Call centres forced to shut shop: Report

By siliconindia staff writer   |   Wednesday, 01 October 2003, 19:30 IST
Printer Print Email Email
BANGALORE: US ‘DO-NOT-CALL’ lists—which include names of Americans who don’t want to receive telemarketing calls—have put many Indian call centres in a spot, forcing some to shut down, according to a report published in Hindustan Times, a leading English daily in India. At least five call centres in Hyderabad which do telemarketing in the US have closed shop and many others may follow suit, even as the countdown begins for the do-not-call law to come into effect on October 1. Backed by the US Congress and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and fed up with unsolicited marketing calls, about 50 million Americans have registered their numbers on the do-not-call lists on websites like donotcall.gov. Telemarketers, who would be supplied these lists, can call these numbers at the risk of being fined up to $11,000. Wednesday's ruling by a federal judge that the FTC has no authority to bar such calls appeared to have no effect. While Congress leaders promised to pass laws to give the FTC the necessary powers before October 1, many US states said they would go ahead with the lists. Many call centres across India, largely in the South, handle telemarketing for US companies which outsource the work to them to cut costs. A Hyderabad’s Goldstone Technologies executive, which shut its telemarketing operation from Tuesday, says the no-call lists made business a risky proposition because of the fines. N. Parvez, MD, Hyderabad's Callworld Technologies, another centre that closed down, says that as if the no-call lists were not bad enough, the outsourcers were defaulting on payments. "These lists are serious, you can't get away from them,'' says Avinash Vashistha, MD, NeoIT. He feels many smaller players in the market have no systems in place to ensure they don’t end up calling a do-not-call number. Even if all of them do not close shop, the law will considerably push up the costs of call centres which have to sift through the numbers before making the call. Vashistha says while small companies will shift their work from telemarketing to non-voice BPO work, big players will adapt to the lists. Sources say some big companies have acquired insurance covers that will come in handy if they mistakenly call the do-not-call numbers.