Major changes are coming to how call centers and telemarketers do business, and it’s essential to stay ahead of the curve. New regulations from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and Federal Communications Commission (FCC) are changing call center compliance requirements for 2024 and beyond. Failure to adapt could result in fines and hurt your company’s reputation. Staying informed and proactive can help you stay compliant.
In this blog post, we will cover two new compliance changes:
- The FTC’s new recordkeeping rules, effective October 15, 2024, and
- the FCC’s new one-to-one consent rule, which applies to pre recorded/AI calls beginning on January 27, 2025.
The FTC’s Recordkeeping Rule
As we covered in another blog post about changes to the FTC’s telemarketing sales rule, the Biden FTC dramatically expanded the type of documents that telemarketers (and/or the sellers who hire them) must keep and how long those records must be kept—which is now five years. The Final rule and associated changes to the Code of Federal Regulations are available here.
Categories of Records Subject to the FTC’s New Recordkeeping Rules
- (i) The telemarketer that placed or received the call;
- (ii) The seller or person for which the telemarketing call is placed or received;
- (iii) The good, service, or charitable purpose that is the subject of the telemarketing call;
- (iv) Whether the telemarketing call is to an individual consumer or a business consumer;
- (v) Whether the telemarketing call is an outbound telephone call;
- (vi) Whether the telemarketing call utilizes a prerecorded message;
- (vii) The calling number, called number, date, time, and duration of the telemarketing call;
- (viii) The telemarketing script(s) and prerecorded message, if any, used during the call;
- (ix) The caller identification telephone number, and if it is transmitted, the caller identification name that is transmitted in an outbound telephone call to the recipient of the call, and any contracts or other proof of authorization for the telemarketer to use that telephone number and name, and the time period for which such authorization or contract applies; and
- (x) The disposition of the call, including but not limited to, whether the call was answered, connected, dropped, or transferred. If the call was transferred, the record must also include the telephone number or IP address that the call was transferred to as well as the company name, if the call was transferred to a company different from the seller or telemarketer that placed the call; provided, however, that for calls that an individual telemarketer makes by manually entering a single telephone number to initiate the call to that number, a seller or telemarketer need not retain the records specified in paragraphs (vii) and (x) of this section.
The FCC’s Narrowed One-to-One Consent Rule
The second major change impacting call centers and telemarketers in 2024 is the FCC’s major tightening of its definition of “prior express written consent,” which marketers need to make marketing/advertising calls under Section 227(b) of the TCPA.
As we explained earlier this year about FCC’s one-to-one consent rule, the FCC is essentially canceling all prior express written consent that your business may have received from consumers if any other unaffiliated company was also given consent to call via that same opt-in/consent form.
Effective January 27, 2025, telemarketers making sales calls subject to Section 227(b) of the TCPA (i.e., any sales calls made with an artificial or prerecorded voice, or anyone who happens to still use an “automatic telephone dialing system”) must have the called party’s prior express written consent consistent with the updated definition.
The updated definition now requires the opt-in form to clearly and conspicuously authorize one identified seller to make these types of calls, and your covered calls must be “logically and topically associated” with the interaction in which their consent was given. So if you’re making these types of calls, be sure to review your opt-ins to ensure they will satisfy this updated definition of “prior express written consent” for all such calls when the rule becomes effective.
As always, please consult a qualified attorney to meet your particular call center compliance needs.
Joe Bowser
Joe Bowser is a partner at Roth Jackson. He has been practicing communications and marketing law for two decades. He advises and defends calling and SMS platform providers (like Readymode), carriers/VoIP providers, and heavy users of those services in their wide range of compliance needs. In his spare time, you can find him taking his boys to their sports, getting in a workout of his own, or catching an Arsenal match.
