ABANDONING ABANDONENT?: New FCC NPRM Considers Rollback of Abandonment Rule Restrictions– Here’s Why That’s a Bad Idea

Line assignments.

Outside of the call center game virtually no one knows what that means.

But overly aggressive line assignments are actually a major source of frustration for consumers who answer phone calls and are greeted with dead air.

SO what is it?

A line assignment refers to the number of outbound calls a dialer is programmed to make at a time based on the availability of a qualified agent.

And what does that mean?

Well first, let’s talk about the law and what “abandonment” of calls means.

Since 2003 callers have been banned from abandoning more than three percent of outbound calls made as part of a campaign.

That means a live agent must be available to answer at least 97% of calls answered by consumers within two seconds. 

If the call is not answered within two seconds they are supposed to play a prerecorded message advising of who they are and why they were calling–rarely occurs.

But the point is, dropped calls (ones on which a consumer answers but not agent is available to take the call) are supposed to be fairly rare.

But what do abandoned calls happen in the first place? Shouldn’t there always be an agent available to take every call made by a cell center?

Well no.

To avoid agents sitting and listening to ringing calls all day–or worse yet having to waste time dialing phone numbers– call centers largely use automated calling systems known as “predictive dialers.”

While many people have heard of these dialers they don’t operate the way many consumers (and perhaps the FCC–we’ll get to that) assume.

Importantly, they generally do not “predict” when consumers will answer the phone. Instead what they predict is when an agent will be available. 

So in the middle of a campaign a predictive dialer will often launch calls before an agent is available “predicting” one will become available before a call is answered based upon the anticipated answer rate and call duration.

Predictive dialers are designed to drop some calls– call centers prefer to annoy consumers than to have agents twiddling their thumbs– but the abandonment rules keep them in check.

So too for less sophisticated “power dialers”– this is where line assignments really come into play– a call center can set up these dialers to make up to 10 calls per available agent. That means if 8 consumers answer these calls at once, 7 of them are going to experience dead air.

The FCC call abandonment rules keep these guys in check and usually line assignments are limited to 3 per agent– meaning a call center will only attempt 3 calls at a time per agent to assure a 97% agent availability rate.

There are entire teams in large call centers who spend their days throttling line assignments and predictive dialers to assure the abandonment rules are met.

Very important.

But the FCC is considering dropping those rules as part of a new NPRM– and I have to tell you, its a bad idea.

Here’s what the NPRM actually says on the subject:

Call Abandonment Rules. We propose to eliminate our rules prohibiting callers from disconnecting an unanswered telemarketing call prior to at least 15 seconds or four rings, and from abandoning more than three percent of all telemarketing calls.106 We seek comment on this proposal…

We believe that the calling practices these rules target might no longer be a significant source of consumer frustration. That might be because calling practices involving the use of predictive dialers have evolved to become more efficient, rendering our rules no longer necessary to protect consumers. 

I love the FCC, but this bolded portion shows a complete misunderstanding of how predictive dialers operate.

As mentioned above, they are generally not predicting when you are likely to pick up your phone–hence the huge number of missed calls we all have– they are predictive agent availability, and they are doing so based upon an aggressiveness set by call center reps.

If the abandonment rules go away, there is no reason for call centers not to crank these things all the way up. You’ll see 20–maybe even 100 line assignment settings. This will please call centers because their agents will be fully utilized and therefore making money.

Of course GOOD COMPANIES won’t do this to consumers. And you can expect R.E.A.C.H.– the trade organization for lead generators and marketers who actually care about consumer privacy and preferences– to set firm standards forbidding this sort of thing.

But the truth is the wider marketing world–particularly the middleman lead generators that are responsible for so many unwanted calls at it is– will simply crank of their dialers.

This is true because these companies are invisible to consumers anyway. They buy a data set, put it on the dialer, don’t reveal their identity when they reach a consumer and then transfer the consumer to a company that thinks they are buying a “hot lead.”

So while companies like Wells Fargo probably won’t carpet bomb consumers with outbound calls they will very likely unknowingly buy leads from companies who are doing just that.

I explain all of this in that huge webinar we did yesterday. Check it out:

 See my discussion starting at the 33:24 mark.

Paraphrasing Madison, “if men were angels, no laws would be necessary”– but call center operators (particularly in the lead generation space) are no angels. Some laws are needed– and this is coming from one of the biggest proponents of industry self-governance out there.

Let’s “delete delete delete” something else– and leave the abandonment rules in place. They are the only thing protecting consumers from an even nastier rise in unwanted calls.

Just my view.

What do YOU all think? Am I missing an angle here? Is the FCC seeing something the Czar isn’t? Interested in everyone’s take as R.E.A.C.H. evaluates its likely comment here.

BTW you can read the full NPRM here: FCC NPRM

Chat soon.