With carriers and aggregators enforcing compliance of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, it is critical that clients are both aware of it and operate according to its guidelines.
As communication laws vary from state to state, please confirm with your legal counsel any and all variations your state may have when it comes to calling and texting voters.
Good TCPA compliance starts with setting up your campaign’s voicemail that can be left with volunteers or staff on that campaign press the “Voicemail” button on the Pulsar phonebank.
A TCPA compliance VM has the following components.
An introduction clearly stating who is making the call or leaving the voicemail.
A clear statement of who the individual is associated with (a campaign, an organization, etc)
A call to action (“Remember to vote on Election Day!”)
A callback number that a human will either answer and/or check the VMs on. This cannot be a Google Voice number.
A disclaimer.
An example voicemail script is as follows:
“Hi, this is John Smith calling on behalf of the Republican Party of Arizona. The upcoming election is critical. Please remember to vote. Our office phone number is 520-888-9999. This call was paid for by the Republican Party of Arizona and not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee.”
The Puslar System is coded to be TCPA compliant. However, user error can lead to non-compliance.
The most common errors we have seen with users are as follows.
Using the Dynamic Dialer to call mobile devices. Make sure that when you set up your Phonebank and call lists that you are using A) Landlines and B) High telephone reliability code numbers (these are listed as”Home” and “High” in the Phonebank>Create Phonelist>Final Steps). IF you do not do this, you will find yourself in Carrier Jail and unable to make phone calls.
Truncated Calls. A truncated call is when a voter answers and the volunteer, either through impatience or a desire not to talk to the voter, hangs up the call prematurely. A lot of this comes down to two things: improper training on how to make calls and incorrect objectives. The goal of voter contact is to talk to voters and find out where they are on the issues and support of various candidates, not to make an endless number of calls to pad stats.
For more on TCPA compliance issues, please go here: Telephone Consumer Protection Act