Why Popular Strategies to Stop Spam Mistagging Don't Work

Enterprises and contact centers face many hurdles when trying to reach customers. One of the most common problems they face is calls being mistakenly marked as spam or even blocked. In fact, according to a recent Omdia Research study, 93% of respondents said over 10% of their outbound calls were blocked six months ago. And, 57% of respondents agreed when calls are marked as spam or blocked, it has a high impact on call volumes — thereby increasing costs and negatively impacting the customer experience.

The result? In the ongoing effort to reach customers, enterprises get frustrated and take matters into their own hands. But what they don’t realize is that they may be using faulty methods – and wasting resources – on strategies that are obsolete or ineffective. And still not reaching those elusive customers.

Our experts at TransUnion have heard it all. In our ebook — Why Popular Strategies to Stop SPAM Mistagging Don’t Work, we identified the top methods commonly attempted to stop call mistaggingand why these efforts may be making matters worse.

Here’s a recap of a few of them, and some suggestions for addressing the root problems.

Three mythical mistagging solutions — and why they don’t work

Strategy 1: Use a single telephone number for all campaigns

The rationale sounds solid: Using one Telephone Number (TN) will be more recognizable to consumers. The flaw is it’s not about consumers. Communications service providers (CSPs) and robocall analytics companies analyze each call and the originating number. When enterprises send all calls through a single TN, the number doesn’t develop a consistent calling pattern, making it more likely to be tagged as SPAM or blocked.

Strategy 2: Use one TN for each local calling area

You’ve probably heard that using a TN for each area code and exchange (NPA-NXX) helps calls appear as if they originated locally, making them more likely to be answered. This technique can get very expensive, but with a rise in neighborhood call spoofing (i.e., fraudsters spoofing a call to match the target’s first six digits), consumers have become wary and won’t pick up these calls.

Strategy 3: Recycling and rotating new TNs

Though many enterprises try this method, it’s not effective in the long term. The new TN may not have an associated history, but over time, analytics models reapply spam tags and call blocking if the calling pattern is unknown, erratic, or suspicious. Plus, as previously noted, new numbers get expensive.

Proven solutions help enterprises overcome challenges

There’s a kernel of truth to many of the strategies enterprises use to avoid mistagging, yet long term, these attempts can be costly and inefficient. Those with no time to waste and an eye on their budgets may want to consider proven solutions to improve engagement and better ensure legitimate calls aren’t marked as spam or blocked. Here are two:

TruContact™ Caller Name Optimization (CNO), powered by Neustar®, has been shown to reduce call blocking and tagging of outbound calls by 90% –100%, helping improve the customer experience by avoiding phone tag and resolving customer service issues faster. According to a Forrester study, CNO has also been shown to help enterprises reduce revenue loss by 8% – 22%.

When combined with TruContact™ Phone Behavior Intelligence (PBI), powered by Neustar® — which provides authoritative contact identity and behavioral insights to increase right-party contact (RPC) rates—enterprises can increase RPC rates by an average of 25%.

Learn more about Caller Name Optimization and Phone Behavior Intelligence, both powered by Neustar®, and download our eBook: Why Popular Strategies to Stop SPAM Mis-Tagging Don’t Work.