Member Article

Nuisance calls crackdown to save businesses time and money

Government action to crack down on nuisance calls and aggressive cold-calling would provide a significant boost for small businesses according to one of the UK’s leading call answering specialists.

alldayPA which has answered over 85million calls since 1999 on behalf of over 23,000 business clients, reveals that some companies are being targeted with as many as 30 cold calls a day.

It says that the significant increase in such calls is becoming a real problem for business owners, wasting time and therefore money as well as tying up lines needed to service customers.

It is encouraging frustrated businesses to add their voice to a campaign that has already attracted 140,000 pledges, and demand that Government takes action against cold-callers that target businesses.

David Joseph, board executive at alldayPA says, “The number of cold-callers targeting businesses is out of control and has become a real drain on the time and resources especially for smaller companies and home businesses.

“Studies show that 64% of small businesses report nuisance calls as the biggest barrier to maximising productivity and 74% said that calls negatively affected workers’ abilities to focus on their jobs*.

“Data from the Information Commissioner’s Office shows that complaints about cold-calling rose by 41% during 2014 and business owners need Government to step in and provide an effective solution**.”

Research by Ofcom has shown that signing up to the telephone preference service, the traditional way businesses could remove themselves from marketing call lists, has become largely ineffective, reducing unwanted calls by just 35% on average.

Instead businesses are turning to call answering services as a way to screen unwanted calls and prevent the productivity of staff being affected.

David Joseph adds, “We are seeing an increasing number of business owners using our services so that they can prioritise important calls without being distracted.

“This is because alternative methods simply aren’t effective. Cold callers may simply ignore the telephone preference database, especially the increasing number of overseas callers who are using Skype as a way to make massive cold call campaigns cost effective.”

For more information about alldayPA, please visit www.alldayPA.com

* Source Panasonic: A survey of 500 home entrepreneurs in the UK August 2014.

** Source IOC – monthly complaints increased from 11,276 in April 2014 to 15,890 in June 2014.

*** Source Ofcom: A survey of 926 people, commissioned by Ofcom May 2014.

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