press release

release detail

UK government proposes crack down on misuse of the technology behind silent calls

READING, UK – November 18, 2009 – Adeptra, the recognised leader in automated customer communications, today announced that it is experiencing a surge in interest in its Auto-resolution™ services to financial organisations as they consider their usage of traditional power diallers, the technology behind so-called ‘silent calls’ and the target of the latest UK governmental proposals to deter the practice.

The UK government recently unveiled proposals suggesting that call centres which make excessive silent or abandoned calls could face fines of up to £2m. The move came about as industry regulator Ofcom says that it is a breach of their guidelines for businesses to make these persistent and unwanted phones calls that can cause nuisance to consumers.

Lou Venezia, CEO of Adeptra said: “No-one likes to pick up the phone and hear a delay before an agent joins the call, or worse still, continued silence or an abandoned call.  Ofcom is looking to impose heavy fines on companies that are not using communication technology responsibly.” He continued: “As organisations with call centre operations look to reach and successfully engage with more customers in real time, even more are looking to achieve the benefits of increased customer loyalty, satisfaction and retention that Auto-resolution provides, without the risk of falling foul of the regulator. As a result, many of our existing customers and other large organisations have called us over the past few weeks to ensure they are making the best use of the available technology.”

A silent call is where a dialler has attempted a number and the recipient has answered, however, due to the lack of an agent being available at that precise moment, the recipient hears nothing. With Auto-resolution, however, the silence never occurs as the engagement script starts immediately. In 2007, Ofcom fined four companies for making silent calls and AMD is back in the news as some call centres have resorted to switching off the technology in the fear that they will fall foul of Ofcom.

Venezia said: “Adeptra and our clients strive to provide high quality and ethical services and to ensure that services and processes are robust and subject to external audit and public acceptance.”  He continued: “Indeed, in an Ofcom policy statement issued in September 2008, the regulator noted the increasing use of Interactive Voice Messaging Technology and pointed to an independent customer research study highlighting that 73 per cent of respondents found bill reminder messages useful.”

If customers are contacted by an Auto-resolution service but are concerned about the legitimacy of the message, they should consider that an Auto-resolution system will start the script immediately and will only ever ask for verification of personal information such as month of birth or number of their last house. It will never ask customers to reveal outright their card number or any other security information.

With a Software as a Service business model, Adeptra works with 9 of the top 10 UK card issuers to transform their ability to perform time-sensitive and vital communications for fraud, collections and marketing.

ENDS

About Adeptra
Adeptra is the global market leader in Auto-resolution™: technology that automates key call centre interactions to reduce their cost and dramatically increase performance. Applications are fully integrated, industry-specific solutions for business processes such as fraud detection, payment reminders and opt-in marketing.

Distinct from less sophisticated auto-dialler systems, Adeptra combines recorded dialogue with state of the art natural language to reach out to individual customers and personally engage with them about important, time-sensitive issues. Adeptra is able to make thousands of customer contacts simultaneously and achieves higher levels of portfolio penetration and produces significantly better results than human agents alone. The resolutions it secures are delivered into clients’ computer systems for reporting and analysis.

Among its many customers, Adeptra is used by the majority of the Top 50 global financial institutions across EMEA, N America and APAC. It occupies a premium position in the market by continually reinvesting in its technology, operations and service structure. Adeptra was the first to be accredited to the highest data protection standards mandated by the payment card industry (PCI DSS) and, uniquely has achieved this is both the US and Europe.

For more information, visit www.adeptra.com

Media Contacts:
Gavin Bradbury
Global  Marketing Director, Adeptra
+44 (0)7545 441002
Gbradbury@adeptra.com 

Jessica Humphrey
NSPR for Adeptra
01628 502 606
jessica@nspr.co.uk