How to Handle Spam Calls Where It Seems They Come from Our GMB Page?

Mikkel
I'm getting a lot of spam calls for my local cleaning company could this be the fault of SEO guy? Or should I be updating GMB page?
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[filtered from 18 Answers]

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how to handle spam calls where it seems they come from our gmb page

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Chris M. Walker ^👑
Are they telling you to update your listing in Google or something like that?
The good news is that this is normal scam and nothing to worry about or do anything to.
The bad news is there's virtually nothing you can do to stop it.
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Ryan » Chris M. Walker
Considering I own 3 businesses, am listed as the marketing director on 7 companies, and am listed as the contact (technical or otherwise) for at least 80 domains – I easily get 5-10 of these robocalls daily. I get another 10-15 from India asking me if I want them to build me a website or outsource my website building, and another 4-5 for app development. Plus I have 9 different Yelp reps calling me, so I average 1-2 calls from yelp per week.
Between my 14 e-mail addresses, I get about 6,000 emails a week – 150 of which are actually of some importance.
This garbage takes up about 8 hours a week of my time.
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Ryan
I'm seriously considering adding a vanity number with a phone tree, directing actual/potential clients to my phone and everything else to various voicemail boxes for "employees."
Russell » Ryan
you need a virtual assistant
Ryan » Russell
Been seriously considering that as well. Problem is, I lost 70% of my revenue with COVID.
Funny enough, it does not matter how good your marketing is if you are a spa, theater, chiropractor, or Las Vegas bar that relies on gaming, and there is a quarantine. My 3 biggest clients (and a few smaller ones) closed up shop last year.
Once I have grown back to the revenue I had before, a virtual assistant is on the agenda. After COVID is gone and we've all been vaccinated, an in-person personal assistant might be in the cards too. In the meantime, I just hang up on a lot of people.
Tony » Ryan
I once had a company where I employed about 14 to 18 people. Life is much easier with virtual assistants. And, a lot less paperwork, liabilities, no need for a CPA, or even an attorney.
Ryan » Tony
Agreed. I once owned a company employing about the same number. We did on-demand fully custom print products for the funeral industry.
My wife (who is a Certified Public Accountant (CPA)) was my Human resources (HR) manager, Ops manager, and general my-girl-friday. Now that I own this company, she is my primary graphic designer and part time bookkeeper while also working for an inventor/entrepreneur friend of mine acting as his right hand.
I've had both virtual and in-person assistants before and both have their pros and cons. I've also been both a virtual and personal assistant in my younger life.
The big difference is that it is harder to have the virtual assistant pick up your dry cleaning, act as your personal shopper, or take your car to the shop for an oil change. 😄
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Yamil ^🎓 » Ryan
so true

Leon
At my company our phone number has an area code from a completely random area in middle of nowhere. Spammers always disguise their number with a matching area code. So we know when we get a call with that area code it is spam. That is how we avoid it.
The drawback is you no longer have your local area code so need to think about that.
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Austen » Leon
genius!
Dario » Leon
very smart for local businesses. Have to steal this idea.

Neil
Make the phone number an image so robots don't pick it up.
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Eric
Apparently your SEO guy helped you get more visibility, that's not the problem. Welcome to 2021 and robocalls.
As Vinnik
said, get a better phone system. Mine costs $28/mo. for one line. My simple menu says "Welcome to ___. We're filtering out robocalls. If you're a human, press 1." Easy peasy, clients are perfectly fine with it, and very few junk calls come through.

Mikkel ^✍️ » Eric
what's that service called?
Eric
Many Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) systems out there. We use Ooma. Loved it so much, signed up to be a reseller to my main clients.

Luke
If you're building citations every day, you will definitely get an increase in spam calls. That's actually a good sign; it means you're making progress. A lot of them are just the marketing companies calling to sell you their products and services after you (or your SEO guy) lists your website in their directory. One way to minimize the spam is to set up Interactive Voice Response (IVR) on your call tracking system. For example, someone calls in and they hear a message that says "Press 1" to connect to you. If they don't, you can have the system automatically hang up.

Cadman » Luke
correct
Mikkel ^✍️ » Luke
How much is something like that
Luke » Mikkel
You shouldn't have to pay more than $50 a month.
I use Call Rail. It's got an easy to use, non-code interface.
Their starter plan is $45/mo. It comes with 500 minutes and 10 phone numbers. Additional local minutes are 5 cents/each until you hit a certain threshold.
From inside their platform, these are the steps:
1. Create a Call Flow
2. Select "Blank" to build your own
3. Select "Menu"
4. Add the text you want the caller to hear.
– By default, it's "Press 1 for Sales, press 2 for Support". I work with contractors, so I switch it to "Press 1 to connect to [Company Name]"
5. Under "What would you like to happen?", click "Dial"
6. Enter the phone number you want calls to forward to (your business line, cell, whatever you'd like.
7. Save
You can now add that call flow to prevent a lot of spam calls from ever reaching you.
If it's an automated bot, there's no way for it to press 1 on the keypad, so it just drops the call.
I started using an IVR a few years ago. One of my pressure washing contractors was getting slammed. But after we set it up, it instantly dropped spam calls by about half. Huge win.
I set it up for every client now. That, and I add them to the national do not call registry: donotcall.gov/register.html.

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