The Right Call For Businesses

Retail, insurance, travel and leisure, real estate, financial services: each of these industries is among the hardest hit by the recession and the enormous decrease in consumer confidence and spending. All these sectors, too, share telemarketing as a lifeline for reaching potential new leads.

While salespeople are going back to basics, utilizing cold calling as the most productive way to generate business, due to stringent state and federal Do Not Call (DNC) regulations, these businesses can no longer indiscriminately "dial for dollars.” When it comes to avoiding DNC violations, adherence to regulations is paramount, as inadvertently placing calls to registered numbers can result in fines of up to $11,000 per call.

And DNC regulations are only becoming more comprehensive. This summer, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) passed two telemarketing sales rules amendments. The first bars telemarketing calls that deliver prerecorded messages unless a consumer previously consented to such calls; the second modifies the FTC’s current method of measuring the maximum permissible level of "call abandonment” to coincide with the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) existing telemarketing rule.

"Due to the fact that both federal and state governments maintain separate lists, DNC navigation can be a tricky endeavor,” says Dean Garfinkel, CEO of Compliance Systems Corporation (OTCBB: COPI), a developer of technology-based compliance solutions for the teleservices industry. "Forty-three states have DNC legislation and the Federal Registry currently has more than 165 million numbers on file. While the cost and effort involved in implementing a DNC solution, training personnel on company policy, and constantly cleansing target market lists can be daunting, the chances of dialing suspect numbers without a foolproof solution in place remains high.”

Fortunately, Compliance Systems has created the only failsafe solution that ensures 100% state and federal DNC list compliance. The company’s patented product, TeleBlock® Do-Not-Call Blocking System, automatically screens and blocks outbound calls in real-time against federal, state, and in-house DNC lists.

In comments to the FCC, Attorney General Steve Carter of Indiana, architect of the most stringent DNC program in the U.S., praised the product, stating: "With services such as TeleBlock® that provide automatic blocking of restricted numbers, companies should no longer have to monitor each state’s laws, their own campaigns, or the actions of their vendors, because the service already does that for them at very little cost.” For more information log onto www.callcompliance.com.