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Outreach Best Practices: Prevent Outgoing Calls from Appearing as SPAM

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Chris
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Symptom

Outgoing calls to Prospects being registered as spam.  

Applies To

  • Outreach Users

Background

The FCC has been working with phone network operators to combat the rising number of spam calls and calls made with spoofed caller ID. You can learn more about some of the FCC's efforts here. 

As a result of this initiative, when a Prospect receives your call, it is possible their phone could show the caller as UNKNOWN CALLER, SCAM LIKELY, or even block the call entirely. This is done by the Prospect's phone company and so you won't see it happening. 

Resolution

Calling Techniques

  • Register all of your phone numbers here. Please note this is the most important step and we recommend doing it as soon as possible. Once your registration is submitted, it generally takes 2 business days to take effect.
  • Use a purchased Outreach phone number for your caller ID instead of an imported phone number. Using an imported number can result in calls being marked as SPAM since the call is not originating from the phone associated with the imported number.
  • Avoid making high volumes of short calls close together from the same phone number in Outreach. We recommend users attempt to maintain a regular traffic volume, without unusual spiking. Carriers monitor patterns of calls from the same number to their networks and label calls from that number to their customer as potential SPAM.
  • Avoid high volumes of calls from local presence numbers due to multiple reps dialing the same area code.  If you have multiple users calling into the same area code, allocate them their own numbers rather than all using the same shared number. Making only these type of "neighbor" calls by mirroring the first few digits of the destination phone number in the from number is associated with spam callers and network operators look for this behavior.
  • Calls for legitimate business purposes should never be too frequently, or at odd hours.
  • Provide callees a clear identification of who is calling, along with easy to understand directions for opting-out of future calls.

Prospect Targeting

  • Ensure your calls are targeted at prospects who would likely be interested in receiving a call from you and that your calls have good content. If phone companies receive complaints that you are making unwanted calls to their customers your future calls will be flagged as SPAM by the carrier or even blocked.
  • Comply with all "Do Not Call" lists, and other Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) requirements.
  • Actively maintain prospect contact information, and delete numbers that don’t successfully connect. Low answer and completion rates are often associated with spam, so avoid calling unassigned or disconnected numbers as much as possible.

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