Today, November 15, 2012, is the date revisions to the FCC’s abandoned call rules take effect.
Abandoned calls are now not allowed to exceed three percent of calls placed by a telemarketer. Current FCC rules allow the three percent abandoned call safe harbor to be measured against all telemarketing calls made over a 30-day period. The new FCC rule amends the method by which it measures abandoned calls to match FTC rules that measure abandoned calls over the duration of a single calling campaign, if the campaign is less than 30 days or separately over each successive 30-day period during which the calling campaign continues.
The FCC determined that October 16, 2013 is the effective date for new rules requiring companies to obtain prior express written consent from consumers before calling them with prerecorded telemarketing “robocalls” or before using an autodialer to call their wireless numbers with telemarketing messages.
January 14, 2013, is the effective date for its new rule requiring that prerecorded telemarketing messages must include an automated op-out mechanism.
These new regulations only apply to activity that the FCC refers to as “Telemarketing”. Your business should review the official FCC material to determine if the description (and therefore the regulations), apply to your organization.
According to the FCC, these new rules protect consumers by:
1. Requiring telemarketers to obtain prior express written consent, including by electronic means such as a website form, before placing a robocall to a consumer
2. Eliminating the “established business relationship” exemption to the requirement that telemarketing robocalls to residential wire line phones occur only with prior express consent from the consumer
3. Requiring telemarketers to provide an automated, interactive “opt-out” mechanism during each robocall so that consumers can immediately tell the telemarketer to stop calling
4. Strictly limiting the number of abandoned or “dead air” calls that telemarketers can make within each calling campaign.
Avaya’s Proactive Outreach Manager (POM) can already support the third and fourth rule changes. Proactive Outreach Manager runs on Avaya Aura Experience Portal or your existing Avaya Voice Portal. Customers can modify their self-service applications and use POM web services to automatically add consumer numbers to the DNC. In accordance to the fourth rule, POM does not dial more consumers than it has available message ports.
Patches for Proactive Contact 4.2.2 and Proactive Contact 5.0.1 have been previously posted for the third and fourth rule changes.
Avaya has provided a workaround for companies to utilize until they are able to make the necessary adjustments to their phone systems.
1) Use cruise control to ensure that the abandon calls are less than 3 percent
2) Select dates for Quality Summary reports for the nuisance rate per campaign, or
3) Export the campaign data into a separate reporting system and define the 30 day period there
For more information on bringing your call center into compliance, call Teltek today! We can help you get your phone system up to speed or get you into a new phone system that can make the process more streamlined and FCC approved.
Teltek is a Certified Avaya Business Partner, NEC Dealer, and Microsoft Partner with two locations in the Baltimore Metropolitan area. We specialize in providing one call technology support for small to mid-sized businesses and nonprofits in Maryland, Washington, DC, Virginia and Pennsylvania.