The Complete Guide to TCPA Compliance

TCN Helps You Avoid Improper Text and Call Blocking

TCN has worked to ensure all clients can verify their business’s legitimate calls.

TCN provides its customers with a one-stop shop for visibility and control over their phone number registration. Users can register and certify phone numbers with call labeling analytics companies utilized by the top U.S. wireless carriers and third-party robocall identification apps.

Register your numbers across the phone provider ecosystem to identify your legal ownership of the numbers and your valid calling intent. Completing a compliance-based certification process to vet and validate your identity gets your organization’s status certified to make calls appropriately. Connect with more customers via phone calls that are properly labeled and accurately represent your business.

Avoiding Common (and Costly) TCPA Penalties with Contact Center Technology

Common TCPA Violations and Fees

Common Violations:

• Autodialing cell phones listed in the Do-Not-Call Registry.
• Automated messages delivered to cell phones without PEWC (consent).
• Unsolicited marketing robocalls.
• Inadequate or absent disclosures during a phone call.

Fees:

• The standard fee for a call made in violation of TCPA is $500.
• Plaintiffs have sought up to 3x the fee for up to $1500 per call.
• Check out the costliest fines to date – they all come from these common violations.

Contact Center TCPA Compliance Solutions

Manually dial calls:

Modern platforms can automate and deliver important parts of the call, like CMS data and call/IVR history – minus the dialing. Manual dial systems mean businesses minimize autodial restriction risks.

Manually approved calls:

• Put a person into the calling system by having them manually approve calls that are presented by the automated system.
• Train call approvers to screen for TCPA compliance criteria like time zone, cell phone vs. landline, PEWC vs verbal consent, etc.
• Use a system that loads caller data into the call before approval to look for do-not-call requests that may not have been formalized yet, need review, etc.

Tip: TCN’s manually approved call system lets you switch between approval and taking calls, which means less downtime for approvers.

Cell Phone Scrub:

• Use the platform to automatically check for cell phones to keep autodialed campaigns flowing their fastest.

Automate Calling Rules:

• Set up automatic rules to prevent or limit calls by timezone, area code, state-by-state, etc.

Record Calls:

• Record calls to capture verbal consent, agreements, etc.
• The strongest consent is a prior express written consent (PEWC), but recorded and documented verbal consent can still provide a solid defense should a call recipient later claim they requested no contact.
• Call recording can help keep clients happy. Recording and smart-transcription can help you keep a handle on unruly or underperforming agents.

Prior Express Written Consent:

• Include language that permits contact for attempts to collect a debt, for marketing purposes, and for account servicing. A well-written consent form included into any purchase or service will prevent confusion later and help control risk if the need to contact arises.

Maintain an Organization-Specific Do-Not-Call List:

• This is actually a part of the TCPA. Businesses are required to maintain their own internal do-not-call lists, and those internal lists must (like those on the national list) be honored for 5 full years.

Include Disclosures:

• Provide the caller’s name, the name of the person or entity that the caller is calling for, and a telephone number or address where your organization can be reached. These disclosures can be easily automated to pop up for your agents to read with the latest systems.
• Pop-ups for specific compliance and risk processes can give full prompts to agents for different compliance purposes as well as those for TCPA mandated disclosures.
• Learn through call analytics where your compliance gaps live.

TCPA Developments and Case Law

TCPA Called into Question – An Exception’s Constitutionality

In January 2020, the SCOTUS approved a writ of certiorari for a lower court’s ruling on the government-debt exception to the TCPA.

That’s law lingo for having a higher court review a decision by a lower court – not a magic spell from a famous wizard.

So, what’s the big deal?

Back in April 2019, “the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit ruled that a 2015 amendment to
the TCPA creating an exception to the law for autodialed calls relating to government debt is unconstitutional.”

In other words, the exception allowed the use of autodialing equipment for companies collecting government debts (but not for anyone else).

Well, for everyone else out there trying to collect on a debt, this smacked of “content-based” discrimination. The courts eventually removed the exception, but not for the reason of discrimination against collectors.

Instead, they removed the exception because it “has an expansive reach and interferes with the privacy of millions of American consumers by authorizing a nearly unlimited proliferation of disruptive and intrusive automated debt-collection efforts.”

The petition to review the TCPA exception was granted to the U.S. Attorney General and the FCC. While this review doesn’t attack the entire TCPA, it could have implications for nearly identical petitions filed by the likes of Facebook and Charter Communications – one of which hopes to address the definition of an ATDS.

Defining an Automatic Telephone Dialing System (ATDS)

A lot has happened to shape and define what qualifies as an ATDS – a key component regulating the use of equipment by contact centers and contact centers.

Multiple cases in recent years have helped to shape the court’s interpretation of what qualifies as an ATDS.

In Collins v. National Student Loan Program, 2018 WL 6696168,the judgment went to the defendant (NSLP). It was ruled that its human-initiated dialing tool didn’t qualify as an autodialer due to not having the ability to “to function as an autodialer by generating random or sequential telephone numbers and dialing those numbers.”

A similar outcome underscored the legality of tools that expedite calls but which are not an ATDS, with the court stating in Fleming v. Associated Credit Services:

Does a system that dials numbers from a list that was not randomly or sequentially generated when the list was created qualify as an ATDS? With only the statutory text to guide me, I am convinced that the answer is no.

This is terrific news for the many TCPA-compliant collections agencies who depend on being able to contact their accounts in an efficient and effective way.

A Twist: First TCPA, Now TRACED Act

Complicating matters for contact centers and contact centers everywhere, the TRACED Act was passed in early 2020.

The TRACED act increases the statute of limitations for those who made robocalls in violation of the TCPA.

Pretty scary. Unfortunately, it does get worse.

The main objective of the TRACED Act is to stem the billions of illegal robocalls plaguing Americans.

It empowers telephone service providers to block calls at their level. However, legitimate businesses need not worry, as long as they don’t trip over the stipulations that trigger blocking. Think of it like the CAN-SPAM Act. Businesses can still send legitimate emails, and only the violators were sent into a spin.

Take a look at the some of the act’s details:

• Telephone providers must adopt call authentication technology to prevent call spoofing and fake numbers.
• Liability for illegal robocalls extended from 1 year to 4 years.
• Fines increased to include an additional penalty “not to exceed $10,000.” That’s per violation, mind you.

For contact centers and contact centers around the world, laws like the TCPA and TRACED Act can cause a lot of undue stress to hard working managers and directors.

Grab your copy of the Manager’s Guide to TCPA Compliance and stay on top of the regulations that affect your business processes and procedures.