Call Center Software

Call Center Blacklist: Why (And How) to Create

Just as we get spam calls on our personal phones, businesses also struggle with unwanted calls. Call centers, especially, face this issue often. And as a business that thrives on maximum call time, spam calls can significantly cut down a call center’s productivity.

Think about it. Spam calls cut into the time that could have been utilized in talking to customers or prospects. They also make your phone lines appear busy or inaccessible when customers try to reach you.

Although every business faces unwanted calls to a certain extent, these can be quite bothersome for call center agents. This is why the concept of a call center blacklist came into the picture. 

What Are Spam Calls and Why Should You Have a Call Center Blacklist?

A call center receives many spam calls daily. This can take up a lot of time and waste agents’ energy. So, creating a barrier for scam calls is essential.

A spam call, in the general sense, refers to calls that present unsolicited offers and schemes. They might come from other companies that are interested in doing business with you or individuals involved in fraudulent activities.

Robocalls are pre-recorded messages that don’t support responses on your end. They are automatically dialed and can be used to call millions of numbers in an instant. Of all spam calls in the United States in 2021, 60% were robocalls.

While you can tell human tele-callers to remove your business’ number from their calling list, how do you deal with automated calls? The only way is to blacklist them. 

Another form of unwanted calls is scam calls. They can target your company’s phone, computer system, or personal information. Such kinds of calls include:

  • Scammers who claim to be from big organizations and offer you fake deals to get money
  • Callers pretending to be from government agencies or authorities, claiming overdue taxes, expiring licenses, and so on

Any of these scams are harmful to call centers and can cost a lot of time, money, and even legal hassle. It is not always possible for call center staff to recognize scammers and escape their trap. So, it’s safer to just block these calls.

Having a blacklist reduces the possibility of such mishaps and ensures that your business operations remain uninterrupted by unwanted callers as much as possible.

Which Numbers Should You Add to a Blacklist?

Every business has a specific set of phone numbers that they want to avoid. But while creating a blacklist, some common numbers automatically qualify to be included. These can be:

  • Technical support calls
  • Lottery scams
  • False charity institutions
  • Bank fraud calls
  • Insurance and healthcare scams
  • Fake customer calls
  • Debt scams
  • Password and information requests

Before adding a number to an app call center blacklist, ask yourself a few questions.

  • Does this caller offer any value to the business?
  • Is this call wasting the company’s and agent’s time?
  • Will the business ever require talking to this caller?
  • Does this number pose any risk to the financial and data security of the call center?

If the answers are mostly negative, add the caller to your blacklist. After all, blacklists are not irreversible. If you change your mind, you can always unblock them later.

Benefits of Having a Call Center Blacklist

There are several obvious benefits of having a blacklist for your call center. Let’s discuss them here.

Minimizes Call Volume

Blocking unwanted calls helps a business to minimize call volumes. For a call center, which needs maximum phone availability, the absence of spam calls lets agents to focus more on customers.

This way, agents and managers can prioritize their core tasks and attend more calls in a day, which ultimately increases the profitability of the business.

Improves Customer Experience

This may sound far-fetched, but call center blacklists indirectly improve the customer experience. With fewer unwanted calls in the queue, customers are also directed to agents quicker. They have to spend less time on hold, which reduces the chances of dropped calls and boosts customer satisfaction.

Saves Costs

Cost savings is a major benefit of call center blacklists. All wanted calls cost money, in terms of agents’ time and for the minutes too. With blacklisting software, call center managers can regulate such calls, thus saving money.

Resources that would otherwise have been wasted on pointless calls can now be directed toward business-specific operations. For instance, if you receive a sales call in place of a spam call, it can lead to a revenue opportunity. 

Preserves the Authenticity of Analytics Data

Spam calls interfere with the accuracy of your analytics data and corrupt the results. This leads to wrong forecasts and financial losses for a company. You may also end up wasting your money on activities, channels, and strategies that are not beneficial for the company’s growth.

Removing fake calls from your data records helps to maintain their authenticity and produces accurate reports of the call center’s performance. This data can be used to formulate future strategies and optimize workflows to increase productivity.

Reduced Chances of Being Scammed

As mentioned earlier, several scammers and fraud callers reach out to call centers on a regular basis. Adding such suspicious numbers to a blacklist reduces the chances of being scammed. After all, with numerous agents attending thousands of calls each day, it is quite impossible for a manager to keep track of scammers manually.

Automated blacklists keep such callers away from your business, thus securing your data and financial resources.

How to Create a Call Center Blacklist

Every call center needs a foolproof way to keep scammers away from their phone lines. Modern contact centers use virtual, cloud-based phone systems that have the blacklisting feature integrated into the platform. This makes it easy for them to block numbers, as compared to physical phone systems or landlines. 

In virtual phones, you can use the blacklisting feature to compile a list of phone numbers that you do not want to hear from. These numbers will be disconnected immediately if they try to call your business any time of the day.

You can use this feature for robocalls, unwanted vendors, spammers, aggressive callers, and so on.

Blacklists can be created in a few easy steps in most online phone systems. You can create and configure a blacklist on JustCall in a couple of ways.

To blacklist a number that is saved to your Contacts, follow these steps. 

  • Log in to your JustCall dashboard.
  • Scroll down to the Contacts section.
  • Select the phone number or contact that you want to blacklist.
  • Scroll down and blacklist the number. 

Another way is to blacklist a number from your call logs. This is applicable for spam calls that are in your call records but not in your contacts.

  • Go to the JustCall dashboard and scroll to the Call Logs section.
  • Click the call that you want to add to the blacklist.
  • This will open the Call Information window.
  • You’ll see three dots at the top of the page. Click the dots and select Blacklist.
  • The number or contact will now be blocked, and their further calls will not be allowed on your call center phones.

Over time, you can keep adding numbers to the blacklist as and when you discover a spammer or a bothersome caller. You can add or remove a number from the blacklist any time you want.

Final Words

A blacklist, although important in personal phones, serves a bigger purpose for businesses like call centers. It frees up time and resources for the employees, helps managers to handle and track data more efficiently, saves money by reducing incoming call costs, protects the personal data of clients, and maintains the financial security of the company.

With the advent of modern call center technologies like cloud-based phones, blacklisting numbers have never been easier. You can have personalized blacklists or numbers that are universally rejected in all lines of the call center. Depending on business needs and issues, every agent can contribute to creating a useful blacklist that can help in increasing the efficiency of the workforce.

Taran, as the Support Manager at JustCall, spearheads efforts to enhance customer satisfaction by strategically collaborating with client-facing teams. He upholds rigorous standards, ensuring JustCall's support services consistently excel. Passionate about superior customer experiences, Taran champions a company-wide dedication to a customer-first mindset.

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