Live From Strasbourg: Fedma Adopts Telemarketing Guidelines
The Federation of European Direct Marketing, at its annual forum, yesterday released a set of principles on the use of the telephone as a marketing medium throughout Europe.
The guidelines, which are voluntary and seek to influence the national DM associations, cover such things as waiting times, information requirements when making outbound calls, information on premium-rate telephone numbers and reasonable hours for calling. Marketers would have to maintain “do not call” lists for consumers who do not wish to be called by telemarketers. They would also need to clean their prospecting lists against the Telephone Preference Services systems that exist in Europe.
The European Commission recommended in 1992 the use of codes of conduct for the protection of consumers in respect of distance selling, which was reaffirmed in the 1997 Distance Selling Directive. Fedma said the new principles respond to the commission’s support of industry self-regulation.
The guidelines call for the use of automatic dialers only when the prospect has previously consented to receive such calls without live operator intervention or when the call was initiated with a live operator. As for the use of predictive dialers, the guidelines state: “If a live operator is unavailable to take the call generated by the dialer, the equipment should abandon the call and release the line in not more than one second.”
“The more transnational direct marketing there is, the more important it is to have guidelines across Europe,” said Philip Cohen, chairman of Fedma’s Teleservices Council.
Cohen said the group started with articles covering all aspects of telemarketing but decided it was better to have more general rules. The European guidelines are generally stricter than those of the U.S. Direct Marketing Association and the American Teleservices Association, he added.
