Collection, renewal, satisfaction survey and retention campaigns engage the same regime, to varying degrees, and are run by organisations that do not think of themselves as telemarketing operations at all.
Size
115,000seats in the sectorAPCC, Portugal, 2025
€3.7 bncluster turnoverDeloitte for APCC, 2022
1,717operations surveyed, across 96 undertakingsAPCC, 2025
30 %of contacts handled by automated agentsAPCC, 2025; up 16 percentage points
485,203complaints in the national complaints bookDirectorate-General for Consumer Affairs, 2025
23.5 %agent turnoverAPCC, 2025
Categories of audience
| Category | Legal position | Verified size | Priority |
|---|---|---|---|
| Outsourced customer service providers | Performing party, with contractual liability of its own and liability as a data processor | Concentrate 83 % of the sector’s seats; 74.7 % of operations are outsourced | Second |
| Financial services and insurance | Obliged, with conduct supervision layered on top | Covered by the Spanish regime as a service of general interest | First |
| Electronic communications and postal services | Obliged, with a sector regulator of its own | The sector with the highest volume of consumer complaints | First |
| In-house operations in retail, healthcare, industry and services | Obliged as a trader in the consumer relationship | 25.3 % of operations are in-house | Second |
| Technology vendors, integrators and training providers | Interested, and exposed through the systems they supply | Directly affected by the article 50 transparency duty | Third |
Sources
Quantitative data comes from the Portuguese Contact Centre Association, from the study it commissioned from Deloitte, from Eurostat and from the sector regulators cited on each page. Figures drawn from different sources are not additive, and the notes indicate where the series diverge. [Data not confirmed in an official source is marked in square brackets and italics.]
Locate your organisation
The first question is not which service you need, but which category your organisation falls into and what follows from that.