When an unfortunate catastrophe (CAT event) strikes, and your claims adjusters get busy, imagine your CX leader bursting in to say, “Our adjusters’ connect rates fell off a cliff by 30% after the hurricane hit! “. The radio silence isn’t policyholders being distracted. You’re having a number reputation crisis.
Your outbound numbers are likely showing up on a mobile screen as ‘Spam Risk’. So your claims follow-up, fraud alerts, renewal outreach are going straight to voicemail. According to Bandwidth’s Enterprise Communication Landscape report, 53% of IT and CX leaders say improper spam labels have caused a lower contact rate. And 17% weren’t sure if their numbers were mislabeled at all.
The solution is widely believed to be branded calling alone, when it’s in fact a cleaner outbound trust infrastructure that starts with managing your number reputation.
Why are your calls being mislabeled as spam?
Carrier analytics engines look for patterns: call volume, frequency, geographic distribution, etc. When they see a flurry of outgoing calls, their algorithms suspect spam.
Insurance contact centers are inherently at odds with that pattern. During CAT season, outbound call volume increases manifold as they follow up on claims, recommending renewals, and alerting to claim updates. These legitimate call volume surge looks like what the carrier analytics engines are trained to flag.
This starts a snowball effect: Your enterprise numbers get mislabeled as spam so customers don’t pick up. Adjusters call again. The call volume surges again. The spam label sticks.
How to fix it: Number Reputation Management as your first layer
Most insurance contact centers discover a mislabeling problem the hard way: answer rates drop, some frustrated customer informs a nonplussed adjuster, and then the team realizes calls have been flagged as spam for days or even weeks.
Phone number reputation management takes you from reactive to informed in spam labeling and remediation. Bandwidth’s Number Reputation Management (NRM) helps you track how your numbers are being labeled across all major US carriers and consumer blocking apps continuously from one place.
Additionally, Bandwidth’s NRM automates the path to remediation, so you don’t just have visibility, but also action against your mislabeled numbers. We work directly with carrier analytics engines to request removal of improper spam labels on your behalf.
When NRM detects a “Spam” or “Scam Likely” flag on one of your numbers, Bandwidth steps in and works with the analytics engine to automatically trigger the remediation process. You get automated insights and alerts about your number reputation.
How does it work in the call path?
Before your outbound call reaches a consumer’s phone, it passes through a terminating carrier’s analytics engine which assigns a label based on the call’s metadata and traffic patterns. Each main US carrier has their own partner analytics engine. Bandwidth’s Number Reputation Management helps enterprises navigate this complex space and have visibility and clear remediation paths for their numbers..
- First, it supports the process of registering your numbers within the call labeling ecosystem
- Then it tracks your number reputation for your chosen number groups across the three major US mobile carriers and consumer apps to verify the presence or absence of call labels.
- If one or more of your numbers are improperly labeled, NRM detects it and automatically initiates the remediation request.
- You receive at-a-glance reporting and notifications on your number reputation, as well as insights to prevent it from being mislabeled in the future.
- You can also view how the spam or scam label appears on mobile devices as screenshots.
How is it different from other phone number management solutions?
- Visibility across multiple carriers and apps in one place.
- Carrier-exclusive insights into call performance data to flag spam mislabels and prevent them from being mislabeled again.
- Automated reporting and alerts on your number reputation
- Automatically triggers the remediation process when any improper labels are detected.
See Number Reputation Management in action
What this means for you: Your adjusters stop calling customers with numbers you didn’t even know were labeled as spam, and you have a clear path to reclaiming outbound answer rates. You can see which number cohorts are healthy or flagged across which carrier and why.
Branded calling alone is not enough
When spam mislabels impact insurers’ outbound calling operations during the CAT season, the instinct is to turn to branded calling. Sending Rich Call Data (RCD) like your logo, name, and reason for calling can support answer rate recovery—to an extent.
But branded calling can’t stop what’s happening upstream. Spam labels can override branding. Or worse, bad actors can impersonate your brand, eroding customer trust.
That’s why number reputation is the foundation. Securing outbound trust requires a layered approach: reputation management first, branded presentation, and network-level identity authentication.
Find the full framework for how those three layers work together at Bandwidth’s complete outbound call trust framework resource.
