Spirus writes:
As a telemarketing consultancy providing a valuable marketing for sales service for our customers, we naturally take an interest in this area, and share the government’s stance on discouraging rogue and nuisance callers from intruding on people’s lives. We also know, though, that tarring all telemarketing and telesales operators with the same brush is neither relevant nor constructive.
However, forcing companies to display their number would certainly would make life difficult for legitimate, caring companies like ours; but not, perhaps, for the reasons you may think. So why is it necessary to withhold your number when you “cold” call?
In the business to business area where we operate, we can call between 30 to 40 companies each hour; but on average, only get to speak to 10. On seeing a missed call, many will call back, representing potentially 30 companies calling us back wanting to know who called. Now, we don’t mind that too much in theory, as we would happily speak to them. However, we work for multiple clients, so it would be tricky to know instantly which each particular call related to.
Secondly, our clients usually prefer us to call on their behalf, as though from within the company, rather than appearing to use an external service. Withholding our own number means we can represent them in the most authentic way, which gets a better response from prospective customers and is a reassurance that this is a genuine call. Someone calling back will be greeted with the Spirus welcome; but they won’t necessarily know who “Spirus” is, which won’t help the ensuing conversation! We have worked with many of our clients on this basis for several years and we really are very much part of their team, providing a valuable marketing and sales function. We are ambassadors for their brand, and it is always in our mutual interest to respect the people we are calling. Most are not “cold” contacts in the usual sense, and usually the service we are calling about is extremely relevant and useful to the recipient; we don’t get our success rates by accident!
Perhaps most importantly though, these measures simply won’t stop rogue companies from making nuisance calls because, as the name indicates, they are rogue. They don’t care about who they harass or annoy. To them, you are simply a number, one of thousands to be ticked off an automated list. That approach is so very different from our own values about telemarketing, which focus on building relationships, connecting with real people and a genuine desire to be helpful and have really good conversations. Plus, unless you have had previous contact with a business, you won’t know who each number calling you is anyway, so it won’t make a meaningful difference to the people receiving the calls; the only ostensible benefit is the opportunity to report specific nuisance callers to the regulators.
We openly applaud initiatives like the Telephone Preference Service. Everybody should have the right to choose whether they would mind being approached in this way. It makes life easier for us too as we certainly don’t want to call people who would rather not be called. However, there are many instances where telemarketing and telesales can be a very valuable and important part of business, creating new relationships, contacts and opportunities which simply can’t happen in any other way. Telemarketing is a fantastic and often irreplaceable part of a strong marketing or sales campaign, and when handled well will also go a long way to building positive brand awareness. We would hate for all unsolicited calls to be immediately assumed to be “rogue” or “nuisance” when so many times they are welcomed as the valid communication channel they are.
So how do we solve the problem of nuisance calls? Having a blanket approach that will disadvantage telemarketing companies like ours, as well as their clients, is not the solution. Perhaps the answer lies in closer co-operation between government officials and the telecoms and internet companies involved, to deal with the rogue companies causing the problem. Showing the punitive measures that will be taken for nuisance calling may also help to discourage persistent offenders; for example, a firm in Brighton was fined £350,000 in February for cold-calling, having made more than 46 million nuisance calls. In the meantime, companies offering a genuine service such as ours have nothing to apologise for.
____________________________________________