The best way to make telephone sales calls
If part of your sales activity includes contacting customers or potential customers by phone you need to ensure you and your staff have a basic understanding of the Telephone Preference Service (TPS). If you use a telesales agency to run your telephone marketing and telephone sales activity it's in your best interests to ensure they're following the rules as it's your reputation that's at stake.
The rules on contacting customers
Under the Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003 it is unlawful for someone in business (including charities or other voluntary organisations) to make a direct marketing telephone call to any individual if that individual has either:
- told that business or organisation they do not want to receive such calls
OR
- has registered with the Telephone Preference Service
Note that an 'individual' is defined as a consumer, sole trader, PLC, Ltd. Company, or (except in Scotland) partnership.
What does opting-in mean?
While dealing with prospective customers who are showing an interest in your services it is good practice to check whether they are happy for you to contact them again and whether they would prefer a phone call or an email. This is known as opt in, that is they give you specific permission to contact them again. This is essential for telephone marketing and fax marketing, and is becoming common practice for email marketing as well.
To enable you to make future contact with people who ahve bought from you in the past you can add a clause into your terms and conditions of business to state that there is an implied ‘opt-in’ from existing customers that they are happy to receive email messages and phone calls from you.
What is opting-out and why is it important
It's good practice to make your direct mailing intentions clear and to give customers the option of choosing not to receive telephone marketing or email marketing messages from you. This is known as opt out and individuals may decide at any time that they no longer wish to receive communications from you. Once an individual has registered with the TPS or fax preference service (FPS) there is a grace period of just 28 days in which unsolicited calls are tolerated. After that time if you make sales calls to someone registered with TPS or FPS that you have not specifically opted-in to receiving messages from you, you risk a fine of up to £5000.
Note that if you are sending email marketing messages you must always provide the opportunity for the recipient to opt-out on EVERY email you send to them.
Keeping your data clean
If you’re buying data to use for a mailing campaign the obligation is on you to ensure the list broker is providing you with properly cleansed data. A good list broker will clean data using:
- Postcode Address File (PAF) Processing
- National Change of Address (NCOA) Processing
- Telephone Number Verification and Appending
- Electoral Roll Verification
- Gone Away Suppression
- Bereavement Suppression
- Mailing Preference Service (MPS) Processing
- Telephone Preference Service (TPS) Processing
- Fax Preference Service (FPS) Processing and Duplicate Detection
- Consumer and Business Profiling.
Ask your data supplier to give you assurance that they have used these for data cleaning. Better still, when choosing your supplier make sure they check against all of these - if they do not they shouldn't even be on your shortlist.
The best way to make telephone sales calls
If part of your sales activity includes contacting customers or potential customers by phone you need to ensure you and your staff have a basic understanding of the Telephone Preference Service (TPS). If you use a telesales agency to run your telephone marketing and telephone sales activity it's in your best interests to ensure they're following the rules as it's your reputation that's at stake.
The rules on contacting customers
Under the Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003 it is unlawful for someone in business (including charities or other voluntary organisations) to make a direct marketing telephone call to any individual if that individual has either:
- told that business or organisation they do not want to receive such calls
OR
- has registered with the Telephone Preference Service
Note that an 'individual' is defined as a consumer, sole trader, PLC, Ltd. Company, or (except in Scotland) partnership.
What does opting-in mean?
While dealing with prospective customers who are showing an interest in your services it is good practice to check whether they are happy for you to contact them again and whether they would prefer a phone call or an email. This is known as opt in, that is they give you specific permission to contact them again. This is essential for telephone marketing and fax marketing, and is becoming common practice for email marketing as well.
To enable you to make future contact with people who ahve bought from you in the past you can add a clause into your terms and conditions of business to state that there is an implied ‘opt-in’ from existing customers that they are happy to receive email messages and phone calls from you.
What is opting-out and why is it important
It's good practice to make your direct mailing intentions clear and to give customers the option of choosing not to receive telephone marketing or email marketing messages from you. This is known as opt out and individuals may decide at any time that they no longer wish to receive communications from you. Once an individual has registered with the TPS or fax preference service (FPS) there is a grace period of just 28 days in which unsolicited calls are tolerated. After that time if you make sales calls to someone registered with TPS or FPS that you have not specifically opted-in to receiving messages from you, you risk a fine of up to £5000.
Note that if you are sending email marketing messages you must always provide the opportunity for the recipient to opt-out on EVERY email you send to them.
Keeping your data clean
If you’re buying data to use for a mailing campaign the obligation is on you to ensure the list broker is providing you with properly cleansed data. A good list broker will clean data using:
- Postcode Address File (PAF) Processing
- National Change of Address (NCOA) Processing
- Telephone Number Verification and Appending
- Electoral Roll Verification
- Gone Away Suppression
- Bereavement Suppression
- Mailing Preference Service (MPS) Processing
- Telephone Preference Service (TPS) Processing
- Fax Preference Service (FPS) Processing and Duplicate Detection
- Consumer and Business Profiling.
Ask your data supplier to give you assurance that they have used these for data cleaning. Better still, when choosing your supplier make sure they check against all of these - if they do not they shouldn't even be on your shortlist.