Industry experts discuss how to increase customer retention during a recession, the evolution of mobile services, and integrating direct mail into a teleservices campaign.

Even with tough regulations, pharmaceutical marketing is boasting bigger gains than ever. Ellen Keohane finds out this sector's secrets of success.

Many of America's largest companies have been using offshore resources for manufacturing and services for many years. Today, the depth of business process outsourc­ing has increased dramatically to encompass mail order processing, warranty/product regis­tration processing, special campaign support, document/information data entry, document scanning and legal transcription, insurance, legal, accounting and human resources.

Wachovia Bank has entered into a settlement agreement with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), which is directing the bank to make restitution to consumers harmed by its relationships with numerous teleservices providers and third-party payment processors.

The Do-Not-Call Fee Extension Act of 2007 has been enacted, setting the annual fees telemarketers will pay to access the registry in fiscal year 2009 at $54 for each area code of data accessed or $14,850 for access to every area code in the registry, whichever is less. More than 157 million phone numbers are currently enrolled in the National Do Not Call Registry.

Charles Farrugia, a defendant in a Federal Trade Commission lawsuit alleging a scam involving telemarket­ing lists and American businesses, has settled FTC charges for his role in the May 2006 Datacom Marketing case. Farrugia, who was acting as the corporate defendants' president when the case was filed, was added as a defendant in November 2006.

California Democratic Assembly Member Fabian Nunez has introduced a bill which, if enacted, will add additional regulations to companies soliciting a consumer's consent to contact him or her through telemarketing.

Database and list marketing giant InfoUSA plans to spreading its business overseas, initially targeting China and India. The company said in a release it is in discussions with several overseas partners to compile a telephone-verified database for these countries.

Microsoft has partnered with global call center and customer relations management outsourcer EDS to offer Microsoft Dynamics CRM as an EDS enterprise application.

RightNow Technologies has released a new version of its on-demand CRM platform. The two main upgrades to the system are a contextual agent workspace and feedback topic monitoring.