Polling industry groups are joining the customer service industry in arguing that the recent Federal Communications Commission clarification of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) is too broad and could hurt legitimate telemarketing practices.
The Council of American Survey Research Organizations (CASRO) and the Marketing Research Association (MRA) last week announced they've filed a “motion to intervene” in a court case challenging the calling rules the FCC (News - Alert) implemented in July.
The groups join a consolidated proceeding that includes the debt collectors’ trade association, ACA International, Sirius XM Radio, and the telemarketing association, Professional Association of Customer Engagement. The group is asking the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit to halt the new TCPA rules.
At issue is that the definition of an autodialer in the new TCPA rules restrict the use of the devices to call cell phones, to unmanageable levels. Among other restrictions, organizations are liable if they call a wrong phone number more than once.
“If the court rules in our favor, we could walk away with a more constrained autodialer definition and an applicable human intervention test — both of which could be major points of relief for the research industry,” said Diane Bowers, president of CASRO, in a statement.
Cell phone users frequently change numbers and carriers reassign them so when a polling organization or survey researcher calls the person’s old number, it is too easy for the pollster to be legally liable, the group noted. Pollsters shouldn’t be liable “unless the caller gains actual knowledge of the reassignment,” the group noted.
It should be between 10 and 12 months before the appeal process could reverse the TCPA clarification. Until then, polling organizations and telemarketers alike are asking themselves how they might have to revise their practices, and if the new rules even make their operations tenable. For pollsters, the new rules could force them away from telephone polling entirely.
With the new rules, it should be an interesting year for anyone who calls customers regularly as a part of their business.