Consent on calls
Consent belongs to the person, not to the phone handler. Every outbound call — placed by the engine, by a due follow-up, by the Assistant or by somebody on the browser line — goes through one path, and that path asks about memory blocks, consent, autonomy and budget before anything rings. An inbound call needs no consent: the caller rang you.
One outbound path, four questions#
Outbound calling runs through comms_providers.dispatch_call with a placer naming who is asking. There is no second route — an automated call, a follow-up call and a person's browser call are the same operation with different placers, and the browser line asks may_place_call under the business's own line before the carrier is told to dial anything.
- Is this person blocked? A memory block or do-not-contact on the relationship stops the call.
- Is there consent for this channel? Recorded against the person, read the same way whoever is placing the call.
- Does autonomy allow it? The per-channel rule for what Connect may do without asking — which may mean the call is held for approval rather than refused.
- Is there budget? Asked last, because it is the only one of the four that will be different in an hour.
Having one path is the whole safety property. A channel that grew its own way of placing calls would need its own copy of all four checks, and the copy that drifts is the one nobody notices until a blocked customer gets rung.
How a block recorded elsewhere reaches the phone#
Because the gate reads the person, not a phone-specific list. Someone who asked by email not to be contacted has asked Connect, and the block is recorded on the relationship — where the next call, the next message and the next email all read it.
That is the practical payoff of one person having one record across channels. The alternative — a suppression list per channel — produces the failure everyone has experienced as a customer: unsubscribing from the email and then being telephoned about it.
What a refusal looks like#
| Placed by | What happens | What the person sees |
|---|---|---|
| The engine or a follow-up | The call is not placed; the reason is recorded | The follow-up stays visible with its refusal |
| The Assistant | The action is refused rather than attempted | An answer saying it was refused, not a report that it worked |
| A person on the browser line | The carrier is answered with a spoken refusal instead of dialling instructions | The dialler does not connect; the refusal is audible rather than silent |
A refusal is always recorded. A call that was deliberately not made and a call that failed to be made look identical from the outside, and only one of them is a fault — so both are written down with their reason.
The consent question that does not arise yet#
Call recording on the live carrier is not enabled. The capability is asked of the provider rather than assumed, and today the answer is no, so no call audio is captured to consent to. What is kept is the transcript, the summary, the outcome and the metering — text produced from the call rather than the call itself.
This is worth stating plainly because a phone line that mentions recording in its greeting is making a claim about something that is not happening. Write the greeting to match what the line actually does.
What Connect does not decide for you#
Whether a particular call to a particular person is permitted where you operate is a question about your obligations, your registrations and your own policy. Connect enforces what is recorded in the workspace — blocks, consent, hours, autonomy — and keeps the record of who was called, when, by which placer and with what outcome.
That record is the part worth valuing. A consent decision you cannot evidence six months later is not much better than one you never made, and the call record, the transcript and the relationship timeline are where the evidence lives.
Questions#
Does a person dialling from the browser bypass consent?
No. The browser line asks may_place_call under the business's line before the carrier dials, so a blocked number, an absent consent, an autonomy rule or a spent budget stops a person's call exactly as it stops an automated one. The refusal is spoken rather than silent.
Does Connect ask an inbound caller for consent?
There is nothing to ask about for the call itself — they placed it. What may need consent is what happens afterwards, such as being contacted again, and that is recorded on the relationship like any other consent.
Is a call recorded for quality purposes?
Call recording is not enabled on the live carrier, so there is no audio kept. Quality review works from the transcript, the measured timings and the event stream, which is why the review talks about reply latency and interruptions rather than about tone of voice.