Rob Bayer of Anomaly Squared: Avoid Being Labeled SCAM LIKELY? Caller ID Management Strategies

Rob Bayer is a call center executive with more than 25 years of experience. He is responsible for overall strategy and direction of Anomaly Squared, Greensboro, N.C., which provides call center services for 20+ mortgage groups with an emphasis on speed to lead and driving high contact rates. LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rob-bayer-b61b88bb/.

Your mobile phone starts ringing, and as we are all apt to do, you quickly look at it to see who is calling and see a glaring “SCAM LIKELY” on your phone screen. Do you answer it?

More than likely, no. You do not, and in all honesty you shouldn’t.

Americans alone received more than 50 billion calls made by an automated dialer in 2021, with those calls falling into four categories of scams, alerts and reminders, payment reminders, and of course legitimate telemarketing. Scam calls made up almost half of those calls at 42%, making it a natural concern for local carriers and consumers alike. But it puts all the other genuine calls at risk of being labeled as predatory as well. Phone carriers across the board are implementing increased barriers to protect their customers and becoming stricter by the day, with some even implementing programs and apps that completely block the calls labeled as a scam from ringing at all.

So, how does a company making solicited and valuable non-solicited automated calls keep from being dinged as a scam so they can continue reaching their potential customers? There are multiple strategies from different angles to make sure every solution is maximized to ensure contact and conversion rate stay strong and continue to build. It is not a pick a solution and run with that either, it works best when all strategies are weaved together to create a rock-solid plan for reaching your leads and prospects.

The first strategy to implement is Entity Identity which is putting an official stamp on your companies’ numbers and register your CNAM (Caller Name Delivery) data with all major phone service providers so your company name shows as a branded number on their screen. Consumers are 53% more likely to answer a call that comes from a number that has been identified as a business. Unfortunately, there is not a singular database that hosts that data, you must make sure you register with each individual carrier. But taking the time to do so can help increase contact rates and overall reputation which is a big step towards preventing your calls being labeled as spam.

Secondly, as you are trying to reach a lead, calling from a local number when reaching out to prospects multiple times can be beneficial as well, which is the next strategy of DID (Direct Inward Dialing) Reputation Management. Work closely with your dialing manager so you can constantly stay on top of the ebb and flow of the numbers that are being pushed through the system. The shelf life of a number making dials is getting extremely short, so it is crucial that someone is dedicated to monitoring, rotating, and switching them out often, making it less likely that your calls and your organizations efforts will not be falsely flagged as spam.

Finally, making a phone call cannot be the end all, be all option for working through and following up on leads. Utilize email and text messages in your approach as well. In the digital age we live in, people are less and less likely to answer a call from a number or business they are unfamiliar with, but if you are also sending them texts and emails with information and offers that are of interest to them with some form of call-to-action, you stand a much better chance of generating an inbound call. That is a golden lead with extremely high intent, which of course leads to more conversions. It is important to remember that behind that lead is a human, and no two humans are alike. Just like when you fill out a form and they ask what is the best way to contact you, call / text / email, everyone is going to have a distinct answer there as well. That is why it is crucial you are engaging with them in different strategic channels.

As mentioned before, the best way to keep your reputation strong and keep from being mislabeled as a scammer is mixing your own version of the three methods above. But as you can certainly imagine, doing all of this and doing it right takes a lot of planning, implementing, and monitoring. It is far from a set it up and walk away solution that only needs attention a few hours or so a week. There should be a dedicated expert you can work with who can oversee it, observe results of trial and errors, adjust as needed. The carriers are always going to be changing their methods. Technology is always going to be evolving. Consumers are forever going to change in the way they want to receive information, whether it be solicited or not. And you always must be ready to shift and pivot.

Everyone is busy and already has too much on their plate. To even think of setting up innovative programs and processes can certainly be daunting. No one is expected to be an expert in everything. There are companies out there that have dedicated themselves to being an expert for you, and a partnership with them allows you and your team to focus on what you are experts in and improves your ROI. Call center BPOs and dialing system experts already have those processes operational. They have already spent those necessary years perfecting, learning, testing, and continuing to stay on top of trends so they are always ahead of the curve, ready for changes, allowing them and you to move forward quicker. So as the old Peter Drucker adage goes, “Do what you do best and outsource the rest!”

Be it that you want to begin setting this up in-house with your own team or finding an outsourcing partner to work with strategically to manage this aspect, you can never go wrong in going about things the right way. If you start out on the right foot and protect your caller ID reputation from the start, it is a lot easier to continue your growth than if you make early missteps and must fight back from there. That will lead to a positive impact on every part of your organization.

(Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect policy of the Mortgage Bankers Association, nor do they connote an MBA endorsement of a specific company, product or service. MBA NewsLink welcomes your submissions. Inquiries can be sent to Mike Sorohan, editor, at msorohan@mba.org; or Michael Tucker, editorial manager, at mtucker@mba.org.)