The funniest thing just happened as I sat here at my desk writing about call centers. My phone rang, and it was my local video store. As I wondered how on earth they tracked me down at work, a cheerful recording told me that I could rent movies two-for-one this weekend.

I was surprised; the only time the video store ever calls is when my movies are days overdue. A small place like this makes its money off of late fees, so there's a tension between getting the movies back so others can rent them and letting them stay out so fees can accumulate. It's a dying business model though. After some exorbitant fees (it's embarrassing how long it took me to figure out that this little shop didn't offer three day rentals), I changed my behavior in two ways: I bought more DVDs and I joined Netflix.

So it's apparent this little movie store is looking for some technological assistance. Why not outbound?

"Junk Mail is Alive and Growing," read a New York Times headline a couple weeks ago. By growing, they mean that direct mail is both replacing telemarketing and defying expectations after many observers predicted its demise to the Internet.

We at Call Center HQ had a five minute discussion about whether or not to mention it as a part of our January Outbound Trends article. We're not going to, and here's why: the growth in junk mail only shows that direct mailers are making the same fatal mistake that got telemarketers in hot water a few years ago.

That faulty scattershot approach annoyed consumers enough to provoke the government to come up with the Do Not Call (DNC) legislation that completely restructured outbound. Are direct mailers making a big mistake? Even as marketers are poised to spend $15 billion more on direct mail this year than they did in 2000, the Direct Marketing Association admits that a mere 2.15% of mailings lead to sales or any other acknowledgement from consumers.

The point we'd like to make is that, if the Times is to be believed, direct mail is increasing but it isn't getting any more targeted, creative, or effective. But dialing is. That's the focus of our January feature. DNC may have led to a boffo increase in junk mail, but the more compelling trend to look at is how it also led to smarter, more innovative and more consumer-friendly telemarketing practices:

1. By following the DNC guidelines, telemarketers reach fewer unreceptive consumers.
2. By focusing on the customers they already have, businesses are offering their customers things they may actually want.
3. By using outbound to keep customers informed about their accounts -- order status, flight changes, appointment reminders, etc. -- businesses stay in touch with their clients in ways that constantly remind them of their benevolence.

For the fourth installment of our Outbound Trends Q&A series, we spoke with Five9's director of product management Randy Jessee.

Five9, unlike the other firms we spoke with, has an all-hosted model for call center services. That means call centers are spared the expensive on-site hardware and tech expertise that used to be a mandatory part of a call center's business.

When we asked Jessee about the significance of hosting in the outbound market, he told us: "I would say hosting is a very significant trend for the 100 seat and smaller call center. I think the massive centers are still doing premise installations, since they can amortize the cost of management and hardware across lots of agents."

This and our interviews with Aspect Software, Interactive Intelligence and SER Solutions are a part of our research for Call Center Magazine's upcoming January feature on Outbound Trends. We also had a chat about dialing with consultant Donna Fluss.

For the third of our series of Q&A interviews with predictive dialer vendors, we present SER Solutions' Scott Wielar, Senior Vice President, Marketing and Business Development and Larry Mark, Chief Technology Officer.

SER's new dialer, which Larry Mark says is much more flexible than legacy dialers, will be out in January.

This and our interviews with Aspect Software and Interactive Intelligence are a part of our research for Call Center Magazine's upcoming January feature on Outbound Trends. We also had a chat about dialing with consultant Donna Fluss.

As a part of our upcoming January feature on Outbound Trends, here's another of our brief Q&As with predictive dialer vendors, this time with Aspect Software's technology office senior vice president Jim Mitchell.

Mitchell gives some great examples of the new and innovative applications for outbound technology, which is what our upcoming article is all about.

As a part of our research for our January article on outbound trends, we spoke with DMG Consulting's president and Call Center Magazine columnist Donna Fluss.

She wrote an excellent column about outbound/dialing trends for our July 2006 issue called "Dialing Isn't Dead." Check it out -- it has a very helpful chart plotting the uses of dialers. As Fluss shows, there's much more to outbound than telemarketing.

Telemarketing isn't gone, Fluss tells us: "What's happening is that outbound calling is changing, and it's going from blind calling which by the end had a very, very small success rate (we're talking one or two percent), to relationship calling which is a very positive event for everybody involved."

Why is it changing? "Do Not Call" (DNC) legislation had something to do with it. But, Fluss said, "DNC did not kill outbound dialing. DNC prevented companies from disruptive dialing, and therefore, I think it's tremendously positive. It also basically challenges companies to figure out how to build relationships with their customers. If a company has a relationship with a customer, then they are allowed to call them. But it just has to be done in a much more meaningful way. I think that's really positive; it's certainly been positive for everyone I've spoken to. What DNC did was alter the landscape of dialing, and it basically forced companies to get smart about how they reached out to their customers, and it’s to the benefit of the enterprise and the benefit of the consumer."

Some of the types of relationship dialing Fluss refers to include loyalty calls, appointment reminders, fraud prevention, welcome calls, and special occassion calls. There's a wealth of information about your customers in your CRM systems -- dialing can help you make use of it.

Look for more about outbound trends from Donna Fluss in our January issue, plus her regularly scheduled column.

In the days leading up to the midterm elections this week, we heard a lot about political phone calls disrupting dinner. And it was calls from both parties, Republican and Democrat. A lot of the calls were recordings, and if you hung up, they'd try you again. The question we kept hearing was "I'm on the federal 'do not call' list -- why am I getting all these political calls?"

We're working a feature for our January issue about outbound trends. We've been talking to some consultants and some predictive dialer vendors about the state of outbound, asking them what they think of the state of the industry a few years after Do Not Call.

Is telemarketing disappearing? Are there enough innovative uses for dialing to constitute genuine trends?

If you have any opinions, information, or perspectives you'd like to share with us, we'd like to hear it. Email associate editor Harry Sheff.

In the meantime, here's what Matt Taylor, Product Manager for Interactive Intelligence had to say: