Interesting to see what everyone thinks of this once they’ve had time to digest…
The link to Ofcom’s consultation document on persitent misuse:
http://www.ofcom.org.uk/consult/condocs/misuse/misuse.pdf

Best regards,

Mike

OK, I get a bit silly at the end but….

From: The United States of Litigation …

“Do Not Call. Those words are music to millions of Americans who have signed up for the list so they’re not bothered by telemarketers. Not content to let things stay as they are telemarketers are now lobbying the FCC to have state laws which regulate the practice overturned. In April an ad-hoc group of firms ranging from the Direct Marketing Association to the National Children’s Cancer Society filed a joint petition asking the FCC to declare that it has ‘exclusive jurisdiction over interstate telemarketing calls.’ The issue revolves around some states whose Do Not Call laws are more strict than Federal law and which prohibit telemarketers from calling anyone on a Do Not Call, regardless of an existing business relationship.”

The above was pointed out to me at the end of last week, I have the feeling this was done to elicit the same reaction as a red rag to a bull.

Digging a bit deeper it seems this ‘Ad-hoc’ group is saying that in five states where, locally, they have tightened the law over and above the federal statutes, marketing to existing customers (which is outlawed) should be allowed.

For a full description see Here: epic.org

Ok, so what does this mean?

Well the short version is some states have completely banned cold calling, whereas the majority have gone with the federal limits on ‘Existing Relationship Contact’, the ‘We may contact you with products or services we feel may suit you’ rather than the other, ‘ We’ll pass your details onto anyone who pays us a large wodge of cash for your personal data’.

This is specific to several states where the local legislature has ruled against not only marketing to individuals who are on the DNC list but to existing customers as well. This means they can’t call to up-sell, re-sell or solicit.

Now I have had calls where they’ve marketed on the basis I’m an existing customer (Guess who?) but I’m more interested in the slightly more esoteric and mercurial status that is ‘Existing Relationship’. Who do I have an existing relationship with? Who do you?

Some of the answers may surprise you.

1) Obviously anyone you trade with, Gas, Electricity, your bank, Telecoms provider.

2) Anyone you used to trade with. So if you’ve changed suppliers for any of the above in the last 12 months they can call and try to persuade you to switch back or sell a new product

3) Now the grey area. Anyone YOU have approached for information and supplied personal contact details to. Again they have 12 months to call.

Now we all know the NIMBY effect around Contact Centre staff. Hands up who’s NOT TPS registered? So one wrong marketing survey, one missed “Can we pass on your details to our carefully selected Cash Cows”, box and the whole cycle starts again. In this case you’ve potentially actually removed yourself from the list voluntarily.

So across the pond they are campaigning to be allowed to call ‘Existing customers’

I’m about to let my imagination run riot.

How long will it be before the courts are sitting on a test case where the American company is defending their right to call and sell you insurance because you bought a can of beans in one of their stores. Therefore establishing an existing relationship.

Come to think of it we’re not that far away here, even given my comments above.
Insurance, home loans, air freshener, new car and bunch of flowers all under one roof,
or in one call? How long before the ‘Existing relationship’ renders the TPS regulations invalid just by the scope of a modern business or a well thought out ‘Strategic Partnership’ forged only to exploit the two, potentially varied, customer bases comes into being?

British Airways and Samsonite? As you use luggage you may travel, as you travel you may use luggage?

Easy Jet and Walkers, because you bought a packet of their crisps on the plane or might be interested in other places they sell their crisps.

BMW and Odeon Cinemas because you saw the Italian Job therefore like Mini’s or vice versa.

Back to the serious part though…

As with Spam and Spam blockers where there is ongoing battle to hit your ‘In-Box’ the marketing / advertising / soliciting trade (Ok ourselves) are constantly adapting to the changing market conditions. I’m deliberately not using the phrase Market forces, all too often we use a ‘Shotgun’ approach. As the legalities of the trade tighten who isn’t prepared to shamelessly exploit the loopholes left in an effort to hit the widest possible demographic?

Will we in five years time see ourselves in the same position as our colonial cousins?

From the article above it appears the US DMA is one of the bodies behind the legal challenge. Whilst here we champion ‘best practice’, we set ‘Industry guidelines’ and we try to self regulate, for which the DMA here is responsible. Will we hit a point where our DMA is forced by the industry to challenge the TPS service it itself helped champion in the first place?

And what’s more do we want to be around to see that battle?

Dave Appleby

On 13th July I told you that I’d got in contact with the Information Commissioners Office about No Agent Available Calls.

The specific question put to the ICO was a follows:

“In principle, is it legal for an organisation, which was making a marketing call, to play a called individual a recorded message which is not a marketing message?

“It is not clear from reading the regulations that this is acceptable, as the initial purpose of the telephone call was for marketing purposes even though the resultant message was not.”

The response received:

“Regulation 19 relates to automated calls, i.e where “non live” direct marketing communications are transmitted following an automatically initiated sequence of calls. The situation you describe refers to non live communications automatically transmitted, which are not direct marketing in nature. As such regulation 19 would not apply.

“I appreciate your comments that the purpose of the call would be to facilitate a live direct marketing communication (regulation 21), but as no direct marketing material is actually communicated the call would not fall under the regulations, and therefore not under the ICO’s remit.”

Therefore, as long as the message that is played is carefully worded to ensure that it contains no marketing information, organisations need not be worried about using the NAA message.

It’s now time for us all to start doing this - although I appreciate that understanding what can and can’t be done is a little daunting for many call centres. For this reason I’ve has started to put together a code of practice for removing silent calls from your organisation. This can be found here.

Please get in contact if you would like further information about using the NAA message in your call centre.

It’s been a little while since my last article here - I’ve been pretty busy with a new venture, trying to get it up and running and at the same time taking a little bit of a break from call centre matters. However, in my absence something really pressing has come up that I couldn’t resist basing this article upon.

This pressing something is the rise of call centre fraud, which has become particularly evident where offshore call centres have been involved. I’ve taken a little flak in my time from some people who seem to think that I’m anti-outsourcing. This isn’t true, though I do feel that outsourcing is often used too readily in the call centre when a more considered approach might be wise. However, I digress. Fraud in the call centre.

Yahoo News reports that outsourced, offshore call centre employees at Mphasis BPO have allegedly stolen �200,000 from the accounts of their customers, predominantly US-based. They have allegedly used the personal details of select customers to orchestrate the theft, and to-date despite the best efforts of the East Indian police, the vast majority of the money has not been recovered.

Earlier this year, another call centre in India suffered a similar outbreak of employee fraud, and several arrests were made.

Security is an ever-increasing concern for all companies making use of outsource call centres. It is those same companies responsibility to ensure that the outsource call centres are reputable and secure. However, it’s becoming clear that mismatches in regulation, business procedure and management are exposing customers’ personal information to the risks of misuse.

In the UK, much is made of information regulation. The Data Protection Act requires companies dealing with personal data to maintain certain standards and shoulder certain responsibilities over the way they treat personal and financial information. However, it would appear that there are (from the UK perspective, but probably more widespread) loopholes and regulatory failings which fail to cover these overseas outsourced contact centres.

Prevention is better than cure

It’s all very well talking about the effectiveness of monitoring and policing within outsource call centres, but it is up to us to ensure that whichever outsource call centres we use adhere to the very highest levels of security. If an offshore call centre cannot meet the most stringent security measures, then we should move to one that can. Price should take second place to security where personal and financial information is to be outsourced.

It saddens me that the sterling work of the great many outsource call centres is tarnished by the actions of a few ruthless and dishonest individuals whose actions create customer distrust and resistance.

John

The National Audit Office has today published a report about the new directory enquiry services (DQ).

There’s been some interested comments about this already in the press, and although I don’t agree with most of them I see no need to go over old ground. So I’m going to pick on something that caught my eye as I snoozed in bed this morning.

On BBC Breakfast was a guy from 118tracker.com. This is a very good website and lists details of all the DQ providers together with rates and services they offer.

I wasn’t so impressed with his comments. His suggestion was that the public was largely uniformed about the extended DQ services that are available. He then went on to say that this was OFCOM’s fault.

If you’ve read my posts in the past you may have realised I’m not a fan of OFCOM. I don’t believe they work hard enough to enforce the legislation that’s in place. However, I’m happy to defend OFCOM on this point. They’re not a marketing organisation and it’s not up to them to educate consumers as to the services available. The only responsibility OFCOM have is to ensure that consumers are aware that they have a choice of suppliers. I think they did this very well.

Marketing
At the end of the day, I don’t think the failure to take up these services is due to a lack of advertising. People are not interested in them and have therefore ignored the advertising. I don’t think the public is prepared to pay a few pence to get cinema listings when they’re free in the local paper or on the ‘net.

The important thing about a free market is that you…market. You’re not forced to offer any particular service. Ensure that there is a market for what you’re offering, ensure that people are prepared to pay for it.

Public perception
In true style of the 3G licence fiasco, enormous amounts of money were being thrown around after 118 numbers were allocated by the big boys trying to get the best numbers. This was followed by several large-scale advertising campaigns, one was so successful that still to this day people shout “Got your number!” at me when I’m out running.

This gave the public an inflated perception of what liberalisation of the market was going to offer. They didn’t exactly know what was going to be different - they just knew it was going to be great. This gave way to dissapointment when things weren’t much different to what they used to be.

As a consequence everybody is still saying that opening the DQ market was a failure. Some say it’s more expensive. Some say the services are no better. Some say the quality is worse. But the truth is:

Some DQ providers are cheaper than 192, and some are more expense.
Some DQ providers offer extended services, and some don’t.
Quality is the only thing we can’t measure because data was never collected about 192. However, many DQ providers offer over a 90% success rate.

All call centre staff will know that the 10% of numbers not found will be more to do with GIGO than anything else.

You pays your money, you takes your choice. A free market at it’s best.

Regards,
DB

I just want to have one quick dig at OFCOM: They elected to disallow use of 118192 because it was seen as the best number and be an unfair advantage.
At which point did someone think this was a better number than 118118?

It seems that once again we’re seeing another high street retailer consolidating (aka ‘closing’) a call centre for efficiency reasons. This is management speak for ‘we’re losing hand over fist so we have to do something radical’. In this case, it’s a holiday firm whose “business has been badly affected by the increase in online holiday bookings“.

As the web becomes the ubiquitous choice for the discerning consumer, it’s clear to me that call centres run by established ‘bricks and mortar’ style retailers are going to be potentially under threat. The effect of Amazon on high street booksellers is clear to see - in my own home city of Edinburgh, I’ve seen a couple of long-established book stores change hands or go out of business.

The Amazon Effect is well known within the world of booksellers; it ripples through the working days of all those whose jobs are involved with books, such as publishers, retailers and distribution networks. By using the powerful emergent medium of the internet to great effect, Amazon created a completely new channel of direct sales to the consumer.

The Diversification Threat

As companies such as Amazon diversify into other areas (such as consumer electronics, entertainment and even film rentals), more and more established and conventional retailers are set to be hit. Many of these affected companies are large enough to have invested in call centres to support and augment their sales and customer service channels. The fact that these new, diversified web eTailers compete on price, choice and in many cases simple convenience makes their continued success inevitable. The conventional high street may well be beyond salvation, at least in the way we know it.

Consolation?

It’s not all bad news. Though many big online organisations eschew the call centre in favour of more cost-effective, streamlined and automated processes, the fact is that many will still need to provide a human voice at some point in the loop. Successful online direct sales companies such as Dell may well redress the balance; what the article doesn’t mention is the fact that Dell are opening a large call centre relatively nearby, which is likely to be larger and thus offer some consolation.

However, big fish call centre investments such as Dell leave areas with too many eggs in too few baskets. Whilst incentives are dangled like big juicy carrots to tempt and persuade these big fish to establish call centres in a given area, what we perhaps need is the complimentary big stick to ensure that they stay.

In my opinion, there has always been a touch of the ‘easy come, easy go’ attitude to call centres from many of the companies which operate them. We as an industry need to continually stress the need to deliver quality over the quest to continually trim costs. If we can do this, perhaps more customers will stick by the conventional players - for reasons of quality products and good service if nothing else.

John

Link: http://news.scotsman.com/scotland.cfm?id=284432005

I received an interesting email just the other day which alerted me about a film whose premise I found intriguing. Apart from the fact that I generally enjoy watching films (especially non-Hollywood fare - with a particular soft spot for low budget horror flicks and offbeat French worldy observations such as Amelie), this particular film was noteworthy because it is the first film to my knowledge to feature a call centre as a plot device. Hopw intriguing!

The film is called American Daylight and it’s a contemporary thriller set in today’s technology-savvy world. This is a world that we all know so well; one where the outsource call centre is king. When we dial our apparently local bank, we are routed to another continent.

In the case of American Daylight, Sujata (played by Koel Puri) is a call centre agent who, as it often the way, is trained to talk with an American accent, and to complete this illusion, she is renamed ‘Sue’. ‘Sue’ receives a call from a guy called Lawrence (played by Nick Moran), a millionaire who is concerned that his wife is about to empty their joint bank account. Now, I can sympathise with that. Happens to me all the time. Anyway, Lawrence tries to persuade ‘Sue’ to bend the rules to give him the ‘inside info’, which she does. Meanwhile, ‘Sue’s boss, Pat (Vijay Raaz), who has a thing for ‘Sue’, starts to resent the way things are starting to turn out between Lawrence and ‘Sue’. Lawrence falls for his ‘Sue’, not realising that she isn’t who she purports to be.

It’s an interesting concept, with shades of Cyrano de Bergerac and other such tales. I haven’t yet had a chance to see it, but I’m definitely going to make a point of looking out for it, as it will be fascinating to see how the director (Roger Christian) handles the topic and the complexities of what isn’t such a far fetched concept.

Keep your eyes peeled for it, should it hit a cinema near you.

I read today about the findings of a report concerning people’s reaction to call centres. It seems that a backlash against call centres has begun with a growing number of people abandoning calls before they are even answered, according to the Dimension Data survey. Customers are hanging up in frustration after realising that they have been diverted to India or some ‘non UK’ destination, or when they find out that they’ve been placed in a long queue.

Quelle surprise…

In fact, many have become so irritated by customer services that they are prepared to wait little more than a minute - with the surveyed customers now only prepared to wait 65 seconds compared with 71 seconds in 2003.

Does this mean that the cards are on the wall for outsourcing? In the wake of many UK companies’ decision to outsource call centres overseas, are we about to see the man-in-the-street making a stand - which will (perhaps justly) hurt the very companies who outsourced overseas?

Personally, I find outsourced call centres to be a very mixed bag: some are effective, but others fail due to things like cultural and language incompatibilities and also the time delay. In fact, just last night my wife had an ‘Outsourced Agent From Hell’ (OAFH) who was determined to sell her some unnecessary cover for her credit cards. Mrs. C., being normally very polite - well, okay, having the capability to be polite - tried to explain but due to language difficulties, the time-delay and other factors, she couldn’t get a word in edgeways.

To turn it around…

If call centres are ever to move on from their ‘disliked’ status within the public at large, it’s going to be as a result of organisations pulling out of these often derided overseas outsource centres and re-establishing themselves within their own country. It’s going to be as a result of better resourcing, so that queues are minimised, and a result of IVR systems being more effectively designed.

These are things that might just give this industry a chance of turning the general public perception of this industry around for the better. However, most companies seem to be moving in quite the opposite direction.

John

Recruitment always seems to be a popular subject in the discussion pages.

It’s always difficult to find the right person for any given role, and it should come as no surprise that the customer service and call centre recruitment industry is buoyant. With an ever-increasing proportion of the workforce being connected in some way with call centres, there is potentially a lot of movement and as a result there are many firms mining the recruitment seam with success.

Many recruitment firms frankly charge far too much for what they offer. One (unnamed) UK recruiter charges upwards of one hundred pounds per position for a listing on their website. This seems somewhat extortionate. What is surprising is the number of companies that appear to be prepared to pay this premium.

If you’ve been following the main discussions, you’ll probably know that we’re planning on introducing a sensibly priced, dedicated job mart for advertising call centre positions. Initially this will be UK only, but we’ll introduce it on a more worldwide basis shortly after launch.

However, this is only half the battle. Organisational and departmental politics can shape the particular recruitment strategies that are followed, and quite often it’s a case of plumping for preferred suppliers or ‘the first ad that looked good in the trade magazine’. Often at great expense.

We want to tell you all that there’s absolutely no need to go to all of that expense. CallCentreJobs.net, our forthcoming sister site, will offer all that the established online recruitment sites offer, but at a fraction of the price. We’ll cover our costs, naturally, but above and beyond that there’s no need to ‘fleece’ employers.

We see it as taking a high quality, high value-for-money approach to the whole messy business of finding the right people. With a high standard of readership and an excellent established brand, we hope that you’ll choose us to help you fill those posts, and bring down the costs of finding the best people.

We’re aiming to launch in early March, so there is much to be done. We’re terribly keen to hear your ideas and suggestions, so please talk to us and we’ll build you the recruitment site you really want.

John

I discussed a while ago the need for us all to be responsible in the way we use outbound calling as a marketing tool. It holds a lot of potential but must be used responsibly or we might have this privilege taken away from us. The industry is divided on the best course of action, but the one thing that everybody is worried about is regulation.

The most irritating thing? Legislation already exists that could cut the bad guys down a peg or two, but OFCOM seems worried about enforcing it.

A year on, OFCOM have opened another investigation re: MKD holdings, also known as Kitchens Direct. See here: Ofcom Website investigation about MKD Holdings Ltd regarding silent calls

The numbers bought into the open by the original OFCOM investigation were conclusive - MKD were misusing the telecommunications network. There can be no defence against such a high number of silent calls. OFCOM’s solution was astoundingly not a fine but this:
“OFCOM obtained written commitments from MKD Holdings which included a commitment that the daily number of silent calls for each phone number used by MKD Holdings would not exceed 5% of the total number of daily live calls” (Source: OFCOM website)

Radical thought: Perhaps if some proper action was actually taken then we’d see the number of silent calls drop?

Regards,
DB

Yesterday saw the launch of the new Apple Mac Mini (does this mean we’re getting a Mac Mini Cooper? ) and a fine beastie it appears to be too. Now, I’m probably biased, but I do feel that Apple should be applauded for trying to solve the age-old problems of usability, simplicity, ergonomics by applying radical and often revolutionary design approaches.

Seeing a computer base-unit of little more than a cd in area and a couple of inches in thickness, it makes me wonder about the various applications such a compact and portable unit might have. As this is a call centre site, of course, I have to look at how it might work in the office environment. My initial thoughts were that a unit like this would enable agents to hot-desk much more easily, as the computer can be easily carried around. It is a very compact unit, which should free up important desk-space. It is reputedly very quiet, though I can’t comment on that. If it is as quiet as I’ve read, it should be perfect for keeping the ambient noise levels to a minimum. Sure, most contact centres have so much going on that even a comparatively noisy machine isn’t obviously intrusive, but I’m a firm believer in doing what we can to keep unnecessary noise at bay.

I can also see applications outwith normal computer use; I haven’t measured, but I reckon that the Mini might just be small enough to fit into the standard audio unit compartment of the average car. Which means that it’s ideal for automotive computing. Just imagine, a black-box flight recorder for your car. In some countries, such things have been trialled for insurance purposes, but a more sophisticated unit such as the Mini, reading in all manner of drive information via its firewire or USB ports, and allowing drivers to archive their trip data using cheap CDR media.

Even the smallest hard-drive option could easily hold a very detailed and easily updated navigation system; GPS locators are relatively inexpensive and could be designed to input ongoing location information via the connections on the back. The DVI output could drive a small LCD panel which could show detailed navigation in unlimited ways - relief information, directories of places to visit/eat/shop, weather information, you name it. The beauty of it being the fact that the baby Mac would have the flexibility and (I’m sure) the reliability to be configured any which way. Couple that to a contemporary mobile telephone and it could be configured to communicate with your Mac iBot to switch on the lights, open the garage door and stream your relaxing playlist from iTunes when you draw close to home.

I know, I know, I’m getting carried away here. However, is any of this so unrealistic? The office idea is very practical - these Mini Macs are apparently very small indeed, inexpensive and because they run OSX, they break away from the mess that is Windows on your typical PC. Support costs are lowered, workers are happier and there would be a marked increase in productivity. Macs are, after all, generally far more reliable and easy to use and live with than PCs. Die-hard PC enthusiasts will no doubt complain, but only because deep down they know I’m right.

So here we have it: the new phase in computing - small, powerful and affordable. We’ve had these before, but only two at a time: powerful is normall big, or expensive.

I doff my hat to you, Apple, for pushing technology forward in such a way that might just make a difference - a positive difference - to the lives of the ordinary person.

John

I’m writing this mostly as a test message - so please don’t expect it to be of any interest.

CCV have kindly accepted my offer of posting any relevant industry news here, and I look forward to doing so with others as this community expands. In the mean time if you have any news that you feel is relevant (this is a big opportunity for all you usually suppressed suppliers on CCV) please send it through to me at ccv@darrylbeckford.co.uk and I’ll gladly research and publish it.

Some *really relevant* industry news for you all - I got engaged at the weekend.

Sorry, I couldn’t not post it. I’m too excited.

Regards,
Darryl

You might have noticed a few changes around the main community. You might be wondering what Firefox is - although I suspect the vast majority of you might have heard about it by now.

If not, let me take a few moments to introduce you to what I believe is the way forward for web browsing. Up until now, most people have been using one of the various versions of Microsoft Internet Explorer, otherwise known in the trade as ‘Insecure Explorer’ due to its shoddy security model and susceptibility to hacks, exploit and other nasties. Despite its flaws, it remains the most widely used browser around today, which is testament to the power of the Microsoft monopoly. It may be notoriously shoddy in its standards compliance, vague in its OS:Application boundary and extremely high risk due to its buggy code base; it may be a cumbersome user experience with its proliferation of pop-ups and pop-unders; it may have hooked corporates in with its disastrous ActiveX technology. Yes, it is all of those things, but until recently it was for many the only real choice.

Choice. There it is, that word again. We now have a new kid on the block. Firefox is a new browser which has emerged to much acclaim in the past six months or so. It has recently had its first ‘proper’ release, version 1.0, which is free to download and offers many benefits over Insecure Explorer:

• Tabbed Browsing;
• A non-embedded-in-the-OS browser engine;
• Effective searches;
• Full standards compliance;
• It’s quick;
• It doesn’t over-egg the features pudding;
• It’s a small download;
• It’s not Microsoft, therefore it has no hidden monopolistic agenda.

…and so on. All in all, it’s a big improvement over the Microsoft offerings, and there’s a definite sense of parity amongst various on different operating systems - for example, Firefox 1.0 on my Powerbook runs almost identically to that of Firefox 1.0 on my desktop PC. Try that with IE for the Mac versus IE for the PC - disastrous!

So, you might be wondering why I’m writing this article? Well, two main reasons. The first is that Firefox is, like CallCentreGurus, an essentially non-commercial venture with the agenda of making life better for its users. So, we are in a sense brothers-in-arms. I can really relate to their cause, as corporate independence and free services/software do not likely bed-partners make.

The second reason is that it’s great. In the next few months, I will be re-designing CallCentreGurus to be fully standards compliant. To my own discredit, there are bits of the site which really do hang together with sticky-tape and glue, and I want to put that right. The target platform will be Firefox, and because Insecure Explorer is not standards compliant, things may ultimately not look so pretty when that browser is used. However, it’s nmt all doom-and-gloom as I will ensure everything still works in IE. It won’t, however, be our recommended browser any more.

The days of IE dominance may well be coming to an end. We’re putting our money where our mouth is and supporting Firefox, and I can only hope that other sites do the same, to ensure that this superb fledgling browser becomes the number one choice in internet browsing on all platforms.

I’d welcome any comments on this subject, and I hope that you will all download a copy of Firefox for your machines and at least give it a chance to win you over. It won me over!

John

My friend Dave, a moderator over at CallCentreVoice, has frequently posted about the woes of weeding out their Administrative ‘VoiceMail box. However, that doesn’t seem to stop messages from members and non-members alike, some of which are nothing more than begging letters, others of which are just bizarre.

When CallCentreVoice was first devised, it used publicly email addresses so that members could contact us. However, that was a bit silly in retrospect as the lowlifes who deal in spam* eventually forced us to abandon that idea and I devised the ‘VoiceMail system as a basic-but-effective means of passing private messages between members.

So far, it’s worked well enough (with some limitations) but the public ‘Contact Us’ facility seems more often than not to be a repository for all sorts of weird and wonderful nonsense.

Can I just emphasise why it’s there? I know this is a bit of a moan but I’d prefer to go on record and save the CCV moderators from having to wade through the noise to get to the odd message that’s actually relevant and worth reading.

Contact them for direct questions to one or other of the moderator team on matters relating to the CCV site. That might mean login issues, or questions about what is and isn’t allowed. Suggestions and ideas for improvements are welcome. As is being told about any bugs, both functional and cosmetic, so that they can be reproduced and fixed.

However, they have no jobs available, cannot help you with your visa, don’t want to use your outsource facility and so on. It’s not what it’s about.

CallCentreVoice is a collaborative community for call centre matters, not a personal assistance or business development agency. There are plenty of other sites you can go to for that stuff.

So, before you contact them, think about whether it’s really something that the CCV team are likely to either want or be able to help you with.

John

* I mean, I don’t want a mail-order degree - I’ve got a real one - and I don’t need viagra. And in any case, I’m quite happy with the dimensions of my bits, thank you very much Mr Spam-Monger.