How Can My Call Centre Comply with TPS Regulations?
What is TPS?
TPS is an abbreviation of Telephone Preference Service, which is a service that was implemented in an attempt to allow individuals and businesses to register their request not to receive unsolicited sales and marketing calls. Individuals should register to the TPS, whilst businesses should register to corporate TPS. The TPS and CTPS are free services, and once registered, an individual or business should expect to not receive unsolicited calls within 28 days.
Who enforces TPS regulations?
The enforcement of TPS is undertaken by the Information Commissioners Office who have the power to impose civil monetary penalties of up to £500,000 for the most serious breaches of TPS regulations.
How can my call centre comply with TPS regulations?
The risks associated with being found in breach of TPS regulations are clear, and would cause significant financial damage to any call centre that had a fine imposed against it. Therefore, it is highly recommended that every call centre has stringent safeguards in place to ensure that no calls are made by any member of staff within the organisation.
Whilst many data companies rely heavily on data cleansers to check the data that is being sold against the TPS register, the fact is that the numbers that have been checked may become registered with the TPS service by the time that the data is used in a campaign by a call centre. Clearly using such data is a risk that many call centres can’t afford to take, but there are alternatives to this archaic technique.
A new and innovative service named TPS Compliant has been brought to the call centre marketplace by Nexbridge, which is offered with a guarantee that no calls can be made to TPS or CTPS telephone numbers. TPS Compliant is able to achieve this by performing a real time check on the number being dialled against the TPS and CTPS databases, before allowing or rejecting the call. The databases that store this information are updated with the latest registrations to the TPS and CPS services every day to make sure that only the latest data is used.