July 1999

Federal and State Compliance Tools

There are products and services you can subscribe to and purchase to help you comply with the laws. One of the best known is Telemarketing Connections, a web-based database that supplies the latest federal and state legislation and regulations tailored to your campaign, program or firm. Devised and hosted by law firm Copilevitz & Canter, which serves telemarketing clients, Telemarketing Connections gives you information such as telemarketer registration requirements, contract provisions, solicitation disclosures and mandatory cancellation rights. The service also gives you a "capital" heads up on legislative / regulatory moves; it provides you with access to reports and to a monthly telemarketing legislation newsletter.  Copilevitz & Canteralso offers The Copilevitz Commercial Telemarketing Resource and the The Copilevitz Commercial Telemarketing Fund-Raising Resource. The first summarizes federal and state telemarketing laws and includes the legislation newsletter. The second supplies you with a summary of each state's fundraising statutes.

Call Compliance.com (CCI; Glen Cove, NY) offers a set of software and services that automatically blocks phone / fax numbers of individuals and businesses on DNC lists.  CCI's Teleblock feeds the latest DNC names from states, CCI and other sources to you through the internet, over a long distance carrier that has a connection agreement with CCI. The app also feeds DNC information to all of your offices. CCI's DNC names come from its Telestop® service. The service lets individuals and business add their numbers by signing up at Call Compliance's web site (www.callcompliance.com).

To see if your center conforms to these laws and regulations, you may need an expert outside consultantto thoroughly review them. TeleDevelopment Services' (Richfield, OH) Call Center Compliance Consultant Program, headed by former Tennessee assistant attorney general Glenn Erickson, does just that. TDS also has a free checklist posted on its Web site, www.telemkt.com/teledev.  Electronic monitoring laws impose new restrictions on inbound call center operations. Usually, the only option a caller who does not wish to be monitores has is to hang up. This means you lose the call or prospect and / or annoy the existing customer. Agents have no control over monitoring.  Witness Systems (Alpharetta, GA) expects to release Witness 5.1 shortly. This system lets the agent initiate the monitoring, and gives the caller the opportunity to opt out of being recorded while allowing them to continue with the call. The agent can also block the system from automatically monitoring the call.  Witness 6.0, out early next year, will also have a rules-based customization feature. This will let you install a monitoring opt-out selection that you can install within your IVR menu. You can either terminate the call or continue without recording, depending on your policy.  NCR (Dayton, OH), maker of Teradata data warehouses, will help you comply with the EU's Data Protection Directive and other such privacy legislation in the US and in other countries with its Privacy Center consulting team, plus new data protection software and services for Teradata customers. The Privacy Center consulting team, plus new data protection software and services for Teradata customers. The Privacy Center devises information management strategies, including an internal audit.  NCR also offers the Privacy Discovery Service which helps you identify privacy objectives and devises ways to integrate them into your IT and customer management processes. The Privacy Administration Utility lets privacy administrators set up your policies inside the data warehouses. The Privacy Consumer Access Interface lets you give consumers access to their personal data within the warehouse.