contact Centre Panel gives clients the opportunity to review their existing OSP contracts, determine if they are best fit and secure the right approach for the on-going success of the brands customer interaction management.