Who’s Calling?: Augment Your Collections Strategy by Telling Consumers Who’s on the Line

People don’t answer calls from unknown callers. Unsurprisingly, according to insideARM, the generally-regarded top reason established customers and new customers don’t answer calls is because they come from an unknown caller. Collectors report that roughly two-thirds of both new and existing customers don’t answer the phone because the call’s coming from an unknown caller. In fact, the answer rate for collections calls is sometimes as low as .5%.

But calling is still critical to a well-rounded, diverse collections strategy.

“It would be a very aggressive strategy change [to stop dialing],” says Mitchell Young, vice president, Diversified Markets, at TransUnion, adding, “I haven’t seen anyone doing that…”

August 7, 2019

Acting to implement a Congressional legislative directive, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) last week “adopted new rules banning malicious caller ID spoofing of text messages and foreign calls.” The ruling further implements amendments to the Truth in Caller ID Act of 2009, codified in 47 U.S.C. 227(e), enacted last year in the RAY BAUM’S Act.

The Truth in Caller ID Act “prohibits anyone from causing a caller ID service to knowingly transmit misleading or inaccurate caller ID information (‘spoofing’) with the intent to defraud, cause harm or obtain anything of value.” However, until last year’s Congressional action, that prohibition did not extend to text messages or international calls. The new FCC rules will effect that extension, including to “additional types of voice calls, such as one-way VoIP calls.” 

March 13, 2018

Last week the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced that they will host a joint policy Forum on March 23, 2018 to highlight the actions the agencies and others have taken to fight illegal robocalls. They also announced that one month later, on April 23, they will co-host a Stop Illegal Robocalls Expo in Washington, D.C…

September 19, 2017

Yesterday the Consumer Advisory Committee of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) met to discuss, among other things, “Unwanted Call Blocking.”

First, a little background

In March of this year the Robocalls Working Group developed a set of recommendations that were made available in a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) and Notice of Inquiry (NOI). The goal of the rulemaking activity was to facilitate voice service providers’ blocking of illegal robocalls…