Do you use Twilio or other Cloud Communication platforms for your business? Wondering why your calls are not being answered? Odds are the person on the other end either never got the call or even worse you were labeled as “spam” or “scam” on the caller id!
Most businesses are completely unaware of this and spend money on other things to help reach their clients. Recently I was consulting a chain of physical therapy clinics that were only able to connect 22% of their calls. Business was down dramatically over the year and I was brought in and asked to assist with marketing and web development. Just like any consulting job, I started with an audit of their current marketing and systems (CRM, Phones, Employees, etc) and eventually I found that the issue was that calls were being rejected by carriers. This company was willing to spend well over six figures in marketing to bridge this gap and make up for the drop in business when all they had to do was ensure that their outbound numbers were set up correctly. After a couple of days of refactoring a list of over 200 phone numbers, it all changed. Within a month the connect rate was 84%, general appointments increased 41% and show rates were improved by 62%
Why are my calls being labeled as “Scam Likely?”
You are now a victim of the ever not so perfect world of “SHAKEN/STIR” or Secure Handling of Asserted information using Tokens / Secure telephony Identity. Put simply this is a system that has checked the inbound number and is unable to verify its authenticity. A process that was made to reduce the number of robo/spam calls, and it is something that has cost businesses millions!
How Can We Fix it?
You are being labeled this way for two reasons, and it’s important to identify the exact reason prior to fixing
- You have not verified a caller id name with the provider. This process is usually available online for platforms like Twilio where you enter a phone number that their system can use to security check the number you are wanting to assign a name to.
- Your number was actually used for spam-related calls. For this, there is not a whole lot you can do other than contact each carrier and ask to have your number reclassified in their system. But at that point, I would recommend getting a new number instead.
A good practice moving forward is to check the history of a number prior to buying it
