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BT hopes to empower consumers to rally against the ‘menace’ of nuisance calls with the launch of crowd-sourced Call Protection service

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By Katie Deighton, Senior Reporter

January 16, 2017 | 3 min read

BT has announced the launch of a new service that allows customers to divert ‘blacklisted’ numbers into a separate mailbox, with the aim of empowering and engaging its consumer base in the fight against nuisance and scam callers.

BT Christine Lampard

Christine Lampard has been selected as BT's Call Protection ambassador

The free Call Protection campaign launches today (16 January) and is fronted by former One Show presenter Christine Lampard: “a champion of consumer issues” according to Pete Oliver, BT Consumer’s commercial marketing and digital managing director.

Christine Lampard

Lampard appears in a number of online films promoting the service, which will be broadcast via BT’s social media channels. The telecoms group will also be launching a direct mail campaign as part of the Call Protection marketing strategy to target elderly consumers who may not use the internet, and is encouraging younger consumers to help older friends and relatives to opt-in.

BT hopes the launch will demonstrate it is ‘declaring war’ on the likes of automated dials for sales calls, PPI companies and accident claims. Speaking about the campaign’s inflammatory language, Oliver told The Drum: “The people we’re targeting are not legitimate enterprises, they are people who are harassing or trying to scam customers.

“We’re keen to encourage customers to get engaged with the issue and feel empowered, and I think making the language combative I think is a really good way to make customers feel that they can do something about this problem and take power into their own hands.”

Oliver explained the network had a “breakthrough with technology” thanks to recent innovations in big data and artificial intelligence. These combined allow BT to quickly blacklist blocks of numbers known to be a nuisance to its customers. While the company would not reveal the scale of investment into the service, Oliver admitted it “hasn’t been cheap” – unsurprising as its tech team has expanded to manually authorise the numbers destined for the diversion mailbox.

Customers can also manually add nuisance calls to their own blacklist, either by dialing 1572 after receiving a call or by registering the number online. As the service is rolled out, BT will be able to crowd source the numbers appearing on multiple customer blacklists and automatically block those calls for its user base in the future.

The company claims it could eventually divert up to 15 million calls a week from personal accident claims and PPI companies alone. The service is currently set up for home phone use, however BT has not ruled out expansion into its mobile and business branches.

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