Compliance and Suppression

Through the Compliance Rules functionality, you can filter, or suppress, contacts by state/province, time zone, contact history, or other criteria.

Rules may be created at the enterprise level, which are available to all accounts in the enterprise, or at the account level, which are available only in the account in which they exist.

Compliance Rules

The following compliance rules are available:

• Allowed Contact Times by Region - configured in Enterprise Manager only
• Contact Dates - configured in Enterprise Manager only
• Location Rules - configured in either Enterprise Manager or Account Manager
• Attempt Rules - configured in either Enterprise Manager or Account Manager
• Contact History Suppression - configured in either Enterprise Manager or Account Manager

To define a compliance rule, on the Campaigns tabbed page, click Compliance and select Compliance Tools. On the Compliance Tools page, select the applicable tab to define the compliance rule.

When you open a tab, a list of existing location rules appears. You can filter the list by using the filter options located along the top of the page.

To edit a compliance rule, open the tab, click on the name of the rule, and edit as required.

Important

The compliance rules you define in the Enterprise Account apply to all of the individual accounts in your enterprise. In the individual accounts, the rules appear as read-only and cannot be edited.

Allowed Contact Times by Region

You can use the Regional Compliance feature to define different time restrictions for each day of the week for each U.S. state, Canadian provinces, the District of Columbia, and U.S. territories. Messaging attempts to your contacts in those states, provinces, and territories will be limited to the time frame you define on each day, regardless of your contact center hours and sub-campaign/pass time frames. For example, if you have sub-campaigns running from 8AM to 9PM local time, and you restrict attempts in New York to 9AM-7PM, no attempts will be made to anyone in New York until 9AM and will end at 7PM. Messaging attempts will still be made during the entire 8AM-9PM time frame in all other states.

To define or edit regional compliance rules:

1. To add a regional compliance rule, click New. The Add State/Province dialog appears.
2. Select the desired state or province from the State/Province drop down.
3. For each day of the week, choose Unrestricted, Select Hours, or No Contact.
   • Unrestricted allows contact attempts to occur from 9:00 AM to 9:00 PM.
   • Select Hours allows you to explicitly define the hours for making contact attempts for that day.
   • No Contact restricts all contact attempts on that day.
4. If you have the same time restriction for all seven days of the week, define Monday's contact attempt strategy and then select All days have the same contact time box.
5. After defining the restrictions for each day of the week, click Add Times. The changes become effective immediately upon saving.

Note that your contact center hours on a given day, as well as your sub-campaign time frame, can also restrict messaging time. For example, if your contact center weekday hours are 9AM-9PM America/Chicago and your sub-campaign time frame for Monday-Friday is 8AM-6PM local time, messaging in Massachusetts on weekdays would not start until 10AM America/New York time (when your contact center opens) and would end at 6PM America/New York time (when your sub-campaign ends in the America/New York time zone). Under no circumstances would messaging ever occur on a weekday in Massachusetts before 9AM or after 8PM local time, even if your contact center is open and your sub-campaign is running outside of those hours.

Do Not Contact Dates

The Do Not Contact Date feature allows you to define a specific date (for example, New Years Day, January 1) on which no attempts will be made to any device in any account in the enterprise during that 24 hour period (midnight to midnight, local to the device.)

If a Do Not Contact Date is defined for the current day, any pass already running will continue to completion, but no pass in a pending state will launch on that day.

To define or edit date compliance rules:

1. Select the Contact Dates tab.
2. Enter a label in the Label field and click the Date box to bring up the calendar.
3. When you're finished, click Add Date. The changes become effective immediately upon saving.

Do Not Contact Location Rules

The Do Not Contact Location Rule lets you suppress contacts by location or time zone.

To define or edit location compliance rules:

1. Select the Location Rules tab.
2. Click New. The New Location Rule dialog appears.
3. Enter a name for the location rule.
4. If the rule is required, check the Required box.
5. Indicate the priority of the rule by entering any positive whole number not already used.
6. From the Determine Location By: drop down list, select Device if the location is to be determined by the area code of the device or Client ID if the location is to be determined by the information associated with the Client ID.
7. From the Do Not Contact Location: drop down list, select from the following options: Anywhere, Time Zones, Countries, Regions, or Area Codes and select the identifier from the associated drop down list.
8. In the Using Channel(s): section, select Voice, Text, or Email.
9. After defining the rules, click Save.

Optionally, you can import an XML file that contains a list of all location rules you want to use:

1. On the Locations Rule tab, click Import. A warning will appear, advising you that all imported rules will replace all existing account rules.
2. If you want to continue, click Select XML File to select the file from your computer or network.
3. Click Import Rules.

If you want to save all the rules you created in the application, click Export and save them to a file on your computer. The next time you need them, you can import them.

Attempt Rules

Use Attempt Rules to specify certain conditions that, when met, suppress a contact attempt.

To add an attempt rule:

1. Click the Attempt Rules tab and click New.
2. If the rule is required, check the Required box.
3. Indicate the priority of the rule by entering any positive whole number not already used.
4. From the Rule scope menu, specify if the rule will apply to the Enterprise, the Account, or a Campaign.
5. Enter the rule parameters in the Do not contact if: fields: For example: Do not contact if 3 or more Inbound or Outbound attempts have been made in the last 4 Hours.
6. Specify the Channels that apply. You can specify All.
7. Specify the devices to include in the Count attempts using: field
8. In the To/From: fields, enter the applicable location or area codes.

History Suppression Rules

Use History Suppression Rules to suppress contacts based on the results of previous attempts.

To add a history suppression rule:

1. Click the History Suppression tab and click New.
2. If the rule is required, check the Required box.
3. From the Rule scope menu, specify if the rule will apply to the Enterprise, the Account, or a Campaign.
   • Enterprise - the contact attempt will be suppressed if an attempt has been made by any sub-campaign in the Enterprise within the specified number of days.
   • Account - the contact attempt will be suppressed if an attempt has been made by any sub-campaign in the Account within the specified number of days.
   • Campaign - the contact attempt will be suppressed if an attempt has been made by any sub-campaign that was run under the current campaign.
4. Select the number of days for which a contact attempt is to be suppressed. The current day, Today, is day 0, starting at midnight in the contact's local time. Therefore, if you select 2 days and it is currently Thursday in the contact’s time zone, they will not be attempted if they were attempted at any time on Thursday, Wednesday, or Tuesday.

Contacts that, based on this setting, are suppressed in this sub-campaign are also suppressed in any sub-campaigns that are scheduled to run in the future, regardless of how far in the future they are scheduled. For example, if you have a sub-campaign already scheduled 14 days later, none of the contacts suppressed in this sub-campaign will be called by the one scheduled 14 days later.

Contact Suppression Lists

You can suppress contacts from being attempted on an enterprise-wide basis by using Contact Suppression Lists.

You can suppress a single device, such as an email address, and leave other devices, such as the home phone number and cell number, available. Or if a customer requests it, you can suppress all devices in the record by suppressing the Client ID.

With multiple suppression lists, you have the ability to manage separate voice, text and email suppression lists. You can also associate a single list to multiple campaigns, eliminating the need to duplicate a list in order to use it with campaigns having different purposes.

In addition to creating or importing a suppression list, you can use the enterprise suppression page to add additional devices or client IDs directly to an active list, even as a sub-campaign is running.

The Enterprise Suppression page provides a complete list of all suppression lists available. At a glance you are able to see the following:

• the name of each list
• whether it exists at the Enterprise or Account level
• the size - or number of records - in the list
• the number of accounts using the list
• whether or not use of the list is required or optional
• the number of days before - or if - each device or client ID is removed from the list
• the Type - either Client ID or Device
• the Channels - Voice, Text and/or Email

To define a contact suppression list:

1. Sign in to the enterprise account.
2. On the Campaigns tabbed page, click Compliance and select Contact Suppression Lists. The Contact Suppression Lists page appears.
3. Click Add -> New List to create a suppression list or Add -> Import List to import an existing list.
4. Select Edit to edit an existing list, Delete to delete a list or Export to export the list as a file.