Staying TCPA Compliant in a Cell Phone World
Whether you’re the call center manager for a huge customer service center or for a busy third-party debt collector, your team has to not only successfully achieve its daily outbound contact goals, but they have to accomplish that feat while adhering to industry rules, regulations, and protocols.
For 25 years now, the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) has been in effect to halt certain types of telephone solicitations to land line – and now cell phone – numbers. As of mid-October 2013, written consent from the phone owner is required prior to any and all marketing-driven auto-dialed or pre-recorded calls sent to and all pre-recorded calls made to residential land lines.
While that’s great news for all the annoyed recipients of those once-unnerving calls from scammers, it’s also affected the ease and speed of calls made by legitimate businesses. The good news is that cloud-based call center software – like TCN’s – has innovative, built-in TCPA-compliant features (like manual dial, cell phone scrub and manually approved calling) that can mitigate risks and prevent your organization from experiencing a slowdown while making legitimate calls. These features also help your call center improve both customer relationship management (CRM) data and overall efficiency.
Here are a few ways that TCN’s real-time, cloud-based call center software can help you stay TCPA compliant in today’s cell phone world:
It automatically removes numbers your team shouldn’t call.
As set forth by the TCPA, certain phone numbers simply cannot be dialed, including cell phone numbers! TCN’s platform has the ability to remove those numbers instantly and automatically from your team’s call lists. This not only avoids any TCPA infringement, it also saves countless hours of work time that can be used to make successful calls instead.
It identifies who your team is calling.
TCN instantly verifies the identity of your subscriber, enabling your agents to see whether or not your company has the necessary required consent to make the call.
It respects privacy.
While quality call center software often includes a feature that enables call recording so that you can properly train your team with real-life scenarios, it also provides a feature that can pause live recordings when it’s imperative to maintain a customer’s privacy. This benefit is three-fold: records conversations, pauses conversations, and adheres to TCPA guidelines that state a customer’s privacy must be maintained.
It requires manual dialing.
The software enables your team to manually dial numbers themselves, instantly helping ensure TCPA compliance. In fact, automated dialing is often prohibited in many cases.
It automatically updates features.
With the onslaught of new technologies, your call center software needs to be current, robust, and able to continually update its features to remain TCPA compliant. Although TCPA was first put into effect more than two decades ago, the government continues to update these regulations to be sure they are in sync with 21st century technology. Without TCN’s contact center software, you might be compliant today, but non-compliant tomorrow.
It saves time, money, and stress.
By embracing an automated, constantly current, state-of-the-art software solution to handle the majority of your TCPA compliance concerns at your call center, you’re able to focus your team’s time, your department’s budget, and any potential operational worries somewhere else! With call center software, you’ll avoid being penalized $500 to $1500 per infraction, your agents will be able to make calls confidently without the worry of possibly breaking the law hovering over their heads, and you’ll be able to focus on consistently providing exceptional customer service.