Many call centers rely on outbound dialing to reach their leads, clients, and customers. Unfortunately, legitimate companies that follow certain practices can damage their phone number reputations, leading to blocked calls and negative labels.
Outbound dialing suppression rules enforce your contact center’s policies automatically to protect your reputation and improve outreach efforts. In addition to enforcing your call center’s individual dialing policies, you can use outbound dialing suppression to prevent customer fatigue and ensure that every agent follows telemarketing laws.
What Do Outbound Dialing Suppression Rules Achieve?
Outbound dialing suppression rules typically focus on four main categories that can affect your call center’s success.
1. Legal Compliance & DNC
Legal compliance and DNC suppression rules make sure you follow current laws about who your agents contact. Dialing suppression rules scrub your contact lists against national and state Do Not Call (DNC) lists to prevent agents from calling registered consumers.
Additionally, the rules can check the Reassigned Numbers Database so agents cannot call people who registered with the DNC but have received new numbers.
Finally, dialing suppression rules can remove numbers associated with serial TCPA plaintiffs and attorneys.
2. Time-of-Day & Location
TCPA sets hours during which your call center can contact consumers (usually between 8 a.m. and 9 p.m., local time). You might also have some state-specific restrictions that enhance these and other rules.
With outbound dialing suppression rules, your system can automatically suppress any calls placed outside of an area’s permissible calling hours. That helps protect your relationship with consumers and avoids fines from government agencies.
Let’s say an agent gets to work a little early one day and starts placing calls. The outbound dialing suppression rules would prevent them from calling anyone before 8 a.m. Similarly, the suppression rules would prevent agents from calling after 9 p.m.
Since TCPA uses the consumer’s local time, suppression rules can also help your agents follow the rules. It’s often difficult for agents to remember the local time in other time zones. Suppression rules remove the guesswork by following time-of-day and location regulations automatically.
3. Contact Attempt Limits
Outbound dialing suppression rules can limit the maximum number of times a single phone number gets dialed per day or week. By limiting outreach attempts, you could avoid harassment claims from consumers.
Limiting contact attempts also helps create “cooldown periods.” For instance, you might prevent agents from calling a number for 30 days after the person hangs up on an agent or says they aren’t interested. Limiting contact attempts lets you avoid aggressive calling cadences that could lead to consumer complaints or even lawsuits.
4. Custom Internal Suppression
While TCPA and government entities can set regulations that guide your outreach attempts, you can create and follow even higher standards that improve customer relationships. In these cases, you’ll want to create custom internal suppression rules.
For example, many businesses maintain internal DNC lists. When someone says they don’t want you to contact them again, you simply add their number to your internal list. Reliable dialing suppression software will remove the number from your contact list or block the number to prevent agents from dialing it. This flexibility lets you go beyond regulatory requirements so you can develop a reputation as a company that respects consumer wishes.
Maintaining Call Compliance Is Essential
The FCC has been improving its enforcement efforts over the last several years. It has also added new regulations to crack down on foreign call centers and to flag the number of companies that use aggressive call techniques.
It isn’t just the FCC that wants to protect consumers. Many carriers and analytics engines now use artificial intelligence to detect when outbound numbers behave suspiciously.
Outbound dialing suppression rules force your organization to follow regulations and avoid behaviors that look suspicious. With system-wide rules, you eliminate the possibility of human error, ensuring that everyone on your team remains within regulatory guidelines and avoids activities that could lead to negative consequences like flags and fines.
The Easy Way to Create Outbound Dialing Suppression Rules
Having the right suppression rules in place could change the way your contact center performs. So, how do you make sure your company benefits from enforcing these and other rules?
CallTools provides a suite of products that make outbound dialing suppression rules easier to create and enforce. For instance, you can use CallTools list management and live filters to update your contact lists as needed. When you remove a number, agents can’t use it to contact someone. When you add a new number, it becomes available immediately so agents can start interacting with the lead.
Call Management features also include useful tools for making call suppression rules. The rules can do more than suppress calls. You can set the rules to control other forms of communication, too, including SMS and email.
You don’t have to spend a lot of time and money improving your contact center’s calling behaviors. Connect with CallTools today to learn more about how our products can help.
