Blocklist

Protect Your IVR from Attacks with One Simple Tool

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Unintentional Spending

Most companies use vendors to provide special services. Oftentimes, the amount you pay to a vendor is a specific amount or falls within a specific range. Imagine, however, the surprise you (or perhaps your accounting department) would experience upon receiving a bill from a trusted vendor that is tens of thousands of dollars higher than your usual bill.

Once the shock and initial anger subside, you need to dig into the bill to figure out why it’s so high. Not only is your company on the hook for a huge sum of money, but you’ll likely end up spinning many hours investigating and attempting to resolve this issue that could be otherwise used for something more productive.

When the dust settles, your company is out a big chunk of change, you’ve diverted a few days of work to the issue, and hopefully you’ve been able to identify the issue.

In the world of voice automation, this situation can happen. Here’s how:

IVR Attacks

Someone (or something) calls into your company IVR. The call remains on the line for an extended period of time, using up minutes. When that call finally ends, the same number calls back and the process repeats.

At the industry average of $0.10 per minute, one phone number can run up a bill of $144 per day if it calls into your IVR continuously for an entire day. If multiple numbers engage in this tactic the cumulative cost increases quickly.

This type of event can easily be automated. There’s always the chance that this is a one-time event that was due to some sort of coding error. There’s also the possibility that more nefarious forces are at work.

Regardless, once you know what caused the issue you need the appropriate tools to prevent it from happening again. You’ve spent a lot of time and resources into developing great IVR applications. You don’t want something like this to ruin all that hard work. Enter Blocklist, from Plum Voice.

Blocklist

If a number can’t connect to your application, it can’t use up minutes. Blocklist is a tool that allows you to prevent specific phone numbers from hitting your IVR applications. Fortunately, Plum Voice customers can use Voicetrends data to quickly identify any number causing issues.

Once you identify a number that is attacking or spamming your IVR, you simply add that number to Blocklist and it will no longer be able to do so. Blocklist is fast, easy, and effective.

At present Blocklist works with Plum DEV and can be managed via API as well. (You can see the Blocklist documentation here.) Plum Fuse users should expect to see support for Blocklist soon.

To learn more about IVR applications and how Blocklist can protect them, contact a Plum Voice IVR expert for more information.