The Spam Challenge feature helps reduce unwanted spam and robocalls before they reach the office. When enabled, Patient Prism evaluates inbound calls using several signals tied to the caller’s phone number and determines whether the call may be spam.
Where to Find It
This feature is located in:
Company Settings → Edit → Spam Protection
Within this area, users can enable call spam check, choose the spam action, customize the challenge message, add languages, and configure trusted countries.
How It Works
When Spam Challenge is turned on, the system performs multiple checks on the incoming caller’s number. These checks may include things like carrier type, attestation level, country of origin, and other signals used to estimate whether the call is likely to be spam. If the caller is identified as suspicious, the system can apply a spam action.
Spam Call Action Options
There are two spam call action options available:
Challenge -- Recommended
This is the recommended and default option. If a caller is flagged as potential spam, they will hear a message asking them to press a digit to continue, such as:
“Thank you for calling [Company Name]. Please press 5 to continue.”
If the caller presses the requested digit, the call continues normally. If they do not respond, the call is rejected. This is intended to stop robocallers and spam systems that cannot complete the prompt.
Hang Up -- Less Recommended
This option immediately disconnects calls identified as spam. This is a less desirable option and is generally not the recommended setting compared to Challenge.
Benefits of the Challenge Option
When a spam caller fails the challenge, there are several benefits:
- The call does not reach the forwarding destination or office phones
- The call does not appear in reporting
- The call does not affect not-connected rate
This helps keep office lines clearer while also preventing spam calls from impacting reporting and usage costs.
Caller Experience
The challenge only plays for callers that the system identifies as possible spam. It does not play for every caller. For legitimate callers who are challenged, the extra step is brief and adds only a couple of seconds to the call flow.
The caller will only be challenged if they appear to be a spam caller, so almost all legitimate callers will not be challenged.
Message Customization
The challenge message is configurable in Company Settings. Teams can edit the wording to fit their needs. For example, the message can include the company name or use more general wording such as:
“Thank you for calling our office. Please press 5 to continue.”
Including the business name may help reassure callers that they reached the correct office.
Additional Languages
Additional languages can also be configured for the challenge message. However, the system does not automatically translate the message. If you add another language, you must manually enter the translated text yourself.
Trusted Countries
The feature also supports trusted countries. This can be useful if a client wants to automatically allow calls from certain countries while focusing spam protection more heavily on calls from outside those regions. One example discussed was allowing calls from the United States, Canada, and Mexico to reduce unnecessary challenges for North American callers.
Solicitation Blocking
Alongside Spam Challenge, there is also a solicitation blocking setting. If a call is analyzed and identified as a solicitation call, that number can be blocked for a period of time.
Single Number Block Duration blocks future calls from the same phone number after a call from that number is classified as a solicitation. Duration must be at least 1 minute.
Range Block Threshold works with Range Block Duration to block calls from the same phone-number prefix. When enough solicitation-classified calls occur from numbers sharing the same E164 prefix, excluding the last 4 digits, future calls from that prefix are blocked for the Range Block Duration.
Example: 407-555-1234 and 407-555-9876 both fall into +1407555****. Once the range count reaches the threshold, calls from that range are blocked for the configured duration.
Important Considerations
While this feature can help reduce spam significantly, there is a tradeoff. Some legitimate callers may occasionally be challenged and asked to press a digit before continuing. For most real callers, this only takes a moment, but some clients may still view it as an extra step in the call experience.