A positive caller ID is essential to your success. It is a new lead’s first impression of your agents and business. A “spam,” “scam,” or “unknown” label will negatively impact your contact rate and your company’s financial outlook. Maintaining a solid phone number reputation means your agents can dial confidently, knowing their calls will display a valid caller ID.
You should never take a “wait and see” attitude toward your company’s caller ID. Instead, approach the issue proactively and take daily steps to maintain and enhance your phone number reputation.
Dialer Software Configuration
Your dialer’s software configuration can help ensure that your calling campaigns do not struggle with preventable issues.
Drop Rates
Certain types of dialers help you significantly lower your drop rates. These dialer types include the following:
- Preview Dialer: A preview dialer provides your agent with the next available lead’s information. Your agent can then decide whether or not to proceed with the call. This type of preparation steers your agent toward clients who are most likely to answer and participate in the call. As a result, the dropped call rate is lowered.
- Predictive Dialer: A predictive dialer uses algorithms to identify an agent’s call trends and then matches those with an appropriate level of dialing activity. The dialer dials multiple consumers simultaneously to move agents smoothly from call to call. The drawback to this system is a slightly higher rate of dropped calls. Still, you should maintain a drop rate below 3% with proper management.
- Progressive Dialer: A progressive dialer is similar to a predictive dialer but only connects your agents to a person and not to an answering machine. If the number does not ring, the system automatically disconnects the call. As a result, your agents have little downtime between calls and experience few abandoned calls.
- Power Dialer: A power dialer works best when you need to contact as many consumers as possible quickly. Your agents will reach more live prospects since the power dialer is set to dial three numbers at once, disconnecting the call if it reaches an invalid number. This type of dialer will produce a higher number of dropped calls, which is inappropriate for many calling campaigns.
Choosing the right dialing software can lessen drop rates and help maintain your company’s caller ID reputation.
Avoid Over Dialing
Overdialing from any outbound company number is harmful to your company’s reputation. Carriers can automatically flag a number that dials out more than 100 times a day.
You can avoid this issue by frequently cycling through your number pool and taking “hot” numbers out of the rotation for a while. To be safe, you may want to set your call limit well below 100 per day per number.
Ethical Dialing Practices
Maintaining ethical dialing practices is one of the best ways to protect your phone number reputation. The following are vital to improving your contact rates and nurturing consumer trust.
- Use quality lead lists: Make certain you buy lists that are “clean” and do not contain outdated information. Otherwise, you may inadvertently call consumers on the DNC list or those who took over another consumer’s phone number.
- Avoid these dialing practices: Overdialing, least call routing, and the wrong dialer type.
- Use proper scripts: The information in your scripts should be 100% accurate and sensitive to consumer needs. An overly aggressive or misleading script will harm your company’s reputation.
- Ensure agents are trained properly: Your agents need ongoing training so they always use ethical dialing practices and are up-to-date on new state and federal regulations.
Compliance Regulations
Your company cannot maintain a positive reputation if it violates compliance regulations. Federal laws include the following:
- Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA)
- STIR/SHAKEN
- DNC
Specific industries have their own regulations. In health care, companies must observe HIPAA to protect patient privacy. Similarly, the California Consumer Privacy Act offers the state’s residents more control over how their personal data is gathered and used.
Any lead list you buy should be scrubbed to remove numbers that will cause your company to violate government regulations. All lists should be scrubbed against the DNC list and the Reassigned Numbers Database (RND). That way your agents will not violate the rights of consumers or mistakenly contact the wrong person.
Phone Number Management
The basics of good phone number management are simple. Follow these best practices to protect your reputation.
- Buy numbers from reliable carriers: Cut rate lists will only cause you problems.
- Register phone numbers’ CNAM data: Registering your numbers with a CNAM is still an essential first step.
- Use carriers that can ensure high attestation ratings: STIR/SHAKEN attestation is everything in the industry. Without an A rating, being successful will be nearly impossible.
- Monitor phone numbers for flags: Check your numbers daily to catch flags early and take mitigating action quickly.
Good management practices will do much to maintain your phone number reputation.
Maintaining Your Phone Number Reputation
Robocalls have made consumers wary of answering calls from anyone other than their close friends and relatives. You must work hard to boost your phone number reputation to make connections and conversions. Doing so is an ongoing effort that involves advanced technology, constant monitoring, clean lead lists, and comprehensive agent training.
Managing all aspects of your outbound calling campaigns will protect your phone number reputation and increase your company’s financial success.
