News Focus: Best Practice - Telemarketers form body to improve industry image.

The Customer Contact Association is challenging marketers to raise standards in their contact centres with the creation of a high profile Industry Council think-tank to represent them to the media, the regulator and the consumer.

Industry Council members - which include such big hitters as BT, British Gas, Royal Mail and Vodafone, and which employ 15 per cent of the UK's 800,000 customer centre staff - have commissioned a series of research white papers designed to promote best practice and force customer contact issues to the heart of the corporate agenda.

But some in the industry fear it will take more dramatic moves to change the way some companies …