Australia’s call centre sector is large. There are an estimated 3,821 in-house or outsourced contact centres operating in the country, representing 1,806 organsiations, with 190,000 ‘seats’ or call centre places across the sector.
“This decision will adversely affect both mum and dad businesses as well as Australia’s biggest brands and hurt working families through job losses,” Edwards says.
Edwards also says including businesses on the Register will make it nearly impossible for companies to carry out the normal business of prospecting for new customers by phone.
“The ability of people in every Australian business to pick up the phone and discuss ideas and products and services with potential customers is the lifeblood of commerce in this country.”
Conroy’s office has promised that the new legislation will allow “genuine prospecting”, but Edwards says this could well be unworkable. Sue Barrett, SmartCompany blogger and sales expert, agrees.
“How do you define genuine prospecting?” she asks. “What’s genuine prospecting to one person might be an irritating phone call to someone else.”
Barrett says she is no fan of pressure selling tactics used by unscrupulous telemarketers and says she supports the Do Not Call Register for home numbers, where marketing companies can target the vulnerable or lonely.
But she says most people running a business are savvy enough to say ‘no’ to aggressive marketing techniques and is concerned that allowing businesses to be added to the Do Not Call Register will remove a key sales technique of small and medium businesses.
“They don’t have the advertising spend that big companies do,” Barrett says. “They have got to use legitimate and personal relationship selling techniques.”
“I hate some of those calls too, but the point is if we stop everyone from making these calls, how do we sell?”
Council of Small Business of Australia chief executive Jaye Radisich says the proposed amendments to the Register are like “bureaucracy gone mad” and says she can see a lot of unintended consequences.
“I go to a lot of functions as part of my job and meet a lot of people and collect a lot of cards. I see part of my role is to connect businesses which might be able to help and support each other.”
“All the SMEs to whom I might pass on details would have to consent to being called. If I pass along the details of a business that is on the Register, I might be potential placing in jeopardy the business to which I pass the number. I would have to stop that networking activity.”
Britain provides the best example of a Do Not Call Register for businesses. The Corporate Telephone Preference Service as it is known came into effect in June 2004, but reviews of the business Register have been mixed as best.
Rob Edwards from the ADMA describes the British system as a disaster, citing a report from the United Kingdom Direct Marketing Association’s Contact Centres & Telemarketing Council that showing just 2% of businesses had registered on the CTPS. Awareness of and compliance of the register were also low.
“[The CTPS] has unnecessarily restricted the normal conduct of business development; increased the cost associated with the normal conduct of business and commerce in the UK; [and] has had a detrimental effect on small businesses in particular,” the UKDMA’s report states.
Edwards says: “The small business people are saying they wish they had never been a part of it and they wish they could do it.”
If the Do Not Call Register is extended to businesses, a company wanting to contact other companies for prospecting will need to check their list against the Register.
Under the current arrangements, a company called Service Stream operates a list and charges access to the list. Telemarketing companies must check their lists against their register (this process is called ‘washing’), usually for a fee (although it is possible to check a few hundred numbers for free).
The Government says the costs of administering Do Not Call Register for businesses will be borne by the telemarketing sector, who it says will make up $3.5 million of the $4.7 million cost of expansion. These costs are likely to be passed onto to the telemarketing sector’s customers.
Consultancy firm Galexia says the costs incurred by telemarketers as a result of the change should be relatively low.
For example, Galexia suggests the cost of washing a contact list against every business number in NSW (the state with the most business numbers at 549,968) would be a $2,140 or less than $0.004 per business.
Galexia argues when fewer businesses are contacted, the cost for accessing the Register will be smaller. For example, checking 20,000 numbers would cost $74.
“This should be contrasted with the cost to a business of receiving and rejecting direct marketing calls – 10 person-minutes lost to a business through answering direct marketing calls may be equivalent to $5-6 in wages alone,” Galexia says.
A spokesman for Senator Conroy says the extension of the Do Not Call Register will require legislative amendments to the current act governing the Do Not Call Register Act 2006.
The spokesman also says the Government will embark on another period of consultation with industry before framing the amendments.
Rob Edwards of the ADMA has had some preliminary talks with Conroy’s department and also started lobbying business groups to speak out against the changes.
“We’re yet to start the formal negotiations. The money has been allocated, they’ve got something in mind, but we don’t know what they’ve got.”
“No one likes getting annoying phone calls, but you are trying to fix a problem with a cure that is 10 times worse than the illness.”
Should the Do Not Call Register be extended to businesses? Let us know by commenting below.
James was the editor and publisher of SmartCompany and LeadingCompany for five years. He is now the Australian Financial Review‘s companies & markets editor, and a former BRW editor.
