Bulletins

Product Bulletin

Cisco Response to UK Ofcom Regulations 2003

(including 2008 and 2010 revisions)

PB613797

This document is high-level response to the Office of Communications Act (Ofcom)

2010 revised statement of policy on the persistent misuse of an electronic

communications network or service (for the statement of policy, please visit:

http://www.ofcom.org.uk/consult/condocs/persistent_misuse/statement/misuse_statem

ent.pdf). As such, it addresses the points raised by Ofcom in the revised statement of

policy and supersedes any guidance supplied that relates to the 2006 statement of

policy Ofcom supplied detailing its approach to section 131 of the Office of

Communications Act (2003). Cisco recommends the use of Cisco

Outbound Option

Version 10.5(2) and later for compliance purposes.

In the interest of brevity, this document sets out the high-level points of compliance and a Cisco response to each.

1. The "abandoned call" rate shall be no more than 3 percent of "live call", calculated per campaign (i.e. across

call centres) or per call centre (i.e. across campaigns) over any 24-hour period and shall include a reasoned

estimate of Answer Machine Detection (AMD) false positives.

●

Cisco response: The Cisco Outbound Option allows administrators to configure the maximum abandon

rate for predictive campaigns. The predictive algorithm uses this rate to control the dialer pace such that the

maximum abandon rate is not exceeded.

2. In the event of an "abandoned call", a very brief recorded information message is played within two seconds of

an individual beginning to speak, which contains at least the following information:

a. The identity of the company on whose behalf the call was made (which will not necessarily be the same

company that is making the call)

b. Details of a no-charge (0800) or Special Services basic-rate (0845) number the called person can contact

so they have the possibility of declining to receive further marketing calls from that company

c. Includes no marketing content and is not used as an opportunity to market to the called person

●

Cisco response: You can configure the Cisco Outbound Option to support all these requirements by using

the interactive voice response (IVR) platform to provide these messages. The outbound dialer can transfer

abandoned calls to IVR applications. You can use both the Cisco Unified IP Interactive Voice Response (IP

IVR) and Cisco Unified Customer Voice Portal as queuing and prompting platforms. You can configure

Abandon to IVR by entering a route point in the "when no agents are available" field in the Skill Group

Selection window. The content of the IVR message (for example, no marketing content) is determined by

the end user; Cisco has no control over this content.

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Product Bulletin Cisco Response to UK Ofcom Regulations 2003 (including 2008 and 2010 revisions) PB613797 This document is high-level response to the Office of Communications Act (Ofcom) 2010 revised statement of policy on the persistent misuse of an electronic communications network or service (for the statement of policy, please visit: http://www.ofcom.org.uk/consult/condocs/persistent_misuse/statement/misuse_statem ent.pdf).
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3. Calls which are not answered must ring for a minimum of 15 seconds before being terminated. ● Cisco response: This stipulation requires appropriate configuration of the Cisco Outbound Option. The default behavior of the dialer is to cancel calls when no agents are available. With Abandon to IVR configured, the dialer does not cancel calls and the call rings until the ring no-answer limit is reached.