Gong's strategies for preventing calls from being flagged as spam

Note

Working with Gong Engage requires an Engage seat.

Who's this for? Reps and admins

Ensuring that your calls don’t appear as spam when reaching out to new prospects is essential to your success. Service providers play a crucial role in determining whether a phone call is flagged as spam, and when calls from specific phone numbers or service providers are frequently reported as unwanted or spam, it can impact the overall reputation of those numbers.

Gong takes several measures to help your calls reach your intended recipients, including the ability to set up trusted calling. These measures can be set up for companies using U.S. phone numbers.

What does Gong do to prevent your calls from being labeled as spam?

Trusted calling

Your admin can set up trusted calling as soon as you have business numbers, involving a quick process of creating a business profile with the necessary details for registering your business numbers as trusted numbers. For Gong to apply all of our spam prevention solutions to your company, you need to provide a U.S. address as part of the trusted calling registration process.

By setting up trusted calling, you can:

• Activate SHAKIN/STIR protocols: This adds a digital certificate to your phone numbers, allowing you to be identified by the service provider.

• Set up Voice Integrity: Voice Integrity allows you to register your numbers with call providers to prevent them from marking the numbers as spam.

• Free Caller Registry: As a complementary part of setting up Voice Integrity, the Free Caller Registry allows you to register and approve phone numbers as legitimate.

Using local numbers

When using the Gong dialer, you can make calls to/from anywhere you want, minus a few exceptions. However, we recommend buying a local number from the regions where you operate to improve answer rates. For example, if you're located in the US but you want to dial UK numbers, your admin can provision a UK number for you.

However, you want to avoid high volumes of calls from local presence numbers due to multiple reps dialing the same area code. If multiple users are calling the same area code, give reps their own numbers rather than using the same shared number.

Best practices

Don’t use your personal number for outbound calls

Personal numbers are often labeled as spam when used with the dialer. We recommend using virtual numbers for outbound calls and personal numbers for inbound calls, as the forwarding number.

Manage call volume and patterns

Avoid making a high volume of short calls in quick succession. Spread out your call activity to maintain consistent traffic and avoid patterns that resemble spam callers. For new campaigns, increase the call volume incrementally over time, rather than jumping from zero to full volume too quickly. Ensure that calls for legitimate business purposes are not overly frequent or made outside of standard working hours, keeping in mind that what constitutes 'too frequent' can vary based on the specific use case.

Avoid neighbor spoofing

Minimize the use of local presence numbers, especially when multiple reps call the same area code. Allocate individual numbers to reps to reduce this risk.

Time your calls wisely

Be mindful of call timing. Avoid excessive calls at odd hours, and space out your calls to reduce the likelihood of being flagged.

Maintain accurate prospect lists

Ensure your calls are targeted, relevant, and compliant with regulations like TCPA (US only, Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) Act 47 U.S.C. § 227) and Do Not Call lists (US only, https://www.donotcall.gov/), and other requirements. Keep your contact information updated to avoid low answer rates associated with spam. Delete numbers that don’t successfully connect.

Provide clear caller identification

Identify yourself clearly on calls, providing prospects the ability to recognize your call and the option to opt out. This builds trust and reduces complaint rates that can lead to spam flags.

Avoid number swapping

Changing numbers frequently is a common practice used by fraudulent callers as it prevents them from being traced. Keeping the same numbers for a while helps ensure the number maintains a positive reputation and call history with carriers.