If you’ve noticed your company’s outbound calls are going mostly unanswered, or worse, being labeled as Spam Likely, you’re not alone. The days when the public eagerly answered their phones are long gone. Thanks to annoying robocalls, neverending new scams, and call screening apps, building and maintaining a trustworthy Caller ID reputation has become mission-critical for businesses.
Unfortunately, even legitimate organizations often fall victim to the dreaded Spam Likely label and blocked calls, damaging contact rates and wasting valuable outbound resources. The numbers really tell the story. A recent Caller ID Reputation study found U.S. consumers answer only a dismal 18% of calls coming from businesses, while Pew Research Center reports 80% of Americans don’t even bother answering calls from unknown numbers. According to a YouGov study 87% of consumers “often” or “very often” ignore calls from unfamiliar numbers, and almost 40% say they ignore calls coming from a business because they are just too busy to answer.
For companies that rely on the phone to operate their day to day operations and communications with customers, this erosion of trust directly affects things like customer engagement, compliance, and, of course, profitability. But despite these facts, there is good news. Most Caller ID issues can be fixed with the right technology and telecom partner.
Here’s how to avoid the most common caller ID pitfalls that will damage your call performance.
Once upon a time, toll-free numbers were a symbol of credibility, but these days they’ve increasingly become a liability. A toll-free (8xx) number cannot have a stored caller name (CNAM), so carriers and devices are unable to display your business name. This often results in the dreaded Spam Likely label popping up or simply having your call ignored (Quality Voice & Data).
Research from DialMyCalls clearly shows why local numbers perform far better:
How to Fix It
If this is a problem you’re encountering, here are a few easy fixes to implement. Switch to localized Caller IDs for outbound dialing. QVD provides a curated inventory of verified local numbers in every U.S. market, giving any company the ability to appear regionally relevant and trustworthy.
Then, combine this with a Trusted Call Completion platform. As an authorized SHAKEN Service Provider Company, QVD terminates directly to other SHAKEN carriers, digitally signing and delivering your calls with full attestation, an approach which provides immediate improvement in both answer and callback rates.
Your Caller ID reputation is dynamic. Analytics and carrier engines are constantly analyzing call behavior, including volume, frequency, and complaint patterns. Even legitimate businesses can easily have their numbers mislabeled as Spam Likely if they don’t actively monitor reputation scores.
Because 80% of unidentified calls currently go unanswered (Hiya), this is an issue to monitor. Once flagged, your numbers can see their answer rates plummet to near zero, even if the issue was actually triggered by false labeling.
How to Fix It
Try out the Caller ID Testing Tool to learn if your business phone number is showing up as spam in real-time. It might also be a good time to invest in real-time Caller ID health monitoring. Companies need immediate visibility into their number’s reputation. Rotating or replacing a number before performance suffers is essential to maintaining a clean and trusted outbound presence.
The STIR/SHAKEN framework authenticates caller identity to prevent spoofing, but not every provider offers full A-level attestation. Many businesses don’t even realize their calls are traveling with lower verification levels, which carriers then often treat as less trustworthy.
According to TransNexus, only about 30% of U.S. calls had full (A-level) attestation as of June 2024. Even more telling, Caller ID Reputation found calls with the lowest (C-level) attestation are over three and a half times more likely to be robocalls than unsigned calls.
How to Fix It
Partner with an authorized SHAKEN Service Provider, not just a reseller or Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) intermediary. This dramatically reduces spam mislabeling. You want calls with A-level attestation delivered directly to Tier 1 and Tier 2 networks. This approach can also improve your answer rates by as much as 48%, helping legitimate calls cut through all the noise.
Even when your business calls are delivered successfully, people are increasingly hesitant to answer numbers they don’t recognize. With U.S. consumers receiving 34.9 billion unwanted robocalls in the first half of the year alone (TNS), in the modern world anonymity equates to suspicion.
This is where Branded Calling ID (BCID) comes into play. It is possible to display your verified company name, logo, and reason for the call on supported devices. When recipients can see who’s calling them, and why, they’re far more likely to answer the phone and engage.
How to Fix It
Combine Branded Calling ID with A-level STIR/SHAKEN authentication. This not only improves transparency, but also humanizes your calls, building up immediate trust with prospects and existing customers. For business sectors like finance, healthcare, and logistics, branded calling has become a critical differentiator in outbound performance.
The scope of the robocall problem just continues to grow, and the numbers are rather disheartening.
This explosion of unwanted calls has completely eroded consumer confidence in the phone channel. Compounding the problem, 14% of Americans routinely ignore their voicemail messages (Caller ID Reputation), which means there’s often no second chance to connect.
How to Fix It
Protecting your phone number’s reputation means managing your Caller ID ecosystem continuously, not reactively. Trusted Call Completion and Real-Time Monitoring solutions enable businesses to identify call labeling issues as they happen, ensuring your calls always reach their destination unflagged and unblocked.
With 87% of consumers often actively avoiding calls from unknown numbers, the challenge to businesses is crystal clear: your calls have to be trusted before they will be answered. Caller ID reputation is not just about technology, it’s about credibility.
At Quality Voice & Data, our proprietary systems help our clients get their calls delivered. Led by Dean Garfinkel, a nationally recognized telecom solutions expert with 30 years of experience, QVD delivers reputation-based telecom services designed for compliance, performance, and scalability.
It’s time to stop showing up as Spam Likely and start showing up as trusted. Only a telephone carrier can directly protect how your calls are delivered, and Quality Voice & Data is that carrier.
Schedule a free consultation today. A member of our team will respond in 48 hours, or if you need a faster fix, call us at (888) 656-5111.