From Lisa Maidment, Marketing Manager,Reed Business Call, 78-81 Queens Road,Brighton BN1 3XZ
I am writing in connection with your article outlining the role of Datapoint’s Call Distribution System in Midland Bank’s innovative home telebank operation (CI No 1,274). At the close of the article you mention that a similar system is used by the junk telephone call-making operation set up by the Reed Publishing arm of Reed Inter national Plc. Here, you are, in fact, referring to our company, Reed Business Call. Whilst it is true that we are invol ved in Telephone Marketing, we are definite ly not involved in junk call-making. Unfortunately, Telephone Marketing was born from telesales and it has had to work hard to educate people as to its important role within the marketing mix. Generally this has paid off and Telephone Marketing is now perceived as a powerful, versatile and cost effective part of the marketing process. Despite this however, some misconceptions still persist which is why we were offended by your description of our operation. Incidentally, the financial institutions, including the banks, are some of the largest and most sophisticated users of Telephone Marketing and I think that they would be the first to disagree with your definition of it as junk telephone call-making.
