How DialerSeat dials — and how we stay compliant doing it
DialerSeat supports four dialing modes: preview, power, progressive, and predictive. Each one handles a different tradeoff between agent productivity and regulatory exposure. This page explains what each mode does, what the law says about it, and what our software does specifically to stay on the right side of the line.
The two regulations that govern outbound dialing
In the United States, outbound dialing is governed by two federal regulatory regimes that frequently overlap:
1. The Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA)
Enforced by the FCC, with a robust private right of action. The TCPA governs autodialed and prerecorded calls, with statutory damages of $500–$1,500 per call. The 2024 one-to-one consent rule (effective January 27, 2025) requires consumer consent to be specific to the seller calling — blanket consent given to a lead aggregator is no longer sufficient for autodialed marketing calls to that consumer.
2. The FTC Telemarketing Sales Rule (TSR), 16 CFR 310
Enforced by the FTC and state Attorneys General. Section 310.4(b)(4) creates a safe harbor for predictive dialing — a detailed set of conditions under which abandoned calls won't trigger enforcement. The safe harbor requires four things, all of which DialerSeat enforces in software:
- Abandonment rate ≤ 3% of calls answered by a live person, measured per campaign per 30-day window.
- Ring ≥ 15 seconds or 4 rings before treating an unanswered call as no-answer.
- Play a brief recorded noticeif a live agent is not available within 2 seconds of the consumer's greeting, identifying the seller and the call's purpose.
- Maintain records documenting compliance with the above for at least 24 months.
Both regimes apply simultaneously. Compliance with one doesn't excuse violations of the other. Our software is built to enforce both.
PREVIEW
Manual gate before every call. Agent reviews lead context, then chooses.- Agent goes available + selects a preview-mode campaign.
- Click "LOAD NEXT LEAD" — system fetches a lead from the queue and displays the full profile (name, phone, all custom fields, prior call attempts).
- Agent decides: "DIAL THIS LEAD" or "SKIP THIS LEAD."
- Only on DIAL click does the call actually fire.
High-touch B2B sales, premium appointment confirmation, re-engaging warm leads where context-before-dial measurably improves conversion.
POWER
Agent-initiated. One call at a time. Agent handles voicemails personally.- Agent clicks "INITIATE DIAL SEQUENCE."
- System pulls the next available lead and dials immediately.
- Agent hears whatever picks up — human, voicemail, or no answer.
- After the call ends and a disposition is set, the next call only fires when the agent clicks again (or, in our implementation, after a brief pause).
Solo agents working a list at moderate pace. Teams that want predictable, consistent dialing without an algorithm in the loop.
PROGRESSIVE
Auto-dial next lead. Answering Machine Detection (AMD) filters voicemails out.- Agent disposes the current call.
- After ~1.2 seconds, the system auto-dials the next available lead.
- AMD analyzes the first few seconds of audio when the line picks up.
- If AMD detects a voicemail or answering machine, the call is hung up immediately and disposed as NO_ANSWER_AMD. The agent never hears the voicemail.
- If AMD detects a human, the call connects to the agent normally.
The default recommendation for solo agents and small teams. Same compliance profile as power mode, with substantially higher live-conversation density. Most ReadyMode users we've seen run progressive in practice.
PREDICTIVE
Multi-line dialing. Pacing algorithm. Hard-capped at 3% abandon rate by software.- Each agent on the campaign heartbeats an active session every 30 seconds.
- A pacing algorithm computes target_lines = configured_multiplier (1.0×–3.0×, default 1.5×).
- Effective target lines = active_agents × target_lines.
- When a line should fire and an agent is free, dial happens automatically.
- AMD filters voicemails from reaching agents.
- A rolling 30-day abandon-rate calculation runs continuously.
(1) The 3% cap. When the rolling 30-day abandon rate hits 2.5%, the pacing algorithm auto-throttles the campaign back to 1.0× lines per agent (i.e., progressive mode). It stays throttled until the rate drops below 2.0%. This 0.5% safety buffer means you should never come within striking distance of the 3% legal threshold, even with sudden answer-rate spikes.
(2) Ring duration. Outbound calls are configured to ring for at least 15 seconds before being treated as unanswered.
(3) Recorded notice on abandon. When an abandoned call occurs (a human answers and no agent is free within 2 seconds), the system plays a brief recorded notice identifying the seller before disconnecting, per § 310.4(b)(4)(iii). This is configured per-campaign by the campaign owner.
(4) Records.Every call attempt, AMD result, agent assignment, and abandonment is logged in the campaign owner's records and exportable for compliance audits.
Teams with 8+ concurrent agents on a single campaign. Below 8 agents, predictive's mathematical advantage over progressive is small, and the abandon-rate variance is high. We surface a warning in the dialer when fewer than 8 agents are active on a predictive campaign.
Compliance is a layered problem. Here's what is and isn't our job.
DialerSeat enforces the dialer-side compliance requirements above. There are additional compliance requirements that fall on the campaign owner — the seller — that no dialer software can fully automate:
- Consent records. TCPA requires prior express written consent for autodialed marketing calls to wireless numbers. Under the 2024 one-to-one consent rule, that consent must name the specific seller calling. Verifying that your leads have valid consent is your responsibility as the seller. DialerSeat now stores consent metadata per-lead and surfaces it in the leads tab — but you supply it.
- National Do Not Call (DNC) Registry scrubbing.The TSR requires sellers to scrub against the National DNC Registry before calling. We do not currently provide automatic DNC scrubbing — campaign owners are responsible for scrubbing their lists before upload. We're evaluating integration with commercial DNC scrub services.
- State-specific calling windows.The TCPA limits calling to between 8:00 AM and 9:00 PM in the called party's local time zone. Several states impose stricter windows. DialerSeat enforces this hard — leads outside their local window are skipped automatically with a TCPA_BLOCKED disposition.
- Litigator scrubbing.Commercial databases of known TCPA plaintiffs exist. Scrubbing against them is best practice for high-volume dialers. We don't currently integrate with these services.
- STIR/SHAKEN attestation. Numbers used through DialerSeat are SignalWire-provided, which provides full STIR/SHAKEN attestation. This reduces (but does not eliminate) carrier spam-labeling risk.
We list these openly because we think it's the right way to talk to professional buyers. A dialer platform that claims to handle all of TCPA compliance for you is either lying or charging you a lot more than $35/week.
What "predictive" mode does today on DialerSeat
We are intentionally cautious about how aggressively we ship multi-line predictive dialing. As of this writing, predictive mode on DialerSeat operates with all the monitoring infrastructure of a multi-line predictive dialer — session tracking, abandon-rate calculation, auto-throttle, AMD filtering — but defaults to single-line per agent until a campaign reaches the 8-agent concurrency threshold where multi-line dialing is statistically safe.
In practice, this means: when you turn on predictive mode, you get progressive-style dialing (one call at a time per agent) plus full visibility into your abandon-rate exposure. If your campaign grows to 8+ concurrent agents, multi-line dialing engages automatically. If your campaign shrinks back below 8 agents, multi-line dialing disengages.
We'd rather ship a predictive mode that's slightly less aggressive than ReadyMode and never gets a customer fined, than the inverse. If your team has the agent count to safely operate at higher line ratios, you can configure that explicitly per campaign.
$35/week. All four dialing modes. No call-volume limits.
Cancel anytime. Your leads, recordings, and campaigns stay yours.
GET STARTED →Not legal advice.This page describes our software's technical behavior with respect to specific U.S. federal regulations. It is not a legal opinion, does not establish an attorney-client relationship, and does not guarantee compliance for any specific use case. Telemarketing law varies by state and circumstance. Consult qualified counsel for advice on your specific operations. Last updated: May 2026. Citations: 16 CFR 310.4(b)(4); 47 CFR 64.1200; 47 USC 227.