Protecting Your Dealership Calls from Spam Labels

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Hello, everyone. Welcome back to another volley rally. Today I'm joined by an awesome guest who we haven't had the opportunity to speak with on, on one of our videos for many years now, which is kind of crazy. But Rebecca Johnson, our partner with Numerical, she's the founder of Numerical. Rebecca, thank you so much for joining me today.

Jake, it's such a pleasure to catch up and talk with Vali again.

Well, when we hopped on the call here, I said, man, it has been a minute. I mean, it certainly has been and it's always good to get back together. So today we wanted to do a refresher. It's now been three years, which is unbelievable since we last did a. A discussion video and we wanted to do a. A discussion on the spam issue. We're getting a lot, we're hearing it a lot more with dealers and of course we are still solving it for the dealers we work with. But kind of getting you on here as you're our major partner in this and certainly a top expert in, in these, in this issue to explain what's going on and explain and what dealers can do about that. So with all of that said, what's going on, in a nutshell, yeah, I.

Think it's actually important to also remind people how we got here. So the reason we have this issue with spam labels on dealerships is because it's the result of decisions by the FCC and the major wireless carriers, T Mobile, AT&T. Verizon, Sprint at the time, in response to the number one consumer complaint in the United States that was fraud calls. Right. So that was a huge issue. Lots of money being taken from grandma and grandpa and fraud against businesses, fraud against consumers. Our country had to do something and the FCC had to respond. So the best solution that was proposed to the FCC was to implement call labeling such as spam or fraud and then present that to consumers. So when the consumer's phone range, they could at least make a decision, do I answer this or do I not? I personally served on that working group that wrote the proposal. And no surprise, I was very clear. This is the dumbest idea I have ever heard. And the reason it was such a bad idea was because there's no information in the network to share who was delivering the call. Whether it was a hospital, a school, government agency, and yes, dealerships. There's just no way to know. So very quickly, after three months of those tools being deployed, I received a call from one of the carriers who I will not mention basically saying everything you said was going to happen is happening. What do we do? So that's how we get to where we are today on the solutions that are in place with regards to registration, remediation, identification. So all those together was actually a direct response to the carriers knowing their algorithms don't always get it right.

It's a common story if you've heard me talk about this before. But we had the, this big Hurricane come through Fort Myers in September of 22 and we're hunkering down here for the storm. It hit about 3pm and at 1:30 my dad got four calls in the span of 10 minutes from potential spam and looked at the voicemail after and it said hello, this is Florida's emergency weather service letting you know of hurricane conditions in your area. Which I hope 90 minutes ago people knew, but. But the point still stands that that is a very important phone call that that got flagged.

Yeah. And I can give an example personally. And this has actually been repeated by other family members on purchasing a car. So for whatever reason I sold my car and bought a new car during COVID I don't know if that just ended up being like the thing, but it just made sense. We could get a good return for used cars and get a brand new car for almost about the same price as selling our used one. So it was, it was a good time, at least from the consumer perspective. So I naturally did what everybody else does. I was looking at all the dealerships in my community, I was chatting on the website and then eventually I knew I wanted to go in person and test drive a car which was allowed during the time. And so the conversation would move from the online chat to a voice call. So a representative that we eventually met with test drove the car, like helped us through the purchase, called us because it was ready to move the conversation that level. Spam. I was livid. Of course, this is what I do for a living. And it was like, are you kidding me? You are disrupting. Because it was like one car was available of exactly all the features I wanted. And it was like I want to make sure that I can get this car. So that was frustrating, but it just validates this problem is experienced by all industries. So it's really good work that Volley is doing and getting involved with dealer identity because it's necessary. It's just disruptive to the customer experience.

And it makes the dealership customers wonder why they're labeled as spam. Right. So with all of that little backstory there, and I know some of these decisions are the ultimate why? But on a practical level, why are legitimate calls being flagged? What is going on?

So it comes down to algorithms that are looking at known information in the network. The known information in a network is call patterns, customer complaints, traffic volumes, spikes, no spikes at rest, dormant numbers, and all of a sudden they now have traffic. So there's a lot of that information that goes into whether or not to label a call fraud or spam. And the reason for that is because that is the behaviors of bad actors. So, you know, they might get a list of, you know, million numbers and they're shooting off all the calls over a matter of a few minutes. So that will raise a red flag on the behavior. Now that's actually changed over the years. And we'll get to later on one of the reasons why it's changed because of the processes that we have in place today. But that's, that's really why those labels get attached onto those calls. And if the carrier doesn't know who's calling and who's behind it, that really is the only other option they have. They, they have to take that approach in order to try to get catch basically the bad actors.

Yeah. I mean, isn't it true that the government has determined that the carriers have more of an obligation to protect their consumers from unwanted calls than to connect your. You as a business, your calls with your customers?

That is the case, except whenever they're also maybe offering business calls, then it's a conflict of interest a little bit there. But I will say genuinely, every carrier that we work with, that the consumer is a priority. And as a consumer, I like that and I appreciate that. And I do know they invest a lot into that and they're not interested in getting it wrong. There's no one saying I could care less. That's, that's not something you'll hear from the carriers.

So one of the things that people say, or more ask me when talking about this is can't I go register it myself? And we'll talk about the actual solution in a little bit. But let's kind of talk through that question. Can a business do this?

Yeah. So each carrier actually has their own independent website on their web. You know, that you can file a complaint. There's no guarantees with that. It's not the establishment of an account that you can then do like a KYC and identify who you are. It's just a way to file a complaint. And it's up to the carrier what they do with that. They have zero obligation to do anything with the complaints that come through that website. There's also another website out there called Free Caller Registry and that is a consolidated single website for the analytics that support the carriers behind that. But again, it comes with the same obligations that the carriers have, which is not much. It's just a nice complaint mechanism that, that gives you an opportunity to say, I think my number is being mislabeled. But it's not like your numbers are stored and you can come back and update, rotate, change. It's just a point in time kind of registration.

And so I know you can't update it and there's no reporting or anything, but let's just set that problem aside. What does this submission actually do for, for a business owner?

So it will inform the providers that you have a problem and you might start to get some ads on branded calling, which is a legitimate way to solve that problem. But that's about it. The next step that you might experience with it.

Well, certainly seems like an inappropriately named website to say the least.

Yeah, that's it. There's no registration that's happening. So that's, that's maybe Free Caller reporting, I don't know, but it's definitely not a registration.

Little off script on this, but just out of curiosity, have you read the fine print on the free caller registry.com.

I think I have in the past. I don't know if it's changed.

It specifically says on the freecollerregistry.com when you are on the submit your information page. This submission does not offer redress for your issues and it does not replace caller reputation monitoring services. So it truly is, it truly is a, an unfortunate scenario because people do believe that they're, they're doing something.

It really is the name they should have not used Registry and probably just said a complaint, you know, is what it should have been.

So another question we get is, okay, I'm labeled, Can't I swap out my phone number? You know, this phone number is bad. Should I swap it out?

Yeah, you can if you also want to continue to look like a bad actor. So that is actually, it's called number exhaustion. And this is actually a topic that's been picked up by the FCC and it even has a working group that's focused on it. There is actually a limit of telephone numbers that we can actually send out and assign businesses to. So, so that's, that is a problem, number swapping. And there is not a single situation in which the FCC or the carriers would deem that to be a good strategy. So it's just now if you're a number swapper, it's, you're just, you're trying to dodge a bullet, it's just not going to work. It, it is not a long term strategy. And again, we just keep looking more like the bad actors than just the patterns of calls too. So it's nail in the coffin, you're done.

And since they don't know who you are and they're just looking at your calling history and habits, you're going to have the same calling habits on the new phone number. So you're not really doing anything right.

Correct. And one of the strategies to counter that, that the algorithms has picked up is that if a number is dormant, so let's say you use a number that doesn't have a bad label and then you start putting traffic on it. Some of the algorithms, if they don't know who is using that number, the first call is spam until their algorithm learns a pattern that maybe it's not. So it's, that's part of that counter strategy to go. If you want to do number swapping, here's how we're going to treat your numbers.

Yeah, so the third misconception, or I guess question that we hear a lot is I read, you know, we're with a vendor and they registered us for Stir Shaken. Isn't that the same thing? Why do I need to register twice?

Yeah, it's so unfortunate that this standard has been interpreted into some kind of registration or identity on who you are or to even deem good actor a bad actor. It's a standard and it was never, ever, ever intended for that. The purpose of the attestation, which is what we're talking about, Jake, whether it's an A, B or C, A is the highest level, C is the lowest level. What a attestation means, and this is in the SIP header of the call, is that the carrier that is originating the call knows who the, knows who the entity is. Be a bad actor. They just know who the entity is and the caller is authorized to use that telephone number. A bad actor can be known and a bad actor can be authorized to use a telephone number. It means nothing. So just to show you how much it means nothing to the carriers as we've progressed through the years, last year T Mobile made the decision to stop displaying the little green check mark with calls that are delivered as a level attestation because it means nothing. And to think that that means trusted or verified was just not the best thing for consumers because of this Confusion right here. So it means that your carrier is compliant with the fcc.

Well, it sounds to me like this is the intention of Stir Shaken is to combat number spoofing.

Correct.

And it also sounds like the carriers don't take this signage into the spam label algorithms at all.

They'll take it a little bit, but it's the weighted of it doesn't mean anything. So if it is a something that comes through, perhaps like a C level attestation, which is usually the gateway, which is usually an international call coming in, that could be a tip off that this is coming from a, you know, a place outside the US So that to me is what's more valuable than an A or a B. It's just kind of like, okay, the good guy, you know, the carriers are letting us know that they delivered this call, put it on the network, and they know something that doesn't raise any red flags with anybody. And it usually helps. It's really just for the carrier. If we had to be honest, it's a benefit to the carrier, not the businesses.

So with all of that said, we have yet to doing these strategies. We've yet to solve this issue for, for the business. So that's why we, you know, volley. We partnered with numerical to bring this into the automotive space as dealer identity. And let's, let's talk a bit about what, what exactly is numerical and dealer identity doing?

Yeah. So what we're doing together is exactly the strategy that was agreed upon with the carriers when I transitioned from the working group to now being an adversary. I don't know. I was an advocate for the businesses that. I understand the situation you're in, that you must have a way to label calls. But I would like to inform your algorithms and that's where the concept of registration came into play. And the only way that the carrier would accept that data is if they knew there was a good KYC process to ensure that the business is who they say they are and they're not a bad, bad actor. So in exchange for accepting that data, the telephone numbers in the business, we could then monitor. And monitoring was important because. And I don't see it as much anymore, but we still see it. Bad actors, like if you're a bank and you register a number and that number, like dealerships, that number is tied to a store. A bad actor could pick it up and spoof it. Spoofing still happens because we have carriers who don't care about those compliance rules. So we need to be able to monitor if that number flips over into the spam category because the behavior has just gone awry. And you would never, as a dealership ever see that in your call logs because that calls getting originated outside your network that you use. So we've been able to get that information on the monitoring and it allows at least the care the dealership to go, maybe I don't want to use that number right now until we get it cleaned up. Or you could completely abandon the number and say, you know, it's been compromised too much bad actors are using it. So monitoring is so important to continue to understand how the tagging is happening on your particular telephone numbers. Then to that point of the spam tag, you got to be able to resolve it. And so in exchange again of verifying your identity, getting the spam tag, and you say, that's really not me, I'm not having that issue. There's a process that you can go through and the carriers can go, okay, all right, we understand that that's actually an improper spam tag because of something over here. And now we fixed it and we have literally with numerical, we have seen where there were errors in the algorithms, literally a zero or one bit change. And we see that because we monitor so many numbers. And all of a sudden one day there was a spike in spam tags. We did the investigation, worked with the provider, and yeah, it was an error on the algorithm. So as far as I know today, Jake Numerical is the only one that is actually testing new rollouts with the algorithms. And we're the first to, to help the carrier solve it, which is to the benefit of everybody.

So one of the interesting things you were talking about, if a bad actor uses a phone number, you know, they spoof it or whatever else and they ruin your calling reputation, the carrier might still flag you. One of the things that we've run into is and Josh from your team, he's put together this stat and it appears that about 6% of of the phone numbers that we register need a remediation post registration. So why? Why? I know the carriers always withhold the right to label a phone number, but what does cause a phone number that isn't being spoofed to get labeled post registration?

It's going to be the calling patterns. And those could be legitimate calling patterns, but it's just that it looks odd. May not be odd to the business, but it looks odd to the carrier. So that's why the registration and knowing how that number was being treated first is important. And then we go through that resolution side. So that we can still check off. Like, is this really the number that you know, is this one of your numbers? Like truly. And you evaluate why is it labeled spam? And if you say, yeah, it definitely shouldn't be, then we fix that. But that's. The numbers are not viewed as a holistic business. So the carriers can only evaluate one number at a time, which is why we do see that. And that's not just the automotive industry. That's across the board, the bucket of numbers. Some are going to be labeled spam when you do the first review of it.

And it's separate for every carrier, pre and post registration. Yeah.

Yes. That was the first thing I discovered when I launched this company and worked with the carriers of I got a set of numbers. Can you tell me how those are labeled? And I was just shocked at how different they treated the numbers.

It's, it is what also makes it very hard to diagnose this on your own because it might come up on her phone, but not on his phone because he is at and T and she is T mobile. Right. So it's, it's pretty, pretty tough how it, how it is completely different.

You know, you talk on to that. I'll just add on to that because, you know, you're focused on the dealership industry. But we, we are across the board and look at a lot of industries and I will say the dealership industry is one where we do see a lot of spam tagging like, you know, from that initial. But the cleanup is really good for that particular industry. Once that identity is established and it's associated to the TNS and you have to maintain the registration, the moment you leave any kind of, you know, for dealer identity, that identity is separated and those numbers, so it must be maintained. But the, some of the greatest successes for that is in the dealership industry, which is a reflection of the acceptance from the carriers that these aren't the targets we're going after. It's really not the dealership. So that's a positive. My debt collectors, it's a little bit harder.

I think it's also counterintuitive to the general narrative about dealerships because as you know, everyone knows, unfortunately, auto dealers don't have the best public perception. When you think of a dealership, you think of the sleazy guy trying to nickel and dime you or whatever. But I think the proof is in the, is in the pudding with these caller reputations is the dealerships. 99% of them are making calls that are legitimate and are wanted. They're calling their customers who have either been in their dealership within an established business relationship or they submitted a fresh lead. They're calling that customer to, you know, set up a sales or service appointment. And. And businesses like this tend to be getting hit hard by these calling algorithms because they are making a lot of dials. They do have varying levels. You know, a recall campaign. Maybe they're not the longest a phone call compared to a sales lead. Right. And so it's just really interesting.

Yeah. Recalls was definitely one that before, you know, we. We met each other and realized there was a partnership here. I had actually a couple of customers were the recall calls. And they were the worst on the spam labeling that occurred. And I fought very hard for those to be protected. And so that's why some industries that they get treated a little differently because they're calling patterns a lot. They do look exactly like a bad actor. Like, you could literally look at the patterns and go, this is a bad actor. Having that identity and the registration to it really helps set it apart. And if it is a recall, certain calls get treated a little bit more protected. In fact, numerical did the critical call registry that is specific for like emergency types calls like. So you. There should be no algorithm that's ever run on it. So there is kind of varying. And it matters what your intent is with the calls.

So what is one thing that you wish every dealership knew about their calling identity?

That they accept the fact that it's probably affecting them if they're not registered? That's. Don't think you don't have a problem if you haven't taken the time to evaluate if there is one. Because once you do, you'll see that you have an issue. And there's. This is the easiest thing to fix. It really is to remove that hurdle. Because nobody wants to invest all this time, all this effort, all this marketing dollars just for right at the connection with the customer. It says spam. That's not getting the best return on your investment into your marketing and your sales team. So just eliminate it. Just eliminate it. That's all you got to do.

Well, to that end, if you do want to find out if you have a problem, reach out to us here at Dealer Identity. We are offering free number checks with our numerical partners. We do have the ability to check these numbers and see if you do have a problem. Rebecca, thank you very much for taking the time with me today. Any other closing thoughts that you'd like to share?

Just. You need to act now. It's been going on long enough, you haven't protected your numbers. You've had years of opportunity so you just gotta do it today.

Well, that is certainly true. So Rebecca, thank you very, very much for joining. If someone wants to get a hold of you for more compliance insights or anything, obviously they can go to numerical.com Is there any other way that they can find out more?

I sign up for our newsletter. That's the best thing. We have a regular update so you can stay up to date with what's trending, what's going on. We keep actually a watch on the US and internationally as well. This is not just for the US challenges. So sign up for the newsletter on the website. It's the best thing to do.

Well, great. And as always, reach out to me and the rest of the volley team if you have any other questions and we hope you all have a fantastic day.