Intelligent Timezone Compliance

Sonar’s Intelligent Timezone Compliance feature— an added safety measure to avoid sending texts to your customers or prospects during non-business and unapproved hours as stated by TCPA law guidelines. Under TCPA, companies are allowed to text consumers only between the hours of 8 a.m. and 9 p.m. in the respective timezone of the recipient.

What You Need To Do

First, you need to derive the timezone using one of several options:

You can input a timezone manually for customers — either through the Salesforce integration, API, CSV Import, or manually in the UI — but this method is reliant on your company already collecting timezone data.

In cases where you do not have timezone data, you can utilize the consumer’s zip code (U.S. only).
If your company doesn’t go about either of the above routes, then Sonar tries to derive timezone from the area code.
- However, we recommend being extra cautious in this scenario by specifying the acceptable hours to a more narrow window to prevent accidentally sending a text too early or too late.
- Specifying an 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. window would give you wiggle room to ensure you are abiding by TCPA guidelines.

Sonar gives companies the ability to pre-select their own acceptable hours of text communication if they do not want to run off the default of TCPA hours.

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Zip Code vs. Area Code
Note: Zip code is better than area code because people move around while still keeping their existing phone numbers.

Intelligent Timezone Compliance Terms Defined

Term	Defined	Default Setting
Start	Beginning of acceptable window to message	8:00 A.M.
Close	End of acceptable window to message	9:00 P.M.
Queue Messages for Later	Whether or not to queue messages for later	True
Max Queue Depth	Maximum number of messages to queue	One
Manual Message Bypass	Allow UI messages outside of compliant hours	False
Bot Message Bypass	Allow bot messages outside of compliant hours	False
Away Message Bypass	Allow away messages outside of compliant hours	True
Double Opt-In Message Bypass	Allow double opt-in messages outside of compliant hours	False
Cancel When Customer Sends Message	Cancels scheduled messages if customer sends message	False
Cancel When Customer Converts	Cancels scheduled messages if customer converts	False
Cancel When Customer Receives Message	Cancels scheduled messages if customer receives message	False
Pass Through Follow-Up Cancellation	Passes through and merges follow-up cancellation settings	True

What You Need To Do

📘Zip Code vs. Area Code

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Zip Code vs. Area Code