When calling with any VoIP vendor, it is important to stay within the line regarding ASR & ACD and your calling reputation. This ensures a great calling experience for yourself (or your team) and the leads you are reaching out to.
The Technical Lingo
When making business calls, carriers have ways to measure the quality of calls. This is done to reduce/eliminate possible spam or nefarious calling within the operation. We can look at two specific metrics Answer Seizure Ratio (ASR) & Average Call Duration (ACD).
ASR is the percentage of successfully connected calls versus the number of attempted calls. (a connected call is one where the call goes to voicemail, IVR, or the end-user answers the call).
ACD is the average duration of connected calls in a certain period. The longer the conversations, the better ACD rating you will have.
The Myphoner approach
In Myphoner, we have built a simple mechanism to help manage the reputation of accounts. We simply do not allow hanging up a call the first 20 seconds it's ringing. This will prevent agents with autodial enabled from hanging up immediately when looking at a lead. If you do not intend to ring, don't - disable the autodialer.
If/when the call is answered the hangup buttons are enabled immediately.
Reputation Dashboard
Account administrators can monitor calling reputation from Manage -> Voice -> Reputation.
The dashboard shows account-level metrics over the past 30 days:
ASR (Answer Seizure Ratio) -- rated as Bad, Good, or Great.
ACD (Average Call Duration) -- rated as Bad, Good, or Great.
Contact Rate -- rated as Bad, Good, or Great.
Below the account-level metrics, the dashboard flags potential issues:
Flagged Users -- agents with very short average call durations (45 seconds or less), which may indicate poor calling practices.
Flagged Numbers -- numbers called more than 10 times by a single user in the past 24 hours, which may indicate a stuck lead or bad data.
Smart CID Reputation
If you use Smart CIDs, the reputation dashboard shows ASR metrics for each CID within a Smart CID group. This helps identify individual numbers that are underperforming compared to their peers.
Each CID row shows:
Column | Description |
CID | The caller ID name and number |
Connects | Number of successfully connected calls |
Sample Size | Total call attempts |
ASR | Answer Seizure Ratio for this specific number |
Remarks | Warning icons indicating potential issues |
Remark icons:
Downward trend arrow -- this CID's success rate is noticeably lower compared to similar IDs in the same Smart CID group.
Clock icon -- this CID's success rate has dropped significantly over time compared to its own recent history.
Clone icon -- this CID is shared across multiple Smart CID groups.
Pause icon -- this CID is currently paused (shows when it will reactivate).
Pausing and Resuming CIDs
When a CID shows poor ASR metrics, you can temporarily pause it from the reputation dashboard:
Go to Manage -> Voice -> Reputation.
Find the CID showing warning indicators in the Smart CID section.
Click Pause next to the underperforming CID.
A paused CID:
Is excluded from the Smart CID rotation for 7 days.
Automatically reactivates after the cooldown period expires.
Can be manually reactivated early by clicking Reactivate.
Note: A Smart CID must always have at least 2 active CIDs. You cannot pause a CID if doing so would leave fewer than 2 active numbers in any Smart CID group it belongs to.
Best Practices
When looking at your ASR, it's important to consider what experience you want to have while calling leads and what experience you want your leads to have.
ASR Best Practices
Ensure that your call lists are accurate and that the numbers are valid before calling. If a number comes back as invalid, remove the number from your database to ensure you don't call it again. (hint: using archive disposition is great for this).
Do not call the same number too frequently; this is up to debate, but think about how you want to be treated. You wouldn't want to receive a call five times within a few minutes, so your leads wouldn't want that either.
Allow calls to go to voicemail - if a call goes to a voicemail, that counts as a connected call. (Check out our voicemail drop feature for further lead nurturing).
Call within appropriate business hours; this will carry dependant on region & legislation. However, generally speaking, ensuring you are calling at a time most advantageous to the lead will mean a higher chance of the lead answering.
Leave adequate time between calling a lead previously on the phone; this is where Myphoner scheduling/follow-up can be helpful.
Ensure that you do not calls leads registered on do not call registries (these differ from country to country.)
Consequences
Great Versus Bad ASR
Knowing where you stand in ASR is important, so let's look at what is considered a good and a bad ASR.
Great = 60%+, any number above this means most calls lead to a connection.
Good = 40 - 60 %, this is a healthy ASR; closer to 60+ is better, of course.
Bad = Below 40%, most calls aren't connected, & you are a suspected spam caller.
If you hit below 40%, this means that you are flagged for review and may be subject to sanctions.
Great Versus Bad ACD
Call centres may only expect to see average call durations of 60-120 seconds (1-2 minutes). Lower ACD traffic is generally indicative of bad lead data quality and lower profit.
Great = 60+ seconds, any number above this means most connected calls lead to a conclusive conversation.
Good = 45 - 60 seconds, this is a healthy ACD; closer to 60 is better, of course.
Bad = Below 45 seconds, most connected calls aren't conclusive, & you are a suspected spam caller.
If you hit below 45 seconds, this means that you are flagged for review and may be subject to sanctions.
Other Useful Tips
Below are some tips to help you run a more successful calling campaign.
Call with a Caller ID or DID number - calling with a business number can build trust and confidence with leads.
Call leads with local numbers; leads will trust a local number more than an international number.
If purchasing leads, ensure they are from trusted 'high-quality sources; go the extra step and use number verification services to wash your lists.
If calling within the US, register with the free call registry.
Testing Existing Numbers
You can place test calls to verify your existing numbers are working correctly:
Go to Manage -> Voice -> Phone Numbers.
Use the "Test call to" dropdown at the top to select a destination number.
Click the test call button next to any active number to initiate a call.
Test calls help verify that your numbers are connecting properly and can be useful for checking if numbers have been spam-flagged by carriers.