TCPA basics for outbound teams

The Telephone Consumer Protection Act is the federal law behind most US calling rules. It restricts calls made with an automatic telephone dialling system or a prerecorded voice, and it restricts calls to mobile numbers in particular. Damages are set per call, which is why class actions around it are common.

What counts as an autodialler has been argued for years. The current reading is narrower than it once was, but it still matters how a call is placed. A rep pressing a key to dial one person, or to start one round, is a very different thing from a system that dials a list on its own and plays a message. Know which one your tool does.

The safest ground is a human placing each call, to a business number, with a real voice on the line.

The TSR is the Federal Trade Commission's rule for telemarketing. It covers what you must say and when you may call. The parts that touch a rep day to day are calling hours, caller identification, and the Do Not Call rules below.

It also requires that the caller ID you show is a real number that can be called back and that identifies your business. Rotating across numbers you own is fine. Spoofing numbers you do not own is not.

The national registry lists numbers that have asked not to receive sales calls. Businesses that make sales calls to consumers must scrub their lists against it and must keep their own internal list of people who have asked them to stop.

The registry is aimed at consumers. Business-to-business calls are largely exempt, but the line is not always clean. A sole trader's mobile is both. Treat any stop request as binding, log it, and never call the number again.

Your own internal list matters as much as the national one. When someone says do not call me, that has to reach every rep and every list, at once. Redialler keeps a suppression list that blocks a number across the whole workspace.

Federal rules allow sales calls between 8am and 9pm in the local time of the person called. Several states are tighter, and a few restrict calls on Sundays or holidays. Local time means their time, not yours. A rep in New York calling California at 9am is calling at 6am.

Work out the timezone from the number's area code and treat unknown timezones as a reason to wait, not a reason to guess. Redialler labels each person as in hours or out of hours and can be set to refuse the dial.

Recording is governed by state law, not the TCPA. Most states let one party to the call consent, which means you can record your own calls. Around a dozen require every party to agree. If you call into those states, say the call is recorded at the start. See call recording consent by US state.

When a list mixes states, or you are not sure where the person is, follow the stricter rule for everyone. A short announcement costs two seconds.

• A human places every call. No prerecorded messages.
• Scrub consumer lists against the national registry and your own list.
• Honour every stop request the moment it is made.
• Call between 8am and 9pm in the prospect's local time, or tighter where the state requires.
• Show a real caller ID you own that can be called back.
• Announce recording where any party is in an all-party state.
• Write this down as a policy and train every rep on it.

Again, this is not legal advice. It is a map of the questions to take to someone who can give it.