6 ms·

I read somewhere that the purpose of some subset of robocalls is to simply listen for an answer to determine whether a human operator has been found.

UncleEntity 8y ago
I'm fairly convinced of that, a couple times I "press one to speak with a sales representative" and it immediately hung up on me. Or "press three to be removed from the call list" and the volume of spam calls drastically increases. I actually just finished a couple weeks of zero spam calls and it was wonderful...if not a bit on the lonely side
- jacobsenscott 8y ago
  I foolishly tried out the new google call screening thing, and I'm also think it increased the number of spam calls I get per day because any answer means someone is there.
  - r00fus 8y ago
    It hasn’t worked poorly for me. Call volume down and I just let stuff go to voicemail most of the time.
    - craftyguy 8y ago
      Yea, probably not a solution for the OP comment you are ultimately replying under.. (assuming you read it)
cableshaft 8y ago
We have a robo dialer that tries to deterimine whether there's a live (human) or recorded voice (I say try, because it's not as easy to determine as you might think), and if it thinks it's a live voice it will play a message that it's going to transfer and transfer to a live agent, otherwise it plays a message intended for voice mail. The main reason we have this is to lighten the load of agents manually dialing phones and wasting time on getting answering machines, fax lines, disconnected numbers, etc, which costs the business money and makes it harder to reach the coverage required by our clients by a certain date. But like I said, it's not perfect, and we are currently fighting an issue where not enough disconnected numbers are being identified as such by the carriers and our agents are having to spend a lot of time manually verifying that they are disconnected numbers. We don't make an attempt to spoof anything, though. These are calls done on behalf of companies that have active business with you (i.e. you got a new insurance policy and the insurance company wants to ask you some follow-up questions, etc).
- criddell 8y ago
  > We don't make an attempt to spoof anything, though. How do your agents identify themselves? What phone number shows up on caller id? Yours or the client's?
  - cableshaft 8y ago
    The script is specific to the client and campaign. They usually begin with some variation on "I am calling on behalf of <client> regarding <whatever topic the client is wanting us to talk about>." It comes up as our phone numbers. If it came up as our clients that would require spoofing.
    - criddell 8y ago
      That sounds honest and reasonable.
      - cableshaft 8y ago
        Yeah, if we were doing something really shady, I don't think I would be able to justify staying here as long as I have, personally. It's not the most rewarding job I've ever had, but it is the most high profile. I wouldn't imagine having so much of an effect on the business of multiple Fortune 100 clients just a few years ago.

UncleEntity 8y ago

I'm fairly convinced of that, a couple times I "press one to speak with a sales representative" and it immediately hung up on me. Or "press three to be removed from the call list" and the volume of spam calls drastically increases. I actually just finished a couple weeks of zero spam calls and it was wonderful...if not a bit on the lonely side

jacobsenscott 8y ago
I foolishly tried out the new google call screening thing, and I'm also think it increased the number of spam calls I get per day because any answer means someone is there.
- r00fus 8y ago
  It hasn’t worked poorly for me. Call volume down and I just let stuff go to voicemail most of the time.
  - craftyguy 8y ago
    Yea, probably not a solution for the OP comment you are ultimately replying under.. (assuming you read it)

cableshaft 8y ago

We have a robo dialer that tries to deterimine whether there's a live (human) or recorded voice (I say try, because it's not as easy to determine as you might think), and if it thinks it's a live voice it will play a message that it's going to transfer and transfer to a live agent, otherwise it plays a message intended for voice mail. The main reason we have this is to lighten the load of agents manually dialing phones and wasting time on getting answering machines, fax lines, disconnected numbers, etc, which costs the business money and makes it harder to reach the coverage required by our clients by a certain date. But like I said, it's not perfect, and we are currently fighting an issue where not enough disconnected numbers are being identified as such by the carriers and our agents are having to spend a lot of time manually verifying that they are disconnected numbers. We don't make an attempt to spoof anything, though. These are calls done on behalf of companies that have active business with you (i.e. you got a new insurance policy and the insurance company wants to ask you some follow-up questions, etc).

criddell 8y ago
> We don't make an attempt to spoof anything, though. How do your agents identify themselves? What phone number shows up on caller id? Yours or the client's?
- cableshaft 8y ago
  The script is specific to the client and campaign. They usually begin with some variation on "I am calling on behalf of <client> regarding <whatever topic the client is wanting us to talk about>." It comes up as our phone numbers. If it came up as our clients that would require spoofing.
  - criddell 8y ago
    That sounds honest and reasonable.
    - cableshaft 8y ago
      Yeah, if we were doing something really shady, I don't think I would be able to justify staying here as long as I have, personally. It's not the most rewarding job I've ever had, but it is the most high profile. I wouldn't imagine having so much of an effect on the business of multiple Fortune 100 clients just a few years ago.