Successful businesses seek ways to stand out in a competitive landscape. CNAM can help your client or company create a personalized and on-brand experience to improve its ability to connect with consumers.
What is CNAM? CNAM stands for caller ID name and is a service that allows businesses to create a name that shows up on the recipient’s caller ID to improve recognition and prevent missed calls and opportunities.
With spam and robocalls consistently rising, recognizable branding is a considerable advantage for businesses contacting customers over the phone. Seventy-eight percent of American consumers are willing to answer a phone call from a business with an identifiable caller ID name.
When you partner with a business CPaaS provider, you can implement CNAM into your client or company’s voice calling and messaging applications to gain instant recognition and build a relationship with consumers. Explore CNAM and considerations to make when implementing this business-enhancing service.
What Is CNAM?
CNAM is the technology that makes a business name appear on the caller ID screen when dialing a customer. Although often confused, caller ID and CNAM are not the same. Caller ID is simply the phone number associated with the party placing the outbound call. CNAM is a string of characters associated with a phone number that identifies the business. It can be a powerful business tool when implemented correctly.
How CNAM Works
In the U.S., CNAM carriers store information in their databases. While most carriers support CNAM—with some restrictions—providers often use different databases to reference the information. When the terminating carrier receives a call and a direct inward dialing (DID) number is displayed, it looks up what is referred to as a “CNAM Dip.” A CNAM Dip references the name attached to the DID from the carrier and displays the CNAM to the recipient’s caller ID.
Most phone carriers use one or two CNAM databases. CNAM carriers update their databases on their own, and there’s no way to expedite a change request. It can take time for the receiving carrier to display your proper CNAM information and for the receiving carrier to sync with your client or company’s carrier database.
The CNAM is pulled from the display name found in the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) signaling and comes from one or all of the following fields:
- P-Asserted Identity:
- Remote-Party ID:
- From:
Business-Enhancing Benefits of CNAM
Integrating CNAM into your client or organization’s business phone system offers several benefits. According to research, 41% of Americans never answer calls from unknown callers. As a business, not having a recognizable name and number can put call answer rates at serious risk. CNAM allows your company or client to assign a recognizable name to its outgoing calls, making it more likely for recipients to pick up the phone.
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In addition to improving call answer rates, integrating a CNAM into a business phone system can deliver the following benefits:
- Establish Trust and Brand Recognition: Customers are more willing to engage with a brand that they recognize. Implementing CNAM provides instant recognition of your brand, builds trust with prospects and customers, and delivers improved answer rates.
- Personalized Interactions: CNAM offers a more personalized and professional experience for recipients, creating a better customer experience overall.
- Avoid Missed Calls: Even callers expecting a call from a business might not answer if they can’t identify the caller. CNAM displays the business name and number on the consumer’s phone, avoiding confusion that can result in recipients missing important calls from the business.
- Regulatory Compliance: Businesses that use CNAM are less likely to be flagged by carriers as spam because they comply with the FCC’s STIR/SHAKEN regulations and bring more legitimacy to calls.
- Affordable: Many CPaaS providers offer CNAM for a low fee or free with voice over internet protocol (VoIP) or SIP services. It’s a cost-effective method of improving caller interactions and answer rates.
Are There Any Limits to CNAM?
A majority of carriers support CNAM, making it easy to optimize the service’s benefits. However, some carriers don’t support CNAM on toll-free, international, or mobile numbers.
CNAM names are limited to alphanumeric characters and spaces with a maximum of 15 characters. Some exclusions are government agencies, unauthorized business names, generic words, names of famous people or fictional characters, words with religious meanings, and offensive words. Understanding what your CPaaS partner offers is critical to determine if your client or business can use CNAM to optimize its benefits.
Integrating CNAM for Your Business Phone Systems
When you select a reputable CPaaS partner for your CNAM integration, integration is simple. Select a cloud-based phone system that offers DID to ensure you can assign CNAM to the appropriate phone numbers. Your company or client can provision and update CNAM names from an administrative web portal, updating the carrier’s database and propagating to participating carriers with time.
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If you integrate VoIP or SIP calling into your communications using an application programming interface (API), you can use microservices to streamline CNAM management. The microservice allows your client or company to automate CNAM creation and associate CNAMs with DID numbers. It also provides management of all the CNAMs in your business or client’s account.
How Long Does It Take to Provision or Update CNAM?
While you can provision and update CNAMs manually or through an API, it can take time to provision and propagate your new CNAMs. In most cases, provisioning a new CNAM or updating an existing one will take several days to weeks to approve and distribute the information to carriers.
An established CPaaS partner can review and approve your CNAM submission within 48 hours. After approval of the CNAM, it can take five to seven days to propagate the CNAM to terminating carriers. Your client or company will have a working CNAM within nine days and receive an email notification when it’s ready.
Selecting the Right CNAM Provider
When you work with a scalable, reliable, and cost-effective CPaaS provider, you can maximize the benefits of CNAM. Select a CPaaS partner that makes it simple to provision and update CNAMs manually through an administrative portal or automatically using an API.
A cloud-based communication solution like VoIP or SIP delivers scalability, business continuity, and compatibility with your company’s existing devices and carrier. The ideal CPaaS partner ensures the delivery of voice calls and offers business-enhancing features like remote call routing, appointment reminders, and call detail records (CDRs).
Optimize Business Calling With CNAM From a Reliable CPaaS Partner
CNAM can help your company or client build instant recognition and consumer trust. When you partner with Flowroute—a reputable CPaaS provider—your CNAM can be provisioned and updated quickly from a simple administrative portal. You can input a name to create a personalized and branded experience for recipients.
Flowroute offers VoIP and SIP calling with powerful APIs that allow you to deliver comprehensive solutions, including streamlined CNAM management. Get started with a scalable and reliable business phone solution from Flowroute.
