Three call reputation management solutions (free checklist)

Would you answer your cell if the caller ID said, “Possible spam”? Alternatively, have you ever tried to find out if your company’s calls are mislabeled as scam or fraud? In this scenario, you might be losing money or worse – customers. It’s time to find out where your legitimate outbound calls stand. Here are the three call reputation management solutions to consider:

• Do it yourself
• Use a reputation monitoring service
• Use a reputation management service

And for more help, we’ve also created a free checklist to guide you to the right solution.

DIY call reputation management

DIY is just that. You and your company work directly with wireless carriers like Verizon, T-Mobile, and AT&T (and their analytic engines). Through the free public complaint process, you can submit complaints to remove spam or fraud labeling from your outbound phone numbers.

Pros: This solution is free and completely in-house. All communication stays between you, the wireless carriers, and their partners.

Cons: This option is quite slow and may have mixed results. We’ve tried the public complaint process. It can take days, weeks, or even longer. You also don’t get visibility into your telephone numbers’ reputation, which can be frustrating. If you succeed in jumping through the carriers’ hoops, there’s no guarantee your reputation will remain in good standing. It might be re-labeled as spam again in the future.

Best for: The DIY choice is usually best for smaller companies with a limited budget. If a company has low call volumes and a small, stable set of phone numbers, it may be able to navigate the manual complaint processes. Since DIY results don’t materialize instantly, it’s best if the company’s critical business processes don’t depend on outbound calls and mislabeling doesn’t have a significant impact on business.

Call reputation monitoring service

To quickly find out which numbers are being mislabeled as spam, look to reputation monitoring services. You can get data straight from third-party analytics engines. These services estimate your reputation score by polling and sampling data from test calls.

Since the reputation scores aren’t provided directly from a wireless carrier’s analytic engine, the scores aren’t as accurate as other solutions. But some companies may prefer faster estimates with lower accuracy rather than precise data provided less frequently.

Monitoring services alone don’t fix your reputation score. You just get the estimated call labeling data faster than doing everything in-house.

When a monitoring service notifies you that your calls are at risk of being mislabeled, you’ll need to work directly with your carriers through the public complaint process, just like the DIY solution.

Pro: You get insight into the actions you need to take, and the overall process is faster.

Con: Call reputation monitoring isn’t free and there’s still a significant amount of DIY work. Third-party estimations aren’t always an accurate prediction of how your calls are treated by wireless carriers.

Best for: Monitoring is probably best for companies that can shift their calls to use alternate phone numbers when they discover that their call labeling is inaccurate. This is known as number cycling, and it can introduce its own set of problems.

What not to do: Number cycling

When a company swaps phone numbers with bad reputations for new numbers, the sudden increase in outbound calls is usually flagged as suspicious activity by analytic platforms. This tactic isn’t recommended and only works for a limited time until the new numbers get bad reputation scores. Then it’s back to square one.

Call reputation management service

Reputation management proactively reduces the chances that your calls will be mislabeled as fraud or spam. This solution reactively discovers and fixes problems if negative call labeling occurs. Reputation management is offered by a spectrum of vendors. Some are full-coverage companies that work with all wireless carriers while others specialize with one wireless carrier.

Services like IntelePeer’s include a vetting and registration process that is recognized and approved by call analytic engines. By creating a relationship between you, your phone numbers, and the analytic engines, vetting and registration helps you:

• Get accurate and up-to-date reputation data straight from the source
• Reduce the likelihood that your numbers get a poor reputation score
• Speed up the process of fixing your numbers’ labeling if you have a poor reputation score

Pro: Call reputation management is easier for you, and it’s more effective than other options. The work is professional and timely, requiring fewer resources and time than doing it yourself. You don’t need to dedicate teams or resources to manage your numbers.

Con: This choice costs more out of pocket than DIY or monitoring-only services.

Best for: Management services are great for most enterprise-sized companies whose business operations are impacted by low answer rates when calling customers, clients, or prospects.

Not all reputation management solutions are created equally

With so many options and factors, it can be overwhelming to choose the right solution. That’s why we’ve made a simple and free reputation management checklist to help guide you to the best option.