When the Australian Government’s Do Not Call Register went live last week, the website crashed due to 50,000 people trying to register on the first day. TUANZ contact centre committee chair Gay Reed-Barrance was in Melbourne and she reports it caused a media frenzy with plenty of interest in both the public's response and in who wasn't on the register.
“Politicians tried to defend why there are no restrictions to them calling members of the public and the register doesn’t apply to foreign companies,” she explains.
The Customer Contact Management Association (CCMA) has come out swinging; issuing a strongly worded statement in which CCMA president Shawn Kelsey urges “cool heads”.
“Anyone in the know who runs a busy contact centre would appreciate that 50,000 registrations in a day or week is just routine business, don’t get too excited about the general public response to the Australian Government’s initiative to further regulate and stifle our business,” he says.
“This register is a Selective Call Register and I can guarantee consumers that the favourite nuisance calls are exempted and offshore calls from India will still happen.”
Kelsey then rebuts any suggestion that the Register will cause job losses, as occurred in America when a Do Not Call Register was introduced there.
”Our labour market is so tight here in Australia, any shift in jobs will be quickly picked up by the other contact centres seeking highly skilled and trained agents, so again we cannot be antagonistic about any adjustment the industry may feel with this new legislation.”