Ethical Marketing Guidelines

Overview: The ATA promotes and supports courteous, ethical and relevant telephone communication between consumers and businesses. We promote adherence and compliance with all state and federal laws pertaining to telephone and marketing communications to our membership. We also strongly promote training and processes for our member employees to ensure that telephone marketing is professional and consumer friendly.

The ATA develops, promotes and supports ethical marketing guidelines created by best practices developed within the industry that support professional, accurate and courteous communication.

The ATA encourages its members and member clients to use on-going quality and feedback programs that allow consumers to provide feedback to the business and industry relating to personal Teleservices experiences.

General: ATA requires 1) that members adhere to state and federal laws, 2) adopt professional communication standards and practices that minimize potential annoyance associated with telephone marketing offers; 3) develop marketing processes and targeting to ensure the call has relevance; 4) develop and use procedures to control the timing and frequency of communication.

Target Marketing & Frequency
ATA supports a targeted marketing approach, recognizing that untargeted calling is not in the best interest of consumers, businesses or the telemarketing industry. Calls should always be targeted to people or companies likely to have a use for the particular product or service being offered. With the exception of legitimate market research requiring random sampling, the ATA does not condone random or sequential dialing without regard to the potential usefulness of the product or service offered to the call recipient.

ATA recognizes that consumer interest may change over time and therefore an offer that was not relevant may become so in the future. Consumers receive multiple targeted offers throughout a year and the ATA supports a time span between marketing promotions from the prior contact (excepting follow-up service, customer satisfaction, and new account introduction calls).

Attempted Contact Frequency
For any given marketing, political or charitable calling program, consumer contact should be limited to avoid excessive contacts. The ATA supports limiting the number of maximum attempts to reach an individual regardless of who answers the phone. Placing a limit on attempting to reach a specific individual will minimize the frustration experienced by any other individual answering the phone who is not the targeted recipient of the call. This limit is supported for those calls that are answered by an individual and not by an electronic device.

In addition to the contact limit, if the individual answering the phone requests that the telemarketer not call again or requests a specific time for a call back, such a request should be honored whether or not the individual is the targeted recipient of the call.

Consumer Requests and Feedback
Consumer requests should be explicitly honored by industry. For example;

• Customers declining an offer should not be called again during that marketing campaign or for the recommended 'rest period' between marketing campaigns. Members are encouraged to educate their telephone representatives to recognize early refusals and only continue if the customer needs additional information to understand the offer.
  
  
• Requests to be placed on company/client specific do not call lists should be handled expeditiously, and such requests should be recognized and honored and not requiring the consumer to use specific language to distinguish a do not call request from a refusal request.
  
  
• The request to be placed on company/client do not call requests should be consumer friendly and not require the consumer to place additional calls.

In accordance with the TCPA, consumers should be provided with a method to contact marketers to ask questions or provide feedback. ATA strongly recommends that every contact be provided a toll free number to call that is answered during business hours by an industry professional who can respond to the consumer's needs. Members are encouraged to use timely and efficient multi marketing media that makes it convenient and easy for customers to ask questions, follow-up on orders and provide other feedback to the respective business

"Do Not Call" Compliance
ATA strongly advocates and promotes the value of company/client specific do not call lists. Federal law mandates that companies maintain internal, company/client specific do not call lists to honor requests from consumers to not receive future solicitation calls. All such requests from consumers should be honored. Companies must adhere to this mandate whether using internal or contracted telephone representatives. Policies and procedures must exist to ensure that all Do Not Call requests are honored. Training should be frequently conducted with all representatives regarding how to correctly respond to the consumer and handle any such requests.

ATA requires all members comply with federal and state laws, including those relating to state and federal do not call lists. Marketers should adhere to the various frequency guidelines relating to downloading the updated state/federal lists of those consumers who have requested not to receive solicitation calls for those marketing programs and industries that are bound by such laws.

Business Relation & Prospect Inquiry Definition
ATA supports the business relationship exemption present in federal and most state do not call laws. The definition of business relationship should be legislated to ensure a standard interpretation. ATA supports a business relationship definition to be defined for customers with current and recent relationships with marketers, as well as a definition for prospective customers who inquire about a company's product or service.

Call Flow Adherence
Outbound solicitation communication should be brief and engaging to allow consumers to state interest and engage in conversation if they choose. ATA supports laws that require marketers to engage consumers by restricting the initial solicitation pitch to include an introduction, purpose of call and gaining of the consumer's interest to proceed. Delivering efficient communication is beneficial to both consumers and business and allows interested consumers to assess their interest in the offer being presented.

Consumers who express no interest in the offer or call should be respected. Marketers should not continue the call once they have offered a response to a consumer's objection unless the customer asks additional questions or clearly states interest in the offer. Continuing dialogue with a consumer who expresses no interest is not in the best interest of consumers, businesses or the telemarketing industry.

Call Abandon Rules
Federal law requires that those calls abandoned/not answered by a live operator have a recorded message delivered to the consumer stating the marketer's name, reason for calling and phone number that is answered during business hours. ATA supports this law and practice. The message allows consumers to receive information regarding who has attempted to reach them and services that may be of value. Requiring this message eliminates 'phantom' calls. In addition, the ATA requires its members to comply with all federal legislation which requires that no more than 3% of all callers attempted on a given day for a campaign would receive an automated voice recording due to the unavailability of a live representative.

Calling Hour Restrictions
The ATA requires members to adhere to the federally mandated calling hours for marketing offers and promotes member companies to use those same calling hours for non-marketing calls. Any state laws further restricting calling hours or days must be honored by all ATA members.

What the ATA and these Ethical Guidelines are all about
The American Teleservices Association (ATA), a not-for-profit trade association founded in 1983 to represent and serve the Teleservices channel for all industries that use the telephone as a means to communicate with customers and prospective customers. It is committed to meeting the needs of its members, as well as protecting the rights of consumers and businesses who have telephone contact with its members.

Through professional educational events, ATA attempts to educate its members, the public and public officials concerning the ethical behavior for both inbound and outbound telemarketing. We have also developed these Ethical Marketing Guidelines to help any business, consumer or legal entity objectively measure Teleservices program integrity and professional performance.

• The ATA supports the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Telemarketing Sales Rule and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Telephone Consumer Protection Act.
  
  
• The ATA strongly encourages its members to review all federal, state and local laws for compliance before initiating any telephone solicitation campaign.
  
  
• The ATA advocates the highest standards of professionalism and ethical behavior for all telemarketing operations. These guidelines, when conscientiously adhered to and practiced call-by-call; help assure the long-term satisfaction of ATA members, their employees and customers while preserving the future of the call center industry.
  

This Ethical Guidelines are an educational tool developed under the premise that professional, reputable programs have specific goals, achieved through closely supervised high-quality performance, with the public interest - business and consumer - in mind. It is anticipated that these Ethical Marketing Guidelines will be an evolving set of principles that should grow over time as changes in the industry and changes in the various laws governing the industry come about. For legal matters, consult your company's counsel.