GDPR and telemarketing: call centres work, you can too

Like call centres, your business doesn't need to be significantly hampered by the General Data Protection Regulation when it comes to calls. Just follow a few simple principles.

One of the things some users looked forward to as GDPR came into force was the expectation of a significant drop in call centre calls. But even two months after the regulation went live, none of the telemarketing companies have closed their offices. How is this possible? And how might this affect calls in the ordinary course of business?

Cold vs. warm contacts

Call centres in most cases work with so-called cold contacts, i.e. databases of phone numbers whose owners have not requested a call. If you have a database of clients with whom you have already been in contact, these are called warm contacts.

From these contacts you should also already have collected consent to send offers via newsletters, but also perhaps just to reach out by phone.

How call centres went about it

Two months after the General Data Protection Regulation came into force, it turns out that calling cold contacts is still possible. Why is that? Companies are simply using programs that generate phone numbers at random instead of databases.

How should you go about it

According to GDPR, the person you call must be able to opt out of being contacted with telephone solicitations at the beginning of each call.

"If the operator actually calls a completely randomly generated number that is not in any available database, and so is not associated with any name or other identifying data of a specific person, it is not a violation of the Data Protection Act," Vojtěch Marcín of the Office for Personal Data Protection told Právo.

The discrepancy occurs when this randomly addressed person tells the operator his or her name and the operator wants to associate it with a number. According to the General Regulation, such an action is only possible with the customer's consent.

A similar approach should be taken to referrals you receive from current clients and customers. If you encounter any difficulty in synchronizing your phone contact database under GDPR that you are not sure how to handle, please do not hesitate to contact us. We will be happy to help you.