Resellers divided on Do Not Call Register impact
- 19 February, 2010 17:20
- Comments 3
Resellers are divided on the impact of plans to extend Australia’s Do Not Call Register (DNCR) to include business and government telephone numbers.
As previously reported on ARN, expansion of the Do Not Call Register legislation is currently under inquiry in the Australian Senate. If approved, it will limit a company’s ability to make marketing and sales calls to potential business customers listed on the registry. The inquiry was launched on November 30 and reports are due by end of February.
Managing director of Dubbo-based Axxis Technologies, Matthew Dickerson, said it would be better off for businesses to join the list, so the reseller could concentrate efforts on businesses that wanted to be contacted. Checking the DNCR before dialling the number could also save a couple of minutes making a call to the wrong type of business.
“Ultimately, people who want to be on the register are ones that aren’t going to respond very well to a cold call,” Dickerson said. “It probably weeds out some people we shouldn’t be calling anyway.”
However, managing director of Queensland-based Computer Merchants, Norman Jefferies, recalled only one time he was told to not call back a business, but earned new business from the company after approaching them a year later.
“All businesses are about making some sort of transaction and communication,” he said. Jefferies added he personally wouldn’t want to be on the register from a business point of view.
“It’s part of growing your business,” he claimed. “Customers have always had the opportunity to say ‘don’t call us’.”
If DNCR expansion did go ahead, it would create more pressure on other forms of marketing, NSC managing director, Craig Neil, claimed.
“If you stopped telemarketing from a voice perspective, it’s only going to increase the amount of email and direct mailing,” he said. “I don’t know why the government really needs to control business executives receiving too many telemarketing calls, especially when they can have those call rebutted.
“I think it’s going a bit too far.”
According to representatives from Direct IT and the Australian Information and Industry Association, DNCR changes have the potential to significantly affect telephone sales for all organisations. Telemarketing is the most common method to generate new business leads by many organisations, including IT resellers.
Nominations for the 2012 ARN IT Industry Awards open on Tuesday, June 12.
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Comments
Giuseppe De Simone
If someone goes to the trouble of entering their details online and declares "please don't contact me with marketing calls", you'd have to be crazy to call them as you are going to get an earful of customer angst. There are plenty of ways to get customers - the phone is one of the most annoying ways for customers - you can advertise online or in print or electronic media, you can go to shows, you can go door-to-door, you can concentrate on other customers who prefer to be called by telephone, you can sponsor events - local events in particular, you can even send them material by addressed or unaddressed mail. The phone may be cheap (especially if you use a call centre from overseas) but you need to consider what impact a poor approach to the customer is going to have. Bring on the Register and stop the complaining. I do not want any more call centres from India or the Phillipines or Mexico or the United States (using illegal migrant workers) calling me to tell me to change my phone plan. Give me back my life, my privacy and my time so I can concentrate on winning customers who want to do business with me.
BaysNet
The IT Channel will need to respond to the challenges this tightening of the do not call legislation will bring. It's not a good or bad thing in itself but it will add cost as a lot of channel players have reduced costs by cutting the expensive external face to face business development team and building the internal sales (telemarketing teams). This strategy may no longer be effective or may lead to exposure to much higher compliance (Fines) costs.
David Banes
So if you're an Australian IT services company it will be illegal to do tele marketing but if you're in India it'll be OK because you're off shore.
Good plan guys.
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