Three new FCC rules within the Telephone Consumer Protection Act went into effect at the end of June that will limit telecom capabilities, whether you’re conducting a poll or doing paid outreach to voters via robocalls.
We wanted to make sure you were aware of these changes because ignoring them (or being unaware) can cost you thousands of dollars in violations—or worse.
New FCC Rules
- All automated calls need to identify who the caller is at the beginning of the call.
- Within 2 seconds of identifying who the caller is, you need to provide specific opt out instructions.
- An entity can only call a phone number with automated voice three times within a 30-day period.
What does this mean for you? For polls, more data will need to be obtained to compensate for the third rule. In addition, we’ll likely see more drop off and need to make more overall attempts to hit a desired sample size. Overall, this just means things will get pricier, unfortunately.
At the end of the day, this trio of rules fits what we’ve been saying—automated response gathering is reaching the end of its useful life, and other solutions, like texting, panels, and live dialing will soon make up a majority of any samples. And robocalls—well, robocalling has been 99% dead for a while now, easily replaced with competitively priced peer-to-peer messaging.
Our data team breaks down each of the polling methods you can utilize when gathering responses here.
We continue to stay vigilant on telecom legal requirements, so feel free to respond to this email with any questions regarding the new FCC rules. You can always trust us to get the job done right—so be sure to contact us the next time you have polling or telecom needs!
