Dealing with the nuisance calls
What a nuisance
Nuisance calls were once limited to landlines but more and more businesses are being plagued by cold calls to mobiles. The calls can be anything from people insisting that you have unclaimed cash, e.g. for mis-sold PPI, to compensation from a road traffic accident you never had.
What to do? Conventional advice is to ignore any number that you don’t recognise, along with withheld ones. This is fine, but what if it’s a new client. The automated messages will also keep going if you don’t answer, leaving you with an unwanted answerphone message to delete. You could change your mobile number if it becomes unbearable, but all your best clients know it and have it stored in their phones - plus it’s on all your business cards. Changing your number is not only a massive headache but could cost you money in lost contacts.
Another way? In January 2014 ( yr.6, iss.4, pg.5 , see The next step ) we detailed how cold calls to landlines were costing small businesses significant amounts of money. In an office of 50 staff, just ten calls per person per month amounted to 6,000 calls per year. Based on each one wasting a minute of time and wages of £15 per hour, that’s £1,500 of workforce time wasted.
Our advice was to use the corporate Telephone Preference Service (TPS). Now the service has been extended to mobiles. The new scheme, run jointly by Ofcom and the TPS went live in May 2016. Mobile phone users can sign up to it by texting “TPS” followed by their e-mail address to 78070. Having done this their mobile number is added to the UK’s official “do not call” database, administered by the TPS. It’s illegal for organisations to make unsolicited sales and marketing calls to numbers registered with the TPS unless they have the person’s consent.
Will it work? The landline TPS can cut calls by a third, according to consumer group Which?. Ofcom and the TPS say that those mobile users who have registered with the opt-out service should see a noticeable change within 28 days (that’s how long it takes to become fully effective). However, they can’t guarantee a complete reduction in nuisance calls to a mobile. That’s because unscrupulous and rogue callers located in the UK tend to ignore the TPS list. Also, callers based outside of the UK aren’t obliged to have any regard to it.
Tip. The text should be free but some companies are charging up to 15p for it. In our view it’s still worth it.
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We don’t know how effective the mobile TPS will be. The example below is therefore based on it reducing cold calls by a third, like the landline equivalent. The figures show calls to a director on a salary of £50 per hour, as well as to a team of twelve sales staff each on £15 per hour. Each call wastes a minute of their time.
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For the previous article, visit http://tipsandadvice-financialcontroller.co.uk/download (FC 09.03.05).
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