Don’t take anything we say here as legal advice, please, for any questions or clarifications see your local lawyer who deals with this sort of thing professionally.
Section 227 of the TCPA says a person "may, if otherwise permitted by the laws or rules of court of a State, bring in an appropriate court of that State..." an action for a TCPA violation. It doesn’t say whether in granting jurisdiction to state courts under certain conditions, Congress meant to divest U.S. district courts of their federal question jurisdiction and bar the filing of such suits in federal courts.
There’s a diversity of legal opinion on the issue. As the authors of the Lexology article say, “tThe Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth, Ninth, and Eleventh Circuits have all held that federal courts lack federal question jurisdiction over TCPA private actions. On the other hand, the Sixth and Seventh Circuits have ruled that federal courts do have federal question jurisdiction over private TCPA suits.”
Read more here.
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New York’s dBusiness News website has a useful list of points to keep in mind when looking for a call center outsourcing provider.
“Do they have the right technology?” This means financial soundness and the correct technology, as well as the ability, experience and institutional stability you’d expect from somebody you’re going to trust with such an important part of your business. As the article suggests, this should really be your starting point, not a later consideration: If a possible vendor fails this test that’s all you need to know about them, better find it out earlier than later.
“Are they helpful?” Don’t underestimate this one – especially for a call center, whose entire mission is to be helpful. As the article observes, if it is not helpful to you, chances are that it won’t be of much help to your clients either. How do you determine their level of helpfulness? As the article sates, check their management operations and talk to them to find out if they actually understand the nature of your business.
Read more here.
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Remember the old days, some say, when a man’s word was his bond? There wasn’t a need for signatures or forms or written documentation. Well, those days might be here again.
Voice biometrics is the science that recognizes the fact that a person’s voice is as unique as their face or fingerprint -- or signature.
According to a good white paper on the topic from IVR experts Angel, entitled “Speak On the Dotted Line,” voice signature tools “can help enterprises that require traditional registration and confirmation processes such as offline, paper forms with wet ink signatures to drastically streamline the process and improve conversions.”
Read more here.
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Call center operations are going to have to accede to increasing demands by consumers who wish to communicate via alternative channels including SMS and Facebook and who knows what else?
"Some of the biggest challenges [we face] have really just been around supporting our customers' desire to have alternate media channels," Mike Taylor, CTO of strategic products and services, recently told call center operations industry observer Jessica Scarpati.
Taylor also noted that customers want more fluidity in how they resolve an issue, meaning the ability to slide from one form of communication to another. As he told Scarpati, "They might be in an environment where they have two or three things going on and they can't pick up a phone to talk, but they can chat or email ... but if all of a sudden the issue gets a little bit more complex, they may want to then escalate that to a voice session."
And what’s going to help call center operations pros, according to Scarpati, is Session Initiation Protocol (SIP). She quotes Hyoun Park, research analyst at Aberdeen Group, saying SIP is the "key enabler" to move call centers from today’s more rigid transactional, telephony-centric environments to what Scarpati describes as “session-based ones that glide between voice, video, text and social networking.”
Read more here.
