Why Your Outbound Calls Are Being Labeled SPAM or SPAM LIKELY… and What to Do About It

You know the frustration well – your call center team has perfected its pitch, you have a great product or service to sell, and your call list has been carefully curated. But once the dialing starts, you hit a brick wall: your calls are being flagged as spam.

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Your legitimate business activities are being mislabeled because of the 2019 Call Blocking Declaratory Ruling from the FCC. This Declaratory Ruling has forced cell carriers to quickly implement spam flagging technology, but they are having a hard time targeting only fraudulent callers and robocallers, and not legitimate brands. The problem is that cell carriers don’t have an effective way to differentiate legitimate calls like yours from illegal calls.

Why Is My Call Labeled as SPAM?

The FCC attempted to apply the concept of spam filters that are used by email providers to cell phone calls. But while emails have metadata, making it easier to identify potential spam, it doesn’t work quite the same way with cell phone calls. When phone calls pass through a cellular network, much of the metadata is removed. The only things the cell carrier really knows about the call are:

• Caller ID number set by the caller
• Number of calls a month (to that carrier)
• Answer rate
• Average time on the call 

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Each carrier’s rating system varies, but calls are categorized in a few buckets: acceptable, spam likely, spam or blocked (calls that rate so badly that they never reach the customer’s cellphone). 

While well-intentioned, the FCC’s process is causing carriers to mark some legitimate callers as spam because they are getting swept up in that carrier’s proprietary rating system. For businesses that rely on outbound calls to engage with customers, that’s a terrible and costly outcome.

Call Patterns to Avoid

While carriers don’t disclose their methodologies for marking phone numbers as “SPAM” or “SPAM LIKELY”, there are a few likely call patterns to avoid:

• A high number of calls placed from one phone number to one carrier (eg. over 1000/month)
• Repeat calling attempts to the same customer number within the same day/week
• Calling outside of business hours
• Low answer rates, particularly if your calls are being answered less than 5% of the time
• Low connection rate, typically under 10% calculated as total calls answered out of total calls placed
• Low time on call, many carriers will flag a caller if more than 50% of calls last less than  6 seconds
• Outbound call volume that is widely fluctuating, for example, if a caller makes 10,000 calls one day and 10 the next
• A high number of spam flagging by call recipients. Specifically, a high number of consumers hitting the ‘report spam’ button on the apps they’re using 
• A high number of consumers reporting the calls as ‘unwanted’ to entities such as the FTC and the cellphone carrier.

Avoid the Spam Flag with Regal.io

Businesses that rely on outbound calls to reach customers need solutions that can help them avoid the spam flag and increase answer rates.

Regal.io’s Spam Remediation is the first service that offers spam remediation across all cell carriers and all 400M cell phones in the US in one place. We first ensure that you are a legitimate brand, and that you are making compliant calls. Then we have the spam flags removed from the phone numbers (aka DIDs) that you upload. 

It's crucial to address the issue of outbound calls being flagged as spam or spam likely, and to provide actionable solutions. At Regal, we offer sophisticated strategies to tackle this challenge effectively.

Our branded caller ID feature enhances caller recognition and builds trust in your brand, ensuring that your calls are received positively. Additionally, our spam remediation strategies are meticulously designed to optimize your calling practices, ensuring compliance and authenticity at every stage.

Ready to experience these solutions firsthand? Schedule a personalized demo with us today. For further insights and strategies, explore our B2C sales podcast. And delve into our customer case studies to see real-world examples of success.

You can be spam-free in less than a day with Regal.io

‍Learn about these products and services at Regal.io, read more posts at regal.io/blog or email us at hello@regal.io.

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