Exceptions to FTC’s prerecorded telemarketing rule

Posted on October 5, 2009 | By Voicent Support

What are the exceptions to the FTC’s new telemarketing rule

Starting from Sept 1, 2009, the Federal Trade Commission is banning these “robocalls” to consumers, unless the telemarketer has written permission from a customer that he or she wants to receive these calls. Violaters will face penalties of up to $16,000 per call. The ban is part of the amendments to the FTC’s Telemarketing Sales Rule unveiled a year ago.

Calls that are not trying to sell goods and services to consumers will be exempt, such as those that provide information like flight cancellations and delivery notices, and those from debt collectors.

Other calls not covered by the Telemarketing Sales Rule include those from politicians, charities that contact consumers directly, banks, insurers, phone companies, survey calls and certain health care messages such as prescription notifications. These don’t fall under the jurisdiction of the FTC.

Before the ban, consumers had to specifically join a do-not-call list to avoid prerecorded telemarketing calls. But after Sept. 1, consumers shouldn’t get most of these calls anymore. Consumers already on the National Do Not Call Registry should not be getting live and prerecorded telemarketing calls. But now, all consumers are protected from getting most robocalls. That leaves telemarketers with the limited option of making a live call to someone not on the registry.

I am a telemarketing sales rep, which Voicent product should I use now?

If you are excempt from the above rule, you can use either BroadcastByPhone autodialer or AgentDialer. If you try to sell products and services to consumers, then you should not use Voicent BroadcastByPhone autodialer. That product is mainly used for making prerecorded audio calls.

You should still be able to use AgentDialer to call comsumers who are not on the Do Not Call list. With Agentdialer, you can use either predictive dialing or semi-automatic dialing. The difference of AgentDialer and an autodialer is that you have to sit in front of a computer when the calls are made.

Posted in Predictive Dialer |

VOIP Power Dialer

Posted on October 5, 2009 | By Voicent Support

Do you offer a power dialer based on VOIP? and how does it work?

Yes, Voicent Agent Dialer is the product.

Power dialing, also referred as force dialing, is basically semi-automatic dialing. The operation is simple, you load a call list, you press a key to have the system to call the next number on the phone list. The system dials, and connects the, you then talk using a computer headset.

Voicent Agent dialer offers more than the above basic power dialing feature. You can press a key to play a pre-recorded audio message during the call, such as when you need to speak to an answering machine. You can transfer the call to another phone number, and record the conversation.

A VOIP power dialing is simply a power dialing that uses a VOIP service for the phone call. We recommed you download the software and give it a try. It is very easy to use.

Posted in Predictive Dialer, voip |

VOIP predictive dialer

Posted on October 5, 2009 | By Voicent Support

I have download Voicent software and installed Agent dialer. By reading the setup guide, it seems you recommend VOIP service for predictive dialing. Could you please elaborate more on why that is the case?

OK. The discussion below gets somewhat technical.

First, we definitely not recommend using modem/analog phone line for predictive dialing. The modem cannot actually transfer a call in predictive dialing mode. Since the modem must dial another phone number to transfer, and the time it takes to connect the transferred number is really long. During that time, the callee is likely to hangup. So in order for a modem line to work, you must pickup the phone, hangup the phone, press a button to notify the pragram, etc, the operation is awkward.

You will not have the above mentioned problem if you are use VOIP, such as Skype or SIP. The main problem with Skype is with audio:

1. For some machines, the detection of human voice may take 5 to 10 seconds when skype is used. This is because Skype instance not always transfer the audio stream to Voicent program in a timely manner. Since Voicent has no control over when this audio is being transferred, some calls will result in long delay of calls being connected. You can normally tell when this happens. After the phone dials a number, you hear someone say “hello” from the computer speaker. This means Skype has not transferred the audio to Voicent program. Without the audio, Voicent program cannot tell whethr someone answers the phone or not.

With SIP, since the phone call is made from Voicent gateway, the audio stream is immediately available to the Voicent program. This results in fast detection and call transfer.

2. You may hear a lot of static when Skype is used. Skype limits the transferring of the call audio stream to a TCP port. This forces Voicent program to use TCP as the mthod to transfer audio to a remote agent. Technically, TCP is not a good transport for real time audio. With SIP, we use UDP for the call audio. UDP is a much efficient transport method than TCP, thus the audio quality will be normally better for remote agent when SIP is used. This is especially true when the agent is working from a remote site.

In summary, it is strongly recommend to use SIP for predictive dialing.

Posted in Predictive Dialer, voip |