February 19, 2025

The Impact of Missed Calls on Your Business

Consumers are so skeptical of unknown phone numbers that many will not answer calls from numbers they do not know. That’s a rational response, considering that phone calls and text messages have historically been the most common ways for scammers to target victims.

Unfortunately, missed calls can hurt the revenues of legitimate businesses that want to connect with current and potential customers. Keep reading to learn more about how missed calls impact businesses and how you can increase your answer rates.

Reasons Consumers Don’t Pick Up

Fraud is a major reason consumers don’t answer calls from unknown numbers, but it isn’t the only reason. People are just tired of getting unwanted calls. They’ve become so annoyed that approximately 94% of them won’t answer calls from unknown numbers.

To some extent, you can blame caller ID for low answer rates. Now that 98% of American adults own mobile devices, practically everyone has access to sophisticated caller ID apps that help them decide whether they want to answer calls. If your call displays an unknown number, very few people will answer.

However, there’s a silver lining to this since taking control of your caller ID information could encourage more people to pick up your calls.

How Missed Calls Cost Your Business

Every missed call is a missed opportunity to convert a lead into a paying customer. Unanswered calls and poor customer service cost U.S. contact centers an average of $685 million per day. The amount your business loses to missed calls will vary depending on factors like your industry and the average revenue from each sale. Regardless, it’s clear that missed calls hurt businesses.

Just as importantly, missed calls can damage your brand reputation. If you work in an industry like healthcare, you must get time-sensitive information to your clients. If they don’t answer calls, they’ll blame you for failing to connect.

Federal Solutions to Combat Call Spoofing

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has spent years working with the telecom industry to prevent fraud and increase consumer trust. In some ways, the solutions to combat call spoofing and other scams have worked very well. In 2024, the agency reported that unwanted telemarketing calls were down 50% since 2001.

Some of the most effective solutions include:

STIR/SHAKEN

The STIR/SHAKEN framework uses tokens to verify a phone call’s source, which helps prevent call spoofing. The technology isn’t perfect, but the FCC and telecom leaders have been closing loopholes and identifying threats to improve the accuracy of attestation ratings.

TRACED Act

When Congress passed the Telephone Robocall Abuse Criminal Enforcement and Deterrence Act (TRACED Act) in 2019, it gave the FCC power to enforce rules that require carriers to adopt the STIR/SHAKEN framework and other protocols.

Most major carriers were eager to comply with new regulations, but a small number of carriers have tried to evade or delay implementation. Enforcement has improved in recent years, and the FCC has made examples of companies that — whether intentionally or unintentionally — help criminals target U.S. consumers.

Carrier Solutions to Label Calls

Telecom carriers know that fraudulent calls erode consumer trust, which ultimately hurts some of their biggest clients, including outbound call centers.

Many carriers assist legitimate businesses by identifying call intent and displaying it on caller ID screens. For instance, the carrier might use terms like charity, account services, and political to help consumers decide whether they want to answer calls.

Carriers also use analytics and customer feedback to label phone numbers that consumers might want to avoid. For instance, a carrier might add the label “scam likely” after it receives enough complaints from consumers.

Note, however, that these labels aren’t always accurate because analytics engines and consumers make mistakes. Companies can try to avoid those mistakes by using technologies like branded caller ID (BCID).

How to Protect Your Outbound Calls

While the FCC and major carriers are doing excellent work to improve consumer confidence, it’s ultimately up to individual businesses to maintain accurate caller ID information and prevent missed calls.

Caller ID Reputation offers several services that can help you protect your outbound calls to prevent missed calls and increase your revenues.

Phone Number Monitoring

Monitoring your phone numbers helps you identify potential flags that prevent you from connecting with existing and potential customers. If you see a flag, you can pull that number from rotation so it doesn’t interfere with your outreach efforts.

Caller ID Reputation’s Call Monitoring solutions reviews your phone numbers to spot unwanted flags and labels so you can address the concern immediately.

Device Cloud Auditing

Rich call data (RCD) lets you improve answer rates by displaying information like your business name, corporate logo, department name, and reason for calling. That only helps, however, when your contacts see accurate information on their screens.

Device Cloud Auditing gives you screenshots from real mobile devices connected to major carriers. That way, you can see exactly what your contacts see when you call them.

Phone Number Remediation

Phone Number Remediation comes in handy when you discover inaccurate information about your outbound numbers. Hypothetically, you could contact carriers and third-party apps to have them change the information they display. In reality, that approach takes a lot of steps and time.

With Phone Number Remediation, a group of dedicated professionals reaches out to the appropriate parties to get the information updated as quickly as possible to prevent more missed calls.

Want to learn more about how Caller ID Reputation can help you avoid missed calls and revenue? Register for an account today.