Do Not Call Register, in its first year of operation, has had a minimal impact on Australian contact centre industry, a report has revealed.

The report, Dimension Data Global Contact Centre Benchmarking Report 2008, showed that 91.7 per cent of Australian participants found the register had either no impact or change on overall outbound calling volumes, with 90.5% claiming it had no impact on their campaign success rate.

A total of 54 Australian contact centres participated in the survey, primarily from some of Australia’s largest banking, government, insurance, retail, telecommunications and transport organisations.

One of the authors of the report, Ian Dundas from Dimension Data, said considering over two million registrations that the register received, the results are “heartening”.

“In the lead-up to the introduction of the Register last year, there was a lot of anxiety as to its potential negative impact on Australia’s contact centre industry,” he said.

“The majority of organisations who participated in the benchmark survey were larger enterprises and are not using unsolicited calls as a way to sell their products and services. Most have already moved beyond the ‘hit and miss’ nature and poor conversion rates of these types of outbound sales campaigns.

“What they are doing very well with is inbound marketing campaigns and outbound customer satisfaction and ‘update’ calls: recognising cross-selling opportunities during these types of calls with existing customers,” Mr Dundas said.