Call Center Software FAQ

• Ensuring compliance with U.S. Federal Trade Commission's Telemarketing Sales Rules (TSR), such as its limits on dropped-call rates.
• Agent training through the use of call monitoring, call recording and "whisper coaching" capabilities.
• Understanding agent performance, line usage, campaign productivity and other resource and quality measures through real-time and historical statistical tracking and reporting.

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission's Telemarketing Sales Rule (TSR) expressly prohibits telemarketers from abandoning any outbound telephone call, but has an alternative that allows some flexibility while enabling you to avoid liability under this provision.

Abandoned calls can result from telemarketers' use of predictive dialers, such as Voicent's AgentDialer. Predictive dialers promote telemarketers' efficiency by simultaneously calling multiple customers or prospective customers for every available sales representative. This maximizes the amount of time telemarketing sales representatives spend talking to customers and minimizes representatives' "downtime" But, if overused, it can create times when more "live" customers are answering calls than there are agents to handle them.

Regularly hanging up on such consumers, or making them wait for more than two seconds before answering back, is viewed as a "dropped call" according to the TSR, and liable for penalities of up to $16,000 per incident in violation.

Voicent's Call Center Manager enables you to set tolerances for Dropped Calls. The program will then monitor agent activity and automatically adjust dialing speed and the pace of outbound calls to reduce chances of having more calls answered than agents available to respond to them.

Both are functionally the same, however, the free version does not allow Dropped-Call threshold to be set, below 25% (which is not FTC compliant). In addition, the free version automatically cancels call monitoring after about 20 seconds.

Yes, any agents you have connected to your Agent Dialer or BroadcastByPhone software can be monitored and managed using Call Center Manager.

No. Once the drop rate threshold is set, the gateway will take care of outbound call volume in order to stay below the set drop-rate threshold.

Voicent's Call Center Manager not only helps companies comply with FCC rules by automatically tracking and adjusting calling-pace to reduce the likelihood of dropped calls, but also by qualifying companies for the FCC's "Safe Harbor" provision. The abandoned call safe harbor provides that a telemarketer will not face enforcement action for violating the call abandonment prohibition if the telemarketer:

"Uses technology that ensures abandonment of no more than three percent of all calls answered by a live person, measured over the duration of a single calling campaign, if less than 30 days, or separately over each successive 30-day period or portion thereof that the campaign continues.

"Allows the telephone to ring for 15 seconds or four rings before disconnecting an unanswered call.

"Plays a recorded message stating the name and telephone number of the seller on whose behalf the call was placed whenever a live sales representative is unavailable within two seconds of a live person answering the call.

"Maintains records documenting adherence to the three requirements above.

More information about the FCC's Telemarketing Sales Rule and Safe Harbor clause can be found on the FCC's website.