Interview with ATA Chair and Liason to the Stuart Discount

Stuart Discount is the government affairs chair for the American Teleservices Association and handles the government affairs role. He sat down at the ATA National Convention in New Orleans with Customer Management IQ's Blake Landau to talk about this year's theme "answering the call." In this podcast interview Discount also dives into the current state of regulatory compliance and the effects it will have on call center.



The shrinking number of landlines and the state side of regulatory compliance are troubling for the ATA member base. The memory of the "do not call" regulation is still fresh in the minds of ATA. "Do not call" caused thousands of layoffs across the country. The ATA wants to prevent another "do not call" situation. When consumer inbound regulation starts to pop up the ATA wants to offer sensible amendments. One issue on the horizon for regulatory compliance is hold time for inbound support centers. If a consumer gets on a sales call they should have the same wait time as they have for service; but this is troubling for businesses. If you are required to have a call disposition in a certain amount of time costs will increase. Staffing a call center, when it comes to minimizing cost, is very difficult.

In this podcast hear more about the biggest challenges facing the industry today including "do not call" and the proliferation of cell phone usage.