At the beginning of December 2019, we brought the TRACED Act to your attention, a bill with the goal to combat robocalls. Since then, new information has surfaced, and on December 30, 2019, President Trump signed the bill into law.

The TRACED Act's primary goal is to regulate and protect consumers from robocalls. It makes it easier to identify robocalls, meaning that consumers will know when a call is potentially spam. This is most likely something you already see, as many phone carriers have already adopted the STIR/SHAKEN authentication system. While it's easier to identify the spam calls, this is not a guarantee that the number of spam calls will be lowered.

The STIR/SHAKEN authentication system, as mentioned above, will use digital fingerprints and tokens to combat spoofed calls and determine the authenticity of a number. On paper, this is fantastic and will go a long way to protecting consumers from spam, but in reality, no one knows how this will affect small businesses. Many small businesses use call spoofing to safeguard their information and the information of their clients. Uber is a prime example of this, using call spoofing to protect the identity of both their drivers and the clients using their platform.

What can you do to combat this?

While answers might not be coming any time soon on how this will impact small businesses, there are some things you can do to try and help your company from missing important calls.

Add Contacts to Your Phone Book

If you're doing business with another company or vendor, be sure to add their phone number into your contacts on your phone. This will help ensure that they can reach you. Ask them to do the same so that your calls can get through to them as well.

Turn Off The Blocker

Most phones and apps are giving you the option to block spam callers, but they can actually block local phone numbers as well, especially those not already in your phone book. If you’re using your mobile phone for your business, turn off these apps and settings so that you can receive calls from clients that are using a local number.

The TRACED Act has now become law, and there's still a lot of questions surrounding it. Try the tips above and keep an eye out for more information on how your business can continue to communicate with other companies and clients successfully.

Dani James is a Marketing Specialist and writer for Atwill Media. She has a bachelor's degree in Strategic Communications from Arkansas State University with focuses in Public Relations, Advertising, and Social Media Management.

When not working, she enjoys spending time with her family, reading a good book, and watching The Office.