Ofcom and Silent Calls - Revised Policy

Revised statement of policy on the persistent misuse of an electronic communications network or service.

As you may be aware, last month Ofcom issued a consultant document related to call centres, predictive diallers and silent calls “Revised statement of policy on the persistent misuse of an electronic communications network or service”. This document suggests changes to the current statement of policy and requests feedback to the proposed changes.

The full document can be found at
www.ofcom.org.uk/consult/condocs/persistent_misuse/

The majority of the revisions provide clarifications to the current statement. We can confirm that Rostrvm Solutions’ dialler conforms to both the current statement and the currently-proposed clarifications.

There are 2 new areas that may have impact on you if the statement comes into force as it is currently written.

Campaigns that use automated Answer Machine Detect may need to make allowance for ‘false positives’ within the silent call percentage. This proposed amendment has the potential to preclude use of Answer machine Detect, and particularly on campaigns with a high answer machine connection rate (greater than 15%).

The use of unattended automated announcements that also allow the caller to interact (“Automated messages and outbound call steering”) may be considered to be misuse. This may apply to all messages including those that might be regarded as in the recipient’s interest; for example a message from a water company after repairing a supply failure such as “This is a message from rostrvm Water. We have reinstated your water supply and apologise for the inconvenience. If you are still having difficulties please press 1 on your phone to be connected to our call centre”

Interested parties have until the end of January to comment. Rostrvm Solutions will make comment before the consultation closes.