If you are part of a business that does a lot of outbound calling, you are probably hearing back from customers and potential clients that your calls are showing up as spam, scam, or possible fraud when you call them. As a business owner or manager, this is extremely frustrating and expensive to your business as it substantially effects outbound sales efforts and answer rate. The effect of this labeling is very obvious as it makes it nearly impossible to get your contacts on the phone when your calls are immediately dismissed. Even worse, voicemails are often ignored or immediately deleted if they arrive with this label.

Why is this happening?

In June 2021, an FCC order to fight illegal robo (or other fraudulent) calling went into effect. As part of robocall mitigation efforts and securing the public telephone network, the FCC mandated that all voice service providers work to identify and prevent robocalling from reaching their network subscribers. As a result of this, voice service providers have been developing their own algorithms alongside using 3rd party services that help identify and label illegal calling. These algorithms and lists work together to both prevent illegal calling from reaching the termination point (the person being called) and to label numbers that may be abusive and “look” like they could be doing illegal activities or calling. Overall, this is a good thing for everyone and it has already greatly cut down on the number of spam/scam calls being received by the average person.

As no system is perfect, there are legitimate businesses that are inappropriately being labeled as scam or spam calls. For those that aren’t in the telecommunications business, it is very confusing as to why your businesses phone calls are suddenly labeled as spam and the complexity of resolving these issues can be difficult even for the communications veterans out there. Chances are that if you are reading this, your business is suffering from the negative effects of mitigation efforts and you need to do something to resolve the problem as soon as possible. The good news is that we are here to help, both with some simple things you can do on your own and in the cases you need assistance with a more complex resolution. In both cases, we are happy to help.

What can you do on your own?

The #1 thing you can do on your own is reach out to the major mobile carriers to whitelist your numbers. Unfortunately, this can be a bit time consuming and you need someone to be available to live answer the verification calls that may come in as a result of filling out these forms.

The Big 4:

Verizon
T-Mobile
AT&T
Spectrum

You can find a more robust list here

What can you do if filling out these forms doesn’t work?

The #1 thing you can do is reach out to us. Unfortunately, there is not a simple fix for most businesses that have even a moderate outbound call volume. There is a mix of problems ranging from how many calls you place a day down to the phone service provider you are using. Rest assured that in even the more complex situations with high volumes, we can help you with a solution to avoid this issue and improve your call answer rate and reputation as quickly as possible.