Written by
Mary Gonzalez, Brand & Content Manager
Edited by our Expert Client Engagement Team
Published on
December 5, 2022
Updated on
August 15, 2025
There are many reasons why labels like ‘Spam Likely,’ Potential Scam,’ or ‘Fraud’ could appear on your outbound phone numbers when they land on consumer devices, some of which may be out of your control. Once these labels are associated with your phone numbers, removing them requires a solution that can remediate them with the major wireless carriers and analytics providers. For more information on how this works, visit our Number Reputation webpage.
What is in your control is how you dial and interact with your customers, subscribers, patients, etc. Often, spam labels become associated with your numbers because of non-customer-friendly dialing practices or phone number usage, resulting in lowered contact rates and loss of potential business.
If you find out that some of your phone numbers are labeled across the network, we have some best practices to help your clean numbers stay that way while you determine a more extensive solution to remediate the labels on your other numbers.
You can also use these respectful dialing best practices once you’ve cleaned up your number reputation to make sure you’re engaging with called parties in the ways they prefer to be contacted, so the cleaned-up numbers don’t get mislabeled once again.
Healthy number reputation starts with a good dialing and number management strategy. You can contact your dialer management team to understand your dialer settings and current metrics to ensure your answer rate, conversion rate, and more KPIs are appropriately structured for success.
It may seem like a no-brainer, but whether you are manually dialing or using an auto-dialer, your calling practices should always be respectful and consistent so that they don’t get flagged as Spam and so consumers don’t file complaints against you.
You should use your best judgment on what your patterns should look like, but here are a few things to consider:
How often and when you contact your customers on the same day can put you at risk for call labeling. You might want to consider a strategy where you are not redialing a number more than 2-3 times a day and not redialing numbers more frequently than every 4 hours in the day. Keep in mind that in addition to time zones, what time you call should always be at a respectful and appropriate hour.
Don’t over-dial your customers. While this varies by industry, it’s an important consideration to build into your overall manual or auto-dialing strategy. Make sure you have a max attempt policy that coincides with an adequate resting period so that you’re not over-dialing your lead list, which could result in call blocking and labeling.
From a caller identity perspective, how your CNAM is registered to your phone number and/or who the analytics believe you might be due to crowdsourcing becomes essential when your name and how your agents identify themselves don’t match.
If the network is displaying your caller name as ABC Hospital (perhaps they used to own the number, and you haven’t registered it to your name yet) and you’re leaving voicemails as XYZ Energy Company, consumer confusion and negative reputation may follow. The absence of any data in CNAM databases can lead to the display of improper call intent labels, so we always suggest requesting that the carriers should complete a CNAM update for your calling name.
Your automated dialer is doing its thing, and one of your called parties picks up just to hear silence, followed by a disconnect when no agents are available to take the call that was just answered. This is confusing and frustrating to the consumer and can result in complaints leading to negative reputation. For automated dialers, try to set your threshold around 2% or less, depending on the purpose of your calls.
Some solutions recommend rotating or auto-rotating phone numbers to avoid spam labels, but you need to spend lots of monitoring time and resources to ensure the numbers you cycle in aren’t coming with any spam or scam labels from a previous user.
When you purchase new numbers, ensure that the carrier has done a recent CNAM update and only request numbers that have rested between uses, we recommend about six months of rest will do. Keep in mind that number rotation solutions are quite costly and can actually lead to negative reputation from sporadic number history and volume spikes.
While these solutions offer some monitoring capacity to alert when your numbers are being negatively tagged, it isn’t common for them to have full carrier reach to get the big-picture view of how your numbers are labeled across the board. More importantly, they don’t offer remediation services for when your numbers are labeled as spam or scam. Instead of stressing over a solution where you’re perpetually avoiding labels, remediation solutions tackle spam labeling issues at the core.
Whether you’re still evaluating your options for a comprehensive call labeling and number reputation management solution or have already implemented one, we recommend considering these best practices as part of an end-to-end approach to most appropriately and successfully engage with your called parties. While there is no one size fits all approach to the perfect contact strategy, starting and ending with your consumer in mind is the foundation.
You can also reach out to us if you’d like more specific best practices recommendations to maximize customer outreach or would like to know more about the spam labeling remediation services we offer through our Number Reputation solution.
The first step is to verify your identity and establish compliant ownership and use of your phone numbers across carrier networks and analytics engines. By registering your numbers through trusted registries and ensuring your calling identity is authenticated, you help carriers and analytics providers recognize your calls as legitimate business communications. It’s also critical to manage your dialing strategies: avoid high call volumes from a single number, limit repeated calls to the same recipient, and ensure prompt, professional engagement when a call is answered. Respecting do-not-call requests and honoring consumer preferences are essential components of compliant outreach.
Ongoing monitoring of your phone number reputation is vital; Numeracle recommends regular spot-checking for spam or scam labeling and leveraging remediation processes to address any improper flags immediately. Simply registering or whitelisting your numbers is not enough. Maintaining a positive calling reputation requires continuous attention to your dialing patterns, consumer feedback, and alignment with industry regulations. By combining identity verification, number registration, on-demand monitoring, and rapid remediation, you can significantly reduce the risk of spam labeling and ensure your communications reach your intended recipients.
Even with the best calling practices, your numbers can still be mislabeled as spam. This can happen due to overly aggressive spam filtering algorithms, incorrect data aggregation by analytics providers, or even if your numbers were previously used by an entity with less reputable calling habits. Numeracle’s Number Reputation Management Solution actively works to correct these inaccuracies.
Managing your number’s reputation means maintaining trust with carriers, analytics providers, and consumers to prevent spam labeling. Enterprises can choose from a few approaches:
For scalable and effective management, businesses should weigh their call volume, internal resources, and reputation goals when choosing between manual, tool-based, or managed solutions.
Enterprises looking to reduce spam labels have several options, each with different levels of effectiveness and complexity. One common approach is to work directly with individual carriers and analytics providers to monitor labeling and submit manual remediation requests. While this can sometimes resolve issues, it is often time-consuming, fragmented, and requires ongoing internal effort to manage multiple processes and relationships.
Another option is to use third-party tools that offer monitoring capabilities, though many focus primarily on reporting or providing data rather than full identity verification, proactive prevention or labeling/blocking protection and correction. These solutions can help identify problems early but may lack the comprehensive reach and direct carrier relationships needed for faster resolution.
Platforms like Numeracle offer a more integrated approach by managing number reputation and remediation across all major U.S. carriers and analytics providers within a single system. By establishing a Verified Identity for each phone number, these platforms aim to prevent spam labeling before it occurs and handle remediation efficiently when necessary. This end-to-end management can reduce internal workload and improve consistency in how calls are treated across the ecosystem.
Ultimately, the best tool depends on an enterprise’s resources, scale, and need for control. Enterprises prioritizing comprehensive protection and streamlined remediation may benefit from platforms that combine identity verification, carrier partnerships, and ongoing management, while others might opt for more manual or monitoring-focused solutions.
