As robocalling and spam-calling become increasingly pervasive, telco operators and 3rd party apps and software are becoming very sensitive to labelling traffic as spam.
Ensuring your business calls are reach your customer, without getting flagged as spam, is critical for effective communication and customer trust.
Many businesses struggle with their outbound calls being labeled as "Likely Sales", "Spam Likely" or "Scam Likely," leading to lower answer rates and damaged reputations.
There are many challenges in the spam ecosystem, but CloudTalk's experts are here to help your business navigate them, and create a plan to help you reach your audience.
How do calls get labelled as Spam?
Telecom operators use analytics engines to monitor call traffic patterns and flag calls as likely sales, spam, or scam, to warn consumers against risky calls.
Unfortunately, these engines can flag legitimate business calls along with actual malicious calls. The exact parameters of their algorithms are deliberately not public and frequently updated so spammers and scammers can't commandeer them.
In the USA, there are 3 primary analytics engines employed by the 3 major carriers
Verizon - TNS (Transaction Network Services)
T-Mobile - First Orion
AT&T - Hiya
The good news is that there are both common sense best calling practices and carrier registrations and anti-spam tools at businesses' fingertips to avoid mislabelling and flagging.
1. Call Traffic: Best Calling Practices
If you are planning to do widespread call campaigns or use CloudTalk diallers, we can help guide you how to maintain a positive caller reputation, minimize risk of your calls being blocked or flagged as spam, and improve answer rates.
Traffic patterns that can trigger the spam algorithms
Spam Calling Indicators | What this means | What you can do |
Dramatic Spikes and Fluctuations in Call Volume | when a number suddenly goes from making no calls to a high volume of calls | Maintain a consistent outbound call volume and avoid sudden spikes in traffic that deviate from regular patterns. |
High Call Volume from a single number | Excessive outbound calls from a single number in a short period can trigger spam detection | Diffuse your calling over different numbers - giving each agent their own number for outbound dialling |
Low Answer Rates | there is a very low connectivity rate on your calls | use numbers that give you the closest local proximity possible - in USA we can get numbers from all major cities and towns.
call during ideal business hours.
If the recipient doesn't answer utilize Voicemail drop |
Short-Duration Calls or High Abandon Rates | calls that last only a few seconds may indicate spam behavior and raise red flags | Aim to call verified leads and have your calls at least 15 seconds. |
Repeated calls to the same numbers | Continued, low answer rates on the calls to the same numbers can cause an analytics engine to label the traffic as "likely sales" | keep your contact lists and campaign schedules clean and clear |
Frequent Complaints and Blocking | If many recipients block your number or report your calls as spam, your number may be permanently flagged | abide by local telco regulations (both in your country and the recipient country)
only contact people who have opted in to receive a call from you
If a callee asks you not to contact them anymore, remove their number from any further contact |
Making calls to numbers on the DNC registries |
| Stay compliant with applicable local laws and regulations related to telemarketing, both in your country of operation and your prospects’ territory
Comply with all national "Do Not Call" lists (e.g. https://www.donotcall.gov/ in USA) |
Segment your number inventory
Separate numbers into public, permanent inbound numbers and temporary, outbound sales numbers, that can be cycled as needed. Do not use the same number for multiple purposes.
Inbound “clean” numbers - official, published website or advertising numbers
“clean” for inbound calls only
outbound calling to established contacts
If outbound campaign calls are not made on these numbers, they should not need to be changed, and your resources will not be wasted if these numbers were used on print materials, web campaigns, or other promotions
Outbound sales or campaign numbers - numbers specifically designated for outbound campaigns or activities that might generate spam tags from your specific use case or traffic patterns.
2. Number Registrations
Despite following all calling best practices, your numbers may still accumulate spam tags over time if you have high call volumes.
CloudTalk recommends these steps to optimize the outbound reachability of your numbers’ inventory and connect with as many prospects as possible.
1. Register Numbers in Hiya Connect
Each carrier relies on different analytics engines to combat unwanted calls and provide caller identification, but in the USA these are the main engines used by each one.
While you could register your numbers individually with each engine or in The Free Caller Registry a unified, free portal of USA numbers with these three largest Analytics Vendors, which are used by the main USA operators.
However, Hiya Connect registers your numbers not just with the main USA databases, but also on
all Samsung devices worldwide
2. STIR/SHAKEN verified calling
STIR/SHAKEN is a call authentication protocol used in the USA to cut down illegal and fraudulent RoboCalling. All of CloudTalk's USA carriers are Stir/Shaken compliant.
While all of CloudTalk's calls are sent with a Stir/Shaken validation, we can further register USA phone numbers from our USA carrier directly on your business, so they are sent as a “verified call“, with the highest A-level Attestation.
A-level: the highest level attestation given by the operator to indicate that the caller is known and has the right to use the phone number as the caller ID
B-Level: the second highest level attestation given by the operator, which would apply to most non-registered CloudTalk calls, where the provider is known to the operator, CloudTalk, but the user has not verified their business and numbers.
C-Level: international calls to the USA and calls with a manipulated Caller ID/CLI
A-Level Attestation can:
Can help avoid spam tags, but may not override existing ones
Must register them with company information (name, address, registration number, EIN number, etc)
Please contact our numbering support team [email protected] for more information on how to register your numbers on your business, and send them this required information
Legal Business Name
Physical Address (Street, City, State/Province/Region, Postal Code, Country)
Business Identity (Direct Customer or ISV/Reseller/Partner)
Business Type (Sole Proprietorship/Partnership/Corporation /Co-Operative/LLC/Non-Profit)
Company Status (Private/Public)
Stock Ticker & Exchange (if Public)
Business Registration Number & Type
must be the EIN for all US-based companies
other business identifiers for non-US companies
Industry
Website
Regions of Operations
Company Representative - our vendor may contact them to verify their connection to the company
(For the fastest verification, this should be someone with a publicly verifiable connection to the company such as a LinkedIn, company website, state or country business register)First and Last Name
Email
Title
Phone Number
Job Position (Director/VP/GM/General Counsel/CEO/CFO)
Have more questions? We have answers. Reach out to our Support team. We're always happy to help!