Adaptive AI Knowledge Base
Phone, SMS & Calling
Maintaining consumer trust in the voice communication channel is critical. Consumers expect to receive wanted and personalized communications, while being protected from spam and unwanted calls. This guide provides updated best practices for maintaining a positive caller reputation.
Why does caller reputation matter?
Trust Center
For full details, see our related support article.
Telemarketing and Advertising Requirements & Best Practices
If Adaptive AI Phone Voice Services are used to place telemarketing or advertising voice calls, the following industry best practices and rules governing telemarketing calls must be followed to reduce the risk of disciplinary action by us, CPaaS providers, carriers, and/or third party analytic providers.
If special circumstances justify deviation from these guidelines (such as a recruiting website with multiple positions, or a debt collector) document your practices on your website.
1. Compliance with TSR, TCPA, Truth-In-Caller ID (US calls only)
a. Unless an exception applies, calls covered by the TCPA must have consent from the call recipient. The level of consent that the caller must obtain prior to placing a call depends on whether the call is classified as “informational” or “telemarketing”.
Because the TCPA is a strict liability statute, the sender of an autodialed call can be held liable for violating the TCPA, even if the sender had a reasonable, good-faith belief that it was calling a landline.
b. Time Restrictions (TSR requirement). Callers cannot place calls outside the hours of 8AM to 9PM, local time for the called party. Some states impose stricter requirements, including no calls on Sunday or on legal holidays and different hour restrictions. Bear in mind that the area code may not be indicative of the location of the called party (e.g, someone with a Los Angeles (213) area code may have moved to New York)
c. Repeated Calls. Telemarketers cannot engage in fraudulent or abusive behavior, including causing any telephone to ring, or engaging any person in telephone conversation, repeatedly or continuously with intent to annoy, abuse, or harass any person at the called number. Example: “Limit calls to a given number to 2 in a single day and no more than 5 in a month”
d. Call Conte nt. Additional disclosures may apply where a caller will accept a sales order or charitable contribution over the phone, or is marketing certain types of regulated products or services. Additionally, the TSR restricts calls with abusive or fraudulent content.
e. Reassigned N umbers Database. Called numbers should be checked against the Reassigned Numbers Database on a regular scheduled cadence (using date of consent or last verified Established Business Relationship (EBR))
- 1Best Practices When Placing a Call
a. When calling a given number repeatedly, use the same caller-ID for each call.
b. Associate a descriptive Caller ID Name (CNAM) with your caller-ID(s) (e.g. Phone Numbers). See Brand Your Calls Using CNAM for instructions.
c. Announce the name of the caller at the beginning of the message. The name must be clear and unambiguous regarding its affiliation to the caller.
d. Announce how consent was obtained.
e. Allow at least 30 seconds (5 ring cycles) for the called party to answer. Ensure the called party hears audio within 2 seconds of the greeting. No silent calls.
- 1Managing customer concerns when calls are answered
a. Address any questions or concerns raised about the nature of the call before continuing. Be prepared to offer a web URL and telephone number where the called party can turn for more information.
b. If the called party indicates that they did not consent, or that they are no longer interested and wish to revoke consent indicate that you will not call again and remove them from your call list.
c. If the call is answered by voicemail, do not hang up. Leave a message with the elements in (1b) above, plus a call-back number. The call back number should answer 24×7 and include an opt-out mechanism.
Positive Caller Reputation Basic Do’s and Don’ts
Be consistent in your phone number usage
Be consistent in your outbound call volume
US ONLY: If you are following all best practices and still being labeled as spam, your best recourse will be to add your numbers to https://freecallerregistry.com/fcr by following this support article to remediate 'Spam Likely' on your Caller ID using Free Caller Registry. Here, you can register your phone numbers for legitimate calls to the major US cellular providers.