Why are my calls marked as spam?
Your calls are marked as spam because a carrier, or the analytics partner it works with, has judged that calls from your number look unwanted, based on how the number calls and how people respond to it. It happens to legitimate business numbers too, and the label shows only on the phone you're calling, never on yours.
Who marks your calls as spam
Not your dialer, and not the person you call. Labels come from carriers and their analytics partners, and some call-screening apps add their own. They look at how a number calls and how people react to its calls, and add a warning such as Spam Likely when the pattern looks like unwanted calling.
Each carrier decides on its own. The same number can carry a warning on one network and look clean on another, which is why one test call from one phone doesn't settle the question.
The patterns that tend to lead to a label are on our Spam Likely page.
Why legitimate sales calls get caught
From the outside, a busy sales number and a spammer can look alike: one number, a lot of calls, mostly to people who have never heard of you. The label judges that pattern, not whether your offer is real or your company is legitimate.
A few situations make a label more likely:
- One number doing all the work. A team that sends its whole calling day through one or two numbers puts the entire pattern on them.
- A sudden jump. A new campaign or a new rep can turn a quiet number into a busy one overnight.
- Calls nobody expected. Lists of people with no link to your business lead to more hang-ups, blocks and reports.
- Someone else using your number. Scammers can fake a real business's number on their own calls, and the reports from those calls land on yours. See caller ID spoofing.
What it costs a sales team
A labeled call still rings, so nothing looks broken from the rep's side. The cost shows up in who picks up:
- Reps dial as hard as before and reach fewer people, without knowing why.
- Every rep calling from that number shares the problem.
- Calls you want answered carry the same warning: a callback a prospect asked for, or a call to an existing customer.
- A prospect who saw a spam warning next to your number may remember it the next time you call.
What you can do about it
There's no setting on your side that switches a label off; carriers and their analytics partners decide when it comes off. What you control is the calling behind it:
- Find out which of your numbers are affected, and on which networks.
- Spread calling across several numbers so no single one carries the load.
- Call people with a reason to hear from you: the right roles at the right businesses.
- Stop calling anyone who asks you to, and keep an internal do-not-call list.
- Take a flagged number out of outbound calling instead of pushing more calls through it.
The longer answer is on how to remove Spam Likely.
What Personnect does
No one can guarantee a number is never labeled; labels are set by carriers and their analytics partners. What Personnect does for the numbers your team calls from:
- Numbers registered in your company's name with Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile.
- New numbers are eased in, calls are spread evenly across your numbers, and flagged numbers are rested until they're clean, automatically.
- Personnect calls each contact from a local number in their own area code.
More on the main Spam Likely page.
Questions, answered
Why do my calls show as spam on some phones but not others?
Each carrier, and the analytics partner it works with, judges numbers on its own, so one network can label a number that another shows clean. Some call-screening apps add labels of their own as well.
Can a brand-new business number be marked as spam?
Yes. A label depends on how a number is used and how people respond to its calls, not on its age, so a new number that suddenly places a lot of calls can be labeled too.
Will I know when my number is marked as spam?
Not directly. The label shows on the phone of the person you call, not on yours. The usual sign is that pickups drop on that number.
Can Personnect stop my calls from being marked as spam?
No one can guarantee a number is never labeled; labels are set by carriers and their analytics partners. Personnect gives you numbers registered in your company's name with Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile; new numbers are eased in, calls are spread evenly across your numbers, and flagged numbers are rested until they're clean, automatically.