Blog
Financial Sector Banned from Using 0845 Numbers for Customer Services
The FCA (Financial Conduct Authority) have announced their UK-wide ban on premium rate numbers and other non-standard numbers for financial services firms.
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How the Changes to Call Charges Affect You
/ Communications Resellers, For Call Centres, Laws and Regulations, News and Updates, Telecoms & Data
On the 1st of July 2015 Ofcom introduced a significant change in the way consumers are charged for dialling service telephone numbers (that's any number beginning with 084, 087, 09 or 118). In order to make things clearer for callers, organisations are now required to state a totally new charging structure wherever they advertise such numbers. Before the 1st July, calls to service numbers tended to be advertised in a certain way:
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iConsole Customer Interface – We’re Almost There
As mentioned in a previous post, Nexbridge is currently redeveloping iConsole - the customer interface that lets Nexbridge customers view and manage their usage and other aspects of their accounts. Our development team have been working very hard to build an interface that has a real focus on ease of use and simplicity.
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Getting Consent to Send Marketing – Are You Compliant?
Consent is all about someone giving their permission for something to happen. Which all sounds very simple: someone either consents to something or they don’t. But did you know that the ICO’s guidance contains 3 full pages defining exactly what it means to give ‘consent’ to receive direct marketing communications?
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Ofcom Request Input from Call Centre Professionals
Are you a call centre manager, supervisor or other decision maker? If so, Ofcom want to hear your feedback regarding silent and abandoned calls, and the regulations that control them. Ofcom's outbound contact centre survey is ending soon, so spare some time to give your feedback and help improve the industry you work in!
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Top 10 Tips for Creating Contact Centre Excellence
Whatever the main objectives are for a contact/call centre, they probably have something to do with communicating a service or product, providing assistance, or gaining customer information. But what is it that really makes a contact centre successful in what it does? The modern consensus seems to be that a holistic approach is more important than focusing solely on KPIs like ASR and First Call Resolution. Indeed, only focusing on such factors can severely limit a call centre’s potential. In reality a successful contact centre incorporates good practice in all areas. Read on to find our top 10 tips for creating contact centre excellence by keeping the bigger picture in mind.
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VoIP Calls Introduced by Biggest Mobile Messaging App
Back in 2007, two Yahoo! employees took a break from work to go travelling in South America with their savings. This trip was to spark discussions about a new mobile application based on status updates. Two years later, Jan Koum and Brian Acton founded WhatsApp, which has now evolved into the biggest mobile messaging app in the world. After an international beta trial, and an invite-only version of their new update, WhatsApp have now added VoIP calls into the mix for their 700 million monthly active users.
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Another £80,000 Fine Issued to Direct Assist for Nuisance Calls
More tough enforcement by the ICO has emerged following a bout of unsolicited marketing calls made by Direct Assist Ltd; a personal injury claims company. The organisation had made a high volume of calls offering access to solicitors for consumers who hadn’t given their permission to be contacted. The ICO has revealed that almost all of the individuals who made complaints had previously registered their telephone numbers with the TPS. Over 800 individual complaints were made over a period of 19 months, giving the ICO more than enough evidence to issue a monetary penalty.
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Network Performance: Why CPS is the Wrong Measure
One of the most common questions asked by customers of VoIP networks is "What level of CPS can your network handle?" CPS, or Calls Per Second is a term used widely in today's telecoms industry; you'll hear it in business meetings, presentations, sales pitches and in the conversations between technical network staff. But as it turns out, the number of calls per second is not actually the best indicator of network performance or call capacity. We got together with Simon Sharman, Technical Director at Nexbridge, to get the facts straight.
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Nuisance Calls – Action Required From All Angles
Nuisance calls have become a real talking point in the media recently. The issue has now earned ‘plague level’ status, with around 100,000 individual complaints made to the ICO last year. But cleaning up the industry will require the right actions from all parties, whether they be call centres, recipients of the calls, network operators, or the regulator. To clear things up we’ve suggested what we think is required from each angle in order to put an end to nuisance calls for good, and change the communications industry for the better...
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