Cold-calling old customers is over: what works now

Your system holds hundreds of people who once bought something from you. A kitchen, a boiler, sun blinds, a bike, a service visit. Quiet week? Someone would pull up that list and start calling customers: how is it holding up, and did you know we now also do this. In the Netherlands that has not been allowed since 1 July 2026, unless the customer gave you explicit prior consent to call. The exception that said an old customer relationship was enough has been scrapped. This article: what changed, who it applies to, what is still allowed, and what to set up instead so your customers call you.

What exactly changed on 1 July 2026

The rules for telephone sales are in article 11.7 of the Dutch Telecommunications Act. The main rule has been the same for years: you may only call people with a commercial offer if they gave prior consent. But there was an exception, the customer relationship: if someone had ever bought from you, you could call them about similar products or services of your own company, up to three years after that purchase.

That exception lapsed on 1 July 2026. The Dutch consumer and market authority ACM puts it like this: from 1 July, consumers and small entrepreneurs may only be called if they have given explicit consent (source: ACM, acm.nl, publication on the new telemarketing rules, 2026). Ondernemersplein, run by the Netherlands Enterprise Agency, confirms the date: the change to the Telecommunications Act took effect on 1 July 2026, and does not apply to charities, lotteries that donate to charities, and publishers of newspapers and magazines.

• Until 1 July 2026: having been a customer was enough, as long as it was a comparable product, they could have objected at the time, and you offered an opt-out in every call.
• Since 1 July 2026: having been a customer is no longer enough. Without prior consent you may not call with an offer.
• Unchanged: you must be able to prove per person that you were allowed to call, you call from a visible company number, and you offer an opt-out in every conversation.
• Unchanged: for phone sales of subscriptions, energy and water the customer must agree in writing before anything is binding.

Who it applies to and who it does not

The rules protect natural persons. That means consumers, but also entrepreneurs without a legal entity: sole traders, partners in a partnership. The ACM explicitly names freelancers and partnerships. If you call a limited company or a foundation for business sales, nothing changes for you.

That sounds reassuring for anyone selling business to business, but look at your own database first. In most installation firms, kitchen studios, window companies, blind fitters, landscapers, bike shops and garages, private customers and sole traders sit side by side, and the legal form is usually not recorded. That is exactly where it goes wrong: it is not the calling round that gets you into trouble, it is the fifteen numbers in it you could not classify.

What you may still do by phone

There is no ban on calling. There is a ban on unsolicited calls with a commercial offer. That distinction matters more than it looks, because most of what a technical or service business does all day falls outside it.

• Service calls: passing on a delivery time, handling a fault, moving an appointment, resolving a complaint, checking that everything works. That is delivering what you agreed, not selling.
• Customers who ask to be contacted. Someone pressing a call-me-back button is asking for it. That is a different conversation entirely, for the caller too.
• Customers who gave you explicit prior consent to call, and where you can prove it.
• Business customers that are a legal entity: limited companies, foundations, associations.

Watch one trap the ACM names explicitly: consent may not be obtained by phone during a service call. So your engineer on the line about a fault may not quickly ask whether he can call with offers in future. And if someone says during a call that they do not want to be called again, you must remove their number from your call list immediately.

Email and messaging are still allowed, under conditions

Here is the part most news coverage drops, and for you it is the most important. The tightening applies to the phone. For email, text and app messages the customer exception remains. On the spam ban the ACM writes: you may send existing customers unsolicited messages about products or services related to earlier purchases, provided they can unsubscribe and you are clearly identifiable as the sender (source: ACM, acm.nl, on preventing spam in your advertising).

• It has to be a real customer: someone who bought from you, not someone who once requested a quote and never signed.
• The message has to be about something resembling what they bought before. A boiler service reminder to someone with your boiler: yes. An offer for something entirely different: no.
• Every message contains a clear, free and quick way to unsubscribe.
• For anyone who is not a customer the normal rule applies: prior consent, and the ACM expects you to be able to prove that consent up to five years after sending.

What that calling round actually cost you

Some arithmetic, because the law is taking away something whose return was rarely calculated. An hour of work cost a Dutch employer an average of 47.60 euro in 2025. Those are labour costs per hour actually worked, including employer contributions and paid leave, which puts it well above the gross hourly wage you are used to quoting (source: Statistics Netherlands, The labour market in figures 2025). In construction it is 45.30 euro, in retail and wholesale 39.50 euro.

Say you have 600 old customers on the list and it takes four minutes per name on average, including the numbers nobody answers and the second attempt. That is forty hours of calling, roughly 1,900 euro in labour cost for a round in which most people do not pick up. This is a worked example with your own numbers as variables, not a measurement at a client. Fill in your own list and your own call length.

The point is not that calling is expensive. The point is that you paid for those forty hours and now no longer have permission for them either. Better to build something that is allowed and takes less time.

What to set up instead: the moment, not the list

A calling round runs on your calendar: it is quiet, so we call. What replaces it runs on the customer's calendar. Not everyone at once, but each customer exactly when it means something to them. That moment is usually already in your own system, only nobody looks at it.

• Installation and maintenance: twelve months after the last service, or just before the heating season.
• Windows, blinds and roofing: the end of the warranty period, or the season in which the complaint always appears.
• Cars and bikes: the inspection date or annual service, plus the last mileage reading.
• Kitchens, bathrooms and interiors: six months after handover, asking whether everything still closes properly; two years later the accessories.
• Gardens and outdoor space: the seasonal work that returns every year, per customer on their own date.
• Anything with a consumable: filters, tyres, bags, fluids, on the interval that belongs to that product.

Such a message is short, is about something the customer recognises, and has an unsubscribe option. And it ends not with a pitch but with a question: shall we call you to schedule it? If the customer says yes, you may call, because they asked. That flips the whole situation: instead of a list of 600 people you may not call, you have a short list of people waiting for your call.

Then make sure the door is open when they respond, including outside office hours. A builder described on X in July 2026 how an AI phone assistant at a white goods company handled roughly 105 after-hours calls in nine days, after which only the conversations that needed a human reached the desk. That is the builder's own claim, not an independently verified figure, and it is not a Socialo result. But the order of magnitude matches what every service business recognises: more people call outside your opening hours than you think, and those people then call someone else.

Asking for consent without the hassle

Asking for consent feels like one more form. It does not have to be, if you ask at a moment where it makes sense. You need one per customer, and you already have those moments.

• On quote approval: a separate box, ticked by the customer, asking whether you may call later about maintenance and replacement.
• On handover or the first invoice: the same, on paper or in the confirmation email.
• During a service visit: do not let the engineer ask on the phone, put it on the digital work order the customer signs anyway.
• Record per customer what they agreed to, when, and through which form. That is your proof.
• Make withdrawing as easy as giving. Someone who wants off the list and cannot get off it is a complaint to the regulator.

Letting an AI assistant call or message? One more rule

Since 2 August 2026, chat and voice assistants must tell the user they are talking to AI. That is article 50 of the European AI Act, and there is no transition period. The European Commission adopted the final guidelines on 20 July 2026 (document C(2026) 5054) and frames it as a property of the system itself: the system must be designed so people are explicitly informed. A line in your terms and conditions is not enough, and business contact is covered too.

In practice: if an AI assistant answers your phone, it says so in the first sentence. If it answers messages, it says so in the first message. It costs you nothing and saves exactly the kind of argument you have no time for.

What this does not solve

• If your offer is wrong, a different channel will not help. A reminder for a service that is too expensive does not improve by being automated neatly.
• If your database is messy, you will spend time cleaning first. Duplicate customers, old addresses, no purchase date: that is manual work up front.
• If you have 40 customers, do this by hand. Automation pays off once the same message applies to dozens of people a month.
• More messages is not better. Every unsubscribe you earn with a pointless message is a customer you will not reach later either.

Four steps from calling round to follow-up that holds up

• Write down what you currently call for. Split it into service (allowed) and sales (not without consent). Usually three quarters turns out to be service.
• Put the consent question into the two or three moments you already have: quote approval, handover, work order.
• Pick two recurring moments from your own records and send a message on them, with an unsubscribe link and a request to be called back.
• Measure one thing: how many people ask to be called back. That is your new calling round, and it calls back on request.

Almost all of the above you can do yourself, with the systems you already have. We only come into the picture when it can no longer be kept up by hand: when the moments have to come from three systems that do not know each other, or when the replies land in an inbox nobody has time for.