How to Keep Your Outbound Campaigns Compliant

Managing outbound campaigns has never been more challenging

Non-stop worries about OFCOM compliance, tighter restrictions on data and a continuous downward pressure on CPA all combine to make sure your job just keeps on getting harder.

The days of simple big-list outbound acquisition and customer cross-sell campaigns are well and truly over. Instead there’s a constant pressure for you to balance driving out performance with a requirement for ever tighter control over compliance.

Working to improve outbound performance and hit targets is hard enough. However you know that it’s compliance that really keeps outbound campaign managers up at night – particularly if your campaigns involve multiple outsourcers. Not surprisingly, you start to dread calls from the CEO’s office, particularly if something’s gone wrong and customers are already complaining to the Daily Mail!

With the ICO now able to fine organisations up to £500,000 for a breach, and OFCOM issuing seven-figure fines for persistent silent calls, compliance is a real concern – both from a business and personal perspective. If a serious data compliance breach happens on your watch – regardless of who was responsible – it’s not going to end well for you.

Prevention is always better than cure, so you need a form of compliance monitoring that will red flags possible risks. However, because you’re no doubt already working with multiple outsourcers, it needs to be agile enough to track all stages of your customer acquisition, cross sell and retention programmes.

So if you’re running multiple outsourcers I believe you really need some form of Central Agency Management (CAM) system in place to provide a mechanism for more accurate performance and compliance management. The best CAMs provide a common performance measurement standard that gives you insight into how all your engaged contact centres are actually performing. It will transform all dialler events from all outsourcers into a common format and provide drill down dashboard insight across all dimensions – agent/ agency/time of day/dialler activity/sales/and data sources.

In my recent roles working for leading Telco’s, I’ve used C-CAM from C-Centric to help the major organisations I’ve worked for gain better control over their major multi-outsourcer campaigns. With an increase use of offshore centres and CPA commercials you need a CAM to counter balance the slightly more detached relationship. By tracking CAM performance at a dialler level you can make sure that all your activity complies with both Ofcom regulations and DMA best practice guidelines. You’ll also be able to monitor compliance on an outsourcer-by-outsourcer basis – without a CAM in place you’ll always have those nagging doubts.

Dialler data doesn’t lie, and with an optimised CAM solution place you get to benefit from features such as red flag silent call alerts, cross matching of all complaints against specific centres and agents, and early warning detection of rogue agent behaviour.

If you are managing the outbound channel, I strongly believe you should evaluate implementing a CAM solution for your company.

To learn more about protecting your outbound campaigns from compliance breaches, please download the new report that I’ve authored with C-Centric’s Michael Page that sets out how removing your compliance concerns is much easier than you think, and can be up and running within weeks.

Warren Pennington – Account Manager

With over 10 years’ experience, Warren has broad commercial and operational experience in Marketing, Media and Financial Services. He has worked with a number of leading organisations including Callcredit, News UK, Virgin Media and Talk Talk.

Vlad Corduneanu – Project Manager

Speaking 7 languages, including Chinese, English, German, Romanian and Russian, Vlad has a Masters from Henley and is certified with the British Computing Society. He brings this, together with 6 years in analytical roles to C-Centric.

Asit Khiroya – Head of Operations

Asit has vast IT and business experience across a variety technologies. He has led some of the largest data management implementations in the UK. At C-Centric he creates leading edge solutions that deliver clear results for clients.

Humphrey Davis

Humphrey has led ground breaking contact centre transformation programmes across leading telecoms organisations including Talktalk, EE and Virgin Media.

As a C-Centric client over many years, we have successfully worked together to implement solutions that drive increased sales and productivity.

Humphrey’s achievements include delivering in excess of 80,000 incremental monthly post pay sales through a multi-channel cross-sell strategy, building an external outbound channel delivering 40,000 monthly sales, exceeding volume, value & MRC targets, and designed and delivered a sales from service methodology that significantly reduced the cost per sale by 60%.

In addition, Humphrey has delivered a single sales from service programme covering 20 sites on 4 continents achieving local business objectives whilst supporting overall Exec Board objectives, introduced a loyalty and retention strategy that achieved 10% attachment rate and 20,000 monthly sales and led a project to use discarded data to drive further cross sales and net new customers.

Liam Smith

An experienced business leader with a track record in delivering strategic, operational and people activities.

Liam has held a number of senior roles within the energy supplier npower, in both residential and business retail markets. Following the deregulation of the energy market, Liam pioneered outbound and online acquisition, establishing the first quote and switch service of the Big 6 energy suppliers, and setting up internal and outsourced telesales channels.

Liam is currently Director of Customer Contact with Rank Group and is also a Non-Executive Director to a number of growing businesses, advising them on their growth and business strategy.

Neil Devadason – Head of Strategy and Analytics Services

Neil is a proven integrated multi-channel marketing strategy consultant and leader, having worked with Heathrow Airport, Guardian, Ideal Shopping Direct, Citi Group, BoA (MBNA), AXA, Virgin Media, Sony Mobile, Centrica, and BskyB.

David McKee – Head of Technical Consulting

David has over 20 years’ experience in delivering large and complex solutions, having previously worked with firms such as Acxiom and Sequent, and built some of the industry’s largest databases for Virgin Media, BAA, BT and IBM.

Neil Perring – Director

With over 25 years leadership in outsourcing firms such as BPS Contact Centre Services, Teleperformance and Interact CC, Neil offers an in-depth understanding of the challenges facing today’s outbound campaign operators.

Michael Page – Director

Michael is one of the industry’s acknowledged experts in optimising outbound campaign performance. He brings deep digital expertise to C-Centric, having worked as Head of Digital Development for Acxiom, and as a Director of MiQ Solutions.

Tim Pottinger – Chief Operating Officer

With over 30 years’ data marketing experience – including senior roles at WWAV Rapp Collins, Callcredit Information Group and now at C-Centric, Tim is driving the company’s business development as it builds out its smart data proposition.