Phone Messaging Policy

Phone Messaging Policy

All messaging transmitted via the platform - regardless of use case or phone number type (e.g., long code, or toll-free) - need to comply with the Application-to-Person (A2P) messaging. All A2P messages originating from the system are subject to this Messaging Policy, which covers messaging rules and /or prohibitions regarding:

• Consent (“opt-in”): Consent can't be bought, sold, or exchanged. For example, you can't obtain the consent of message recipients by purchasing a phone list from another party. And SMS should only be sent to the opted-in contacts.

• Revocation of Consent (“opt-out”): The initial message that you send to an individual needs to include the following language: “Reply STOP to unsubscribe,” or the equivalent so that Individuals have the ability to revoke consent at any time by replying with a standard opt-out keyword.

• Sender Identification: Every initial message you send must clearly identify you (the party that obtained the opt-in from the recipient) as the sender, except in follow-up messages of an ongoing conversation.

• Messaging Usage: You should not be sending messages in any way related to alcohol, firearms, gambling, tobacco, or other adult content.

• Filtering Evasion: As noted above, we do not allow content that has been specifically designed to evade detection by unwanted messaging detection and prevention mechanisms. This includes intentionally misspelled words or non-standard opt-out phrases which have been specifically created with the intent to evade these mechanisms. We do not permit snowshoeing, which is defined as spreading similar or identical messages across many phone numbers with the intent or effect of evading unwanted messaging detection and prevention mechanisms.

This policy applies to all customers who use LC - Phone messaging services to safeguard their messaging capabilities and services.

How We Handle Violations?

When we identify a violation of these principles, where possible, we will work with customers in good faith to get them back into compliance with the messaging policy. However, to protect the continued ability of all our customers to freely use messaging for legitimate purposes, we reserve the right to suspend or remove access to the platform for customers or customers’ end users’ that we determine are not complying with the Messaging Policy, or who are not following the law in any applicable area or applicable communications industry guidelines or standards, in some instances with limited notice in the case of serious violations of this policy.

1. Ramp-Up Model:

• Every new account (from April 20, 2022) going forward will follow the "Ramp Up Model".

• The SMS limit is multiplied each day by the number of days (till the 7th day) the location has spent with us. Starting the 8th day the location will have the limit set to 5000 SMS/day. Below is the table which will give you a detailed idea:

Day	Limit [SMS]
1	250
2	500
3	750
4	1000
5	1250
6	1500
7	1750
8th Day & Ongoing	5000

The daily counter resets every day at midnight 00:00:01 AM UTC. If the limit is reached before the rest time the account is locked for the rest of the time period.

What error screens or notifications will a sub-account see during a violation

• Conversation Error: You have exceeded your SMS sending limit.

  
• Bulk Action: You are allowed to send 5000 message(s) in a day. You have already sent 5000 message(s). If you wish to proceed, 1 Message(s) will be failed.

  

2. Spam Message Handling:

Each of the messages sent out from the sub-account ends up with the following 4 statuses:

Sent: The messages whose response we did not receive from the carrier, can be in any of the three statuses below.

• Delivered: The messages which were successfully delivered and sent to the contact.

• Failed: The messages which were canceled or were not sent to the carrier to forward to the contact.

• Undelivered: The message sent was suspicious or did not fulfill the messaging policy.

As part of this feature, we will only consider Undelivered messages. All the undelivered messages end up with a particular error code and we will start storing them at each of the message levels. We will further use them to start enabling Temporary/Permanent DND at a contact level so that new SMSs are not sent to them increasing your deliverability rate.

The below table summarizes the undelivered SMS error codes and what each of them means and the relevant remediation measure we are taking:

Response Code	Code Description	Remediation
30005	User Inactive/Number does not exist	Enable Temporary DND
30003	Unreachable- Out of Service	Enable Temporary DND
30004	Do not want SMS/DND enabled	Enable Permanent DND
30006	Landline/Incapable to receive SMS	Enable Temporary DND
30008	None of the above scenarios matched	Do nothing

Temporary DND: The DND set at a contact level can be revoked by the agency or location.

Permanent DND: The DND set at the contact level cannot be revoked by the agency or the location as the contact is incapable to receive the message or had opted out from receiving messages.

Opt-Out Keyword: Individuals must have the ability to revoke consent at any time by replying with a standard opt-out keyword like STOP, Unsubscribe, etc. In this case, also a permanent DND will be enabled at the contact level.

Advantage:

• This will restrict the location from sending SMS to non-relevant contacts, eventually increasing the deliverability rate and decreasing the possibility of getting blocked.

• The locations will only send out messages to the contacts who have opted in.

Spam messaging error screens:

• Conversation: Cannot send messages as DND is active for SMS.

  
• Bulk Action: All SMS sent via features like workflow, and bulk SMS will automatically skip the DND-marked contacts from the sender list.

How to revoke the DND for a contact?

• For Temporary DND, go to the contact details and remove the DND flag, below is the screenshot of the sample screen:

  
• For Permanent DND, you cannot revoke the same from UI. To revoke the permanent DND, request the contact to send a reply with the "START", "YES", and "UNSTOP" keywords to the number. This should automatically remove the DND from the contract.

If the START keyword does not revoke the DND and still incoming/outgoing messages are failing, please raise a support ticket.

3. Opt-Out Language addition

• The consent for sending out communications cannot be bought and the only way is to take explicit consent from the user for the SMS campaigns and communications.

• The consent is taken by a specific entity, in our case sub-accounts that are the actual sender of these communications.

• To comply with the messaging policies each of the initial messages sent out by the company to an end-user should have below two mandatory information, ie, Sender ID and opt-out Language:

• Opt-Out Language: The end user should have the capability to remove the consent at any time, so similar to above each initial message should also have opt-out keywords like STOP, UNSUBSCRIBE, etc. We will additionally add the opt-out language: “Reply STOP to unsubscribe".

“Opt out message” feature is applicable to Bulk action(Bulk SMS), Workflow and campaigns and is not applicable to One on One conversation.

Sample Opt-Out Language message screen:

Sender Information addition

• The consent for sending out communications cannot be bought and the only way is to take explicit consent from the user for the SMS campaigns and communications.

• The consent is taken by a specific entity, in our case locations that are the actual sender of these communications.

• To comply with the messaging policies each of the initial messages sent out by the company to an end-user should have below two mandatory information, ie, Sender ID and opt-out Language:

• SenderID: Every message you send must clearly identify you (the party that obtained the opt-in from the recipient) as the sender, except in follow-up messages of an ongoing conversation. We will additionally add the sender info: “Thanks, <Location Name>".