BACKGROUND

Robocalls are generally recognized as unwanted calls. However, the term “robocall” does not have a precise definition as it has various meanings in the industry and to the public. Some federal agencies interpret this term to mean as any telephone call that plays a pre-recorded announcement to the called party. Others consider any unwanted call to be a “robocall,” regardless of whether a pre-recorded announcement is played. An issue arises when defining this term based on whether the call is wanted or not. Namely, whether the call is wanted or not cannot be determined until the call is answered by the called party. For example, a pre-recorded call asking the called party about renewing their car warranty is currently frequently a scam and thus may be readily identified as an unwanted call by the called party. Other pre-recorded calls may inform the called party that their car, which they brought into the dealer for servicing, is ready for pickup. In this case, if the called party actually brought their car into the dealer for servicing, then the called party will likely consider this a wanted call. Thus, it cannot be completely determined whether the call is wanted or not until after the call has been answered. However, many robocall mitigation techniques attempt to predict whether the call would be wanted and block the call based on the prediction. Obviously, attempting to predict whether an unanswered call is wanted or not is problematic.

Many of these unwanted calls received are scams, unsolicited telemarketing calls, many of which are illegal or fraudulent. Certainly, many of these calls are viewed as a nuisance and unwanted, though some are difficult to predict with certainty prior to answering. Many illegal calls rely on a concept called “spoofing.” This term is frequently understood as indicating a telephone number that the caller is not authorized to use. Scammers may populate the calling party number (“CPN”, also sometimes referred to as the ANI) with an unauthorized number to increase the likelihood that the called party will answer the phone. However, it is not necessary to have definitive agreement on the scope of the terms “robocall” and “spoofing” to appreciate the inventive concepts herein.

The industry has collectively attempted to reduce unwanted robocalls by various means and technologies. So far, no one approach appears to be 100% effective in eliminating such calls, nor is likely to be, as there are various types of unwanted calls. One approach is based on executing a “robocall call blocking” i.e., a mobile application in a smartphone intended to block unwanted calls. It is estimated by the Cellular Telecom Industry Association (“CTIA”) that there are hundreds of such robocall blocking mobile applications that can be readily downloaded and used to reduce the volume of unwanted calls.

One such technique for processing unwanted calls by a mobile application is to examine the calling party number (assuming the call is delivered with a calling party number) and check that number against a list of allowable or prohibited numbers. This list of allowable numbers is sometimes called a “whitelist” and the list of prohibited numbers is sometimes called a “blacklist.” In some instances, the mobile application will launch an Internet-based query that includes the calling party number to a remote service provider operating the whitelist or blacklist database. Frequently, the number is checked against a blacklist, which may be populated based on crowd-sourced data or other means. This reflect that frequently unwanted calls spoof the same unauthorized number when making calls, so that that particular CPN is reported as an unwanted call. If the query response indicates the calling party number is not on the blacklist, then the mobile application alerts the user of the incoming call. If the number is on a blacklist, the mobile application is informed and may dispose of the call by suppressing ringing, forward the call to voicemail, or rejecting the call. Thus, these steps (the processing of the incoming call, checking the calling party number, and determining whether to alert the user) must occur quickly so as to avoid delay. Storing the list in a manner to facilitate the speed of processing is important, as there is a limited amount of time in which the searching must be accomplished.

Another approach is to check the calling party number against a whitelist. In this case, the mobile phone may use the list of telephone numbers in the user's contact list as the basis of an internal whitelist. The concept of querying a list is similar as described above except that the query is internal to the smartphone, i.e., no external database is queries. A drawback of this approach is that while commonly used telephone numbers may be in the contacts list and thus will pass the processing of the whitelist, there may be any number of otherwise desirable calls that will be blocked, because the numbers are not in the whitelist (i.e., the contact list).

For example, consider the prior example of a person who has dropped off their car for servicing at a car dealer. They may not have the telephone number of the dealer listed in their contact list. Yet, the dealer may originate a call to the person to inform them that the servicing of their car is completed and is ready to be picked up. If the mobile application checks the incoming telephone number and determines it is not listed in the user's contact list, the smartphone would block the call in some manner (e.g., suppress ringing to the user). The user may not then receive an important and wanted call. Thus, using the contact list as the number source for populating the whitelist may be deficient in some cases.

This illustrates that merely using the contact list found in a smartphone may not be sufficient and desirable. The user may find it necessary to disable the mobile application's call blocking processing, in order to receive wanted calls. However, doing so opens up the possibility of getting unwanted calls. Thus, improved methods and systems are needed to ensure that if the mobile application does process robocalls to suppress ringing or otherwise treat the call as an unwanted call, that approaches are defined to ensure that important calls are being delivered to the called party. Such approaches need to consider both the speed of processing in which the list searching occurs, and must also consider the available memory storage requirements, since memory storage in a smartphone is finite. A greater level of a control and granularity is required for the user to manage which calls are treated as unwanted calls, and a more efficient means of searching and storing the lists is needed.

BRIEF SUMMARY

In general, embodiments of the present invention provide computer-program products, methods, systems, apparatus, and computing entities for facilitating the completion of calls from a call center to a called party using a whitelist. In one embodiment, various mechanisms are provided for providing greater management of how the whitelist is generated and populated. In another embodiment, a short message service (“SMS”) text message is sent to the called party prior to originating a voice call, in order to ensure that the calling party number of the subsequently originated voice call is on the called party's whitelist.

As is discussed in greater detail below, the subject matter disclosed herein may be implemented as a computer-controlled apparatus, a method, a computing system, or an article of manufacture such as a computer-readable storage medium. These and various other features will be apparent from the following Detailed Description and the associated drawings.

This Summary is provided to exemplify concepts at a high level form that are further described below in the Detailed Description. This Summary is not intended to identify key or essential features of the claimed subject matter, nor is it intended that this Summary be used to limit the scope of the claimed subject matter. Furthermore, the claimed subject matter is not limited to implementations that address any or all disadvantages noted in any part of this disclosure.

