DMA Issues Privacy Law Guides
The Direct Marketing Association has issued two new documents on complying with new California legislation and Federal Trade Commission (FTC) rules that take effect early this year. Specifically, The DMA wants to alert members to new relating to California's new privacy law, (S.B.27), as well as to the new FTC rule on how to determine the "primary purpose" of a commercial e-mail message pursuant to the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003. SB 27, which went into effect on Jan. 1, applies only if personal information (of a California customer) is shared with third parties for direct marketing purposes but applies to online and offline activities for both for-profit and nonprofit entities. In addition, the FTC issued its final rule on how to determine the "primary purpose" of a commercial e-mail message under the CAN-SPAM Act. This rule takes effect on Feb. 18. The FTC added a fourth category of messages for purely transactional or relationship messages. In this case, the FTC requires messages with both commercial and relationship or transactional content to have the relationship or transactional content appear at the beginning of the message. If they don't, the primary purpose of the message will be deemed commercial.
Originally published in Direct Newsline
ICT short-lived near Buffalo
AMHERST, N.Y. - About 200 workers, hired just eight weeks ago at a new ICT call center here, were laid off last week after ICT reportedly lost a contract with Experian.
Originally published in CCNews.
BPO Survey Shows 42% Mortgage Companies Likely To Outsource in Next 2 Years
West Palm Beach, FL -Forty-two percent of the respondents to a survey of mortgage industry companies said they are likely to outsource at least some services within the next two years, according to a study released today by Ocwen Financial Corporation (NYSE: OCN).
Originally published in ContactCenterWorld.com
Non-compliance with CAN-SPAM Widespread
Spam accounted for 77% of all e-mail traffic in 2004 and virtually all unsolicited e-mails transmitted failed to comply with the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing (CAN-SPAM) Act, according to MX Logic Inc., a Denver based e-mail security and tracking firm.
MX Logic measures random samples of 10,000 e-mails monthly to measure CAN-SPAM compliance since the law was enacted in January 2004. The highest monthly average measured compliance rate for 2004 was 7% in December, based on MX Logic\'s figures. The lowest compliance rate was .54% in July.
The firm estimates that as much as 69% of daily spam originates from zombie computers, which are computers hijacked by spammers that are linked to networks without the knowledge of the computer owners.
Ending the increasing spam epidemic will require a long-term effort that includes industry cooperation to improve e-mail authentication and security protocols, said Scott Chasin, CTO at MX Logic.
Originally published in Direct Newsline
Ask the Experts
The following are actual questions posed to the TRG experts. You can pose your questions on our website.
Malaysia as an Outsource destination
Question: "What is the prognosis and the possibilities and actions required for Malaysia to become a competitive offshore, outsource call center destination?"
Expert Response:
The recent and forecasted growth of call/contact centers in Asia-Pacific is outpacing the rest of the world. In 2003 Asia-Pacific represented 8,600 call centers and 420,000 agent positions. Datamonitor has predicted this market to grow at a CAGR (Consolidated Annual Growth Rate) of 15.1% per annum and to total over one million agent positions by 2008.
With approximately 250 call centers operating today, an industry association in place and a highly multilingual workforce Malaysia should be well poised to capitalize on the outsourcing trend. However Malaysia is handicapped by amongst the highest labor costs in the region. The labor costs, a higher level of staff turnover, than India or the Philippines, a shortage of experienced staff and lack of governmental focus will limit to near term prospects for the Malaysian call center industry. Government support, investment and leveraging the existing number of Regional Head Offices and technology firms located in Malaysia will be critical to developing a significant offshore call center industry in the country. In the near term I expect that the Malaysian industry will grow at about the 15% level over the next year, but at this growth rate it will be losing ground to India and the Philippines.
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