Phone number reputation management is vitally important for businesses and outbound call centers that rely on outbound calling. If you don’t proactively manage the caller ID reputation of your phone numbers, chances are your calls may be showing up as ‘Scam Likely’ or ‘Spam Risk’ on your prospects’ phones or even get blocked, reducing your call connections and negatively impacting your conversions, as prospects usually aren’t likely to answer unknown calls that are labeled as scam or spam. This article explores what phone number reputation is and how you can check it.
What is Phone Number Reputation?
Phone number reputation, also known as Caller ID reputation is the overall trustworthiness of a specific phone number that is used by a business to make outbound phone calls to prospects or customers. A good phone number reputation generally means that a phone number is associated with legitimate and non-spammy activities.
A bad reputation, on the other hand, typically means that a specific number may be linked to non-legitimate or fraudulent activities, which is why it may be marked with a scam or spam label by a telephone service provider. Very often, legitimate numbers used by businesses may be mistakenly marked as ‘Scam Likely’ or ‘Spam Risk’, making consistent Caller ID reputation management essential.
Why is Phone Number Reputation Important?
Maintaining your phone number’s reputation and preventing your outbound caller ID from being labeled as ‘Scam Likely’ or ‘Spam Risk’ is critical for outbound call centers where agents are predominantly involved in making outbound calls to prospects or customers.
Since people typically answer calls from numbers they trust, if your number is marked as a scam, they probably will not pick up as this is typically associated with unwanted calls. That lowers your call answer rates and ultimately means that your agents will connect with fewer prospects, which will result in fewer conversions, negatively impacting the efficiency of your outbound calling efforts.
How to Check Your Phone Number Reputation?
Make test calls from your phone numbers
As the first step, you may want to make test calls from each of the phone numbers you are planning to evaluate. You will need to use several mobile phones, each one served by different mobile carriers (in our case, T-Mobile, AT&T, and Verizon Wireless). These carriers rely on First One (T-Mobile), Hiya (AT&T), and TNS (Verizon Wireless) analytics platforms, each having its own spam filtering algorithms that determine whether or not a specific phone number is suspicious.
While one platform may consider your number as spam, another one would treat it as trustworthy, which is why it’s important to test all carriers. Seeing a warning on the screen that the call is a scam, spam, or fraud would mean that you need to work on this number’s reputation score.
Use a Caller ID lookup service
You may also check your caller ID reputation by using Caller ID lookup services (Hiya or Truecaller, for example), which allow you to verify your number’s reputation and caller ID reputation score by simply entering it into the search bar on their website or a mobile app.
Many VoIP phone system providers would also allow you to manage the reputation of phone numbers you are using for outbound calling. E.g., VoiceSpin, a global CPaaS (Communication Platform as a Service) and VoIP telephony provider, offers a caller ID reputation management function that verifies each of the numbers you use when running outbound calling campaigns to ensure they aren’t likely to be labeled as ‘Scam Likely’ or ‘Spam Risk’. The system would then inform you if your numbers are actually at risk so that you could take appropriate measures.
Check your Caller ID reputation score
When checking your numbers in the Caller ID lookup service, you will be able to see a Caller ID reputation score, which usually ranges between 0 and 100. A low score would naturally indicate that the number’s reputation is low, and it is likely to be considered as a spam or scam call if you use it to make outbound calls to your prospects. Conversely, a high score means that the number is most likely to be considered trustworthy as it has a high reputation.
Once you’ve checked the score, you may need to take action to adjust the number’s reputation. Moreover, it’s important to monitor your numbers’ reputation periodically, ideally weekly, because it can rapidly change in a short period based on multiple factors.
Wrapping up
Maintaining your business phone number reputation is paramount for businesses to protect brand reputation and ensure their calls are trusted and not ignored or blocked by recipients. However, phone number reputation management requires constant attention. By following the steps provided above, you can check your phone number’s reputation and make timely adjustments to improve your number’s reputation score, ensuring the success of your outbound calling efforts.
