Mandatory telemarketing recording initiative gets tweaked

Last month our Board of Directors approved changes to several existing rules (click here for the latest updates). The most interesting—and wide-reaching—of the changes looks to be the amendment to the mandatory telecommunication recording initiative that provides an exemption to those subscribers who—while otherwise meeting all qualifying criteria—refuse to be recorded.

In these cases, telemarketers are permitted to fall back on asking the Personal Identifier Question to prove personal request of a publication or magazine.

One question I have already heard regarding this rule is this: “What if a publisher comes back to BPA claiming that half of their telemarketing file refused to be recorded?”

Here’s what I’ve been telling them: Over time BPA will build trend data on the results–as we have now for confirmations. We will know what the normal refusal rate is overall and by market. If three publications in a market have 2% refusals and the fourth has 59% refusals…well, draw your own conclusions.

I’ll be interested to hear your feedback regarding this rule amendment or any of the others.

Comments

[SH]

What is BPA's stand on recordings that can't be supplied for phone audits. For example, if a company's recording system has malfunctioned and calls couldn't be recorded that day, what do we do at time of audit. Do we have to resort back to phone billing records?

BPA's response: If BPA can not be presented with recordings due to system malfunctions, corrupted files, etc., BPA must increase the level of testing on the other aspects of the telecom audit, including but not limited to: pulling larger samples; tracing a higher number of calls back to carrier invoices and logs; and increased confirmation calls.