There’s frequent, changing legislation around phone calls. The legislation is aimed at protecting consumers from scams and fraudulent calls, which is something we can all get behind! However, some of these new regulations are having unintended consequences to legitimate businesses as a result. The biggest impact of all of this is in call blocking and answer rates. In order to have conversations with your customers, you need to be prepared to adapt regularly to these new regulations!
The number of calls that are blocked is difficult to pin down. There is no definite way to determine if a call you’re making is being blocked. It does not always show to the calling entity and can be handled in numerous different ways by the receiving party. The phone call may just go straight to voicemail, without ringing to the donor’s phone. You may hear a tone like a busy signal. The call could be answered by blocking software that plays an automated recording to the caller. With hundreds of apps on the market, carriers and manufacturers creating their own custom call blocking and labeling solutions, and more software released every day, we can’t clearly determine the number of calls that are being blocked.
While there are some indicators that your calls are being blocked, even these methods can fall short, as they typically focus on one or two types of call blocking, but cannot address or identify some of the newer, more creative ways calls are being blocked, such as playing a recording of someone pretending they can’t hear you on the phone. To give you an idea of the level of impact we’re seeing in our industry, in 2019, on average, every caller ID number we use was flagged as needing updated 3 times. Our 4 clients with the highest block rates required an average of 15 phone number changes throughout the year—more than once per month. It all boils down to one conclusion: blood banks’ legitimate calls are getting tied up in the unintended consequences of legislation that is aimed at reducing scam robocalls.
Measuring Answer Rate
The best way to get a handle on the amount of call blocking you are experiencing is to measure the opposite—how many calls are being answered by donors. This is an imperative statistic to keep track of and is the only definite way to measure your reach with your donors. Answer rates can dramatically affect your ability to schedule appointments. Answer rates in 2019 varied by 11-14 points between their highest and lowest positions by client. That can be 12 appointments per thousand dials. So, if your team makes even a small amount of dials in a day—1000—over the course of a week, you are 84 appointments down from where you should be—huge impact to results if not monitored!
The technology that carriers, providers, and even independent app developers have created and championed has done well to decrease the amount of robocalls that consumers need to deal with. However, blood bank calls being blocked is one of the unintended consequences of blocking the scammers from calling. Much of call blocking and labeling, leading to lower answer rates, comes from algorithms that large carriers and analytics companies put in place to respond to the consumer outcry against fraudulent scam calls. These algorithms look at call activity to determine how to label calls. So much of the call blocking comes directly from the technology—not the donors themselves! Because of this change, it’s our jobs to figure out how to work within this new technology.
But it’s not all doom and gloom! I know it sounds like that so far, but as a donor recruitment center, Incept has been working behind the scenes to manage the consequences of the risks of higher call blocking, and I want to share some of what we’ve done to mitigate these issues at Incept in hopes that you can implement them in your tele-recruitment operations to manage call blocking and answer rates a little better.
1. Look for Suspected Call Blocking Activity
The first thing we do is look for suspected call blocking activity. We analyzed our call activity and the returns we receive from our phone companies to determine, in our use case, the most likely indicators of large-scale call blocking. We may never be able to realize a way to see when every single individual call is blocked. However, monitoring sudden changes or spikes and drops in what our calling produces in a given day can help us uncover an issue. We monitor these initial indicators daily to prevent large-scale call blocking from continuing for any length of time to avoid a disruption in collections.
2. Monitor Answer Rates
We also monitor answer rates. Answer rates can be affected by so many different things: strategy, donor segment, likelihood to donate, previous call volume, and the list goes on. Because of this, it’s important to measure your answer rates not as a whole, but segmented by donor type, call strategy, location, etc. Measuring your answer rate overall can hide problems in specific areas of your calling, and lead to fewer appointments. For example, if you combine your frequent platelet donor answer rates with your lapsed red cell answer rates, it can cover up issues in your frequent platelet calling that you would otherwise realize. You don’t want to damage your most important donor base segments by generalizing the results!
3. Review Monthly Caller ID Health Reports
Also, through our phone vendors, we receive monthly health reports on our caller ID numbers. We know how often the numbers are flagged, and can use this information in conjunction with the suspected call blocking activity and answer rates to determine the best time to update the caller ID. While the health reports can’t contain all information from every call blocking software, it gives us an idea of the health of a phone number, particularly when used with the other metrics we’re measuring.
To help improve the performance of the file, Incept works to increase answer rates by using a caller ID local to the area in which your blood center is located. If your blood center is located across state lines, we will generally use multiple area codes to ensure that donors in each state get calls that are familiar to them. In some metropolitan areas, multiple area codes are used, so in those areas, we use more caller ID numbers as well.
4. Segment Your Caller ID Numbers
We can also use special caller IDs for the best donor segments. The more calls placed using a single caller ID, the more likely the phone number is to be blocked. Because of this, if you have a large donor base, or if you frequently call lapsed and super lapsed donors alongside your active donors, your caller IDs can be more likely to be flagged due to the volume of calls. Using a number that’s set aside for your best donors reduces that likelihood and gives you a better chance for high performance in your most important donor segments!
5. Adjust Call Strategies
We can also adjust our calling strategies to better respond to the donor base. For example, we’re regularly testing strategy changes to reduce call volume to less-responsive donor segments without affecting donations. We can change hold times to increase or decrease the time between calls to get to the best answer rates by segment. The time of day of your phone calls can affect answer rates, so we measure answer rate by time of day by donor segment to get the best equation as well. Finally, we suggest reaching your donors using other methods as well. A multi-channel approach can help improve answer rates for your more productive segments, and also allows you to reach donors in your least productive segments without increasing call volume. Using analytics, we can better determine who in your donor base is most likely to answer the phone or donate and adjust the call strategy accordingly.
Of course, with all the monitoring we’ve discussed so far, we can update caller IDs when necessary. Updating caller IDs too frequently can actually be a signal to carriers that the originator of the calls may be spoofing phone numbers or be a bad actor. While Incept is not spoofing numbers and is not a bad actor, we do run the risk of getting falsely flagged if we change caller IDs too frequently. That’s why we work hard to measure so many metrics that we can use in conjunction with updating caller IDs, so it’s not our only avenue to improve answer rates.
Are Phones Still Worth Incorporating Into a Donor Recruitment Strategy?
At this point, you may be asking if using phones to reach your donors is still effective. I have good news—it is! Calling has changed over time just as phone technology has. And while we may be in the middle of a technological transition, one thing is for sure: people are with their phones now more than ever before. Right now, calling is still the most effective way for you to recruit your donors. It allows us to have a live, custom conversation with the donors. Having the human connection on the phone is important for the relationship of the donor and the blood center. Between 80-85% of all donors Incept recruits are recruited via a phone call.
By using analytics, you can more effectively market to donors in the ways in which they are most likely to respond. Certain donors are the most responsive to phone calls. The goal of things like modeling, digital marketing, and alternate channels is to more effectively market the rest of the donor base—the ones who are less likely to respond to phone calls. This data-driven approach allows calling to remain effective for the donors for whom it has always been effective, while maximizing the rest of your donor base.
It’s also about future-proofing your strategy. Phone calls are still effective, which is fantastic news. However, their efficacy in the industry isn’t increasing, and we need to use analytics to find ways to increase overall collections for the future of donor recruitment and expand into alternate channels of recruitment before it’s too late.