“We’re calling about your car’s extended warranty.”
This scripted spam call happens so often it has become a national punchline.
But the onslaught of spam calls is no joke. With 10 billion robocalls logged in the first two months of 2023 alone, unwanted calls are the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) top consumer complaint.
These calls are more than a nuisance. They can cost your business time and money, derail productivity, and exploit security vulnerabilities.
Let’s discuss why businesses need to stop spam and scam calls and explore proven solutions to do just that.
Answering the phone when someone calls is vital for most companies, especially small businesses. You don’t want to miss a potential sale or earn a poor reputation for customer service. Spammers and scammers are counting on this when they target commercial enterprises, knowing the odds of someone answering the call are much higher than with personal phone numbers.
Studies show that on average, it takes 23 minutes for a person to get back to a task after a single distraction. Additional research reveals that interruptions and distractions negatively impact our quality of work.
Now think about how many times each day you or someone else in your company is interrupted by a spam call. Even if the employee hangs up as soon as they realize it’s an unwanted call, the damage has been done and productivity suffers.
Not only do spam calls cost your business time and money, but they also leave you open to potential security breaches. Spammers and scammers are often skilled at manipulating people into providing details that give them access to proprietary information and systems. If they gain access to the business owner’s login credentials, they can do significant damage.
Even an employee with limited access could inadvertently expose the company to a security breach. For example, each employee with Square or PayPal access at a small business that uses these platforms to accept payments could be scammed into giving unauthorized access. A phone call from someone with just enough knowledge of the company to sound legitimate and exert the right amount of urgency could exploit an employee’s panic response to get the information they need to access sensitive financial details (credit card numbers, bank accounts, etc.).
Every business operates with a certain amount of risk, but we can reduce the risk of scams with a combination of preparation, education, and technology. Review these spam call solutions for small businesses and begin building a plan to protect your company and your employees.
The first step in preventing spam calls is to add your work phone numbers to the National Do Not Call Registry. Many people know that they can add their personal and home phone numbers to the registry, but overlook adding their work numbers. Any phone number is eligible for the registry.
The National Do Not Call Registry, managed by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), was designed to protect against unwanted sales calls and is effective at deterring domestic telemarketers.
Add your work phone number by visiting donotcall.gov. You can also call 1-888-382-1222 from the number you want to register.
Although this step does provide some relief from spam calls, it is not a complete solution. The FTC has jurisdiction over telemarketers in the United States, but spammers and scammers located outside the U.S. are not required to observe rules around the National Do Not Call Registry.
A robocall mitigation program (RMP) is designed to prevent unlawful robocalls from originating on a carrier’s voice network. RMPs include tools such as blocklists, caller ID reputation, dynamic traffic analysis, call screening, and caller ID lookup.
Most carriers offer customers the ability to block specific callers, which means you can simply block any number you don’t want calls from. Although this does offer some relief from robocalls and scams, call blocking is a whack-a-mole solution.
Firstly, unless you know which numbers you don’t want to hear from, you’re most likely blocking them after you’ve already received a spam call. Secondly, spammers can just call you from a different phone number. Before long, your blocklist could be more extensive than your list of contacts!
Whichever small business spam call solutions you implement, be sure your employees are aware of them and educated on how and why to use them. Humans are the weakest link when it comes to protecting your business from spammers and scammers. Take the time to train your team on the tools you use to prevent spam calls and make sure they know how to handle any spammer who might get through the safeguards.
Each of the spam call solutions discussed so far requires manual effort from everyone in your company without the promise of complete protection. A comprehensive third-party solution like Robokiller Enterprise does the work of protecting your business from spammers and scammers for you.
Our cutting-edge API is powered by artificial intelligence, machine learning, blocklists, call screening, and real-world feedback from millions of calls to block 99 percent of spam calls.
Don’t spend time and money building a robocall mitigation program that’s not guaranteed to work. Instead, rely on our proven technologies to keep your enterprise safe. Your organization can leverage our data-rich offering to analyze any phone number, and Robokiller’s solution easily integrates with PBX, CPaaS, UCaaS, and more.
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