Open Enrollment and the Phone: Helping Health Insurers Get Answered in a High-Risk Season

Every enrollment period puts consumers under pressure. They have a deadline, a stack of options and decisions that affect both their health and their budget. It’s exactly the moment when a knowledgeable voice on the phone is most helpful, and, unfortunately, exactly the moment fraudsters choose to strike. Telemarketing noise and scam activity make the conversations insurers need to have much harder to start.

This article looks at why the phone still matters so much in health insurance, what makes enrollment outreach difficult, and how insurers can build the kind of caller ID trust that gets their calls answered.

Why voice still matters for health insurers

Much of the research behind a purchase now happens online, but in health insurance the phone call has never lost its importance. Coverage choices carry real financial weight, often involve sensitive personal details and come wrapped in contract language that’s easy to misread. A conversation with a real person lets members ask follow-up questions, talk through their situation and feel confident before they commit.

Older members, in particular, tend to prefer speaking with someone rather than navigating forms on a screen. That matters when the topic is Medicare Advantage, supplemental coverage or a retiree plan carried over from a former employer. And the preference isn’t limited to seniors: one industry analysis of missed-call trends found the share of consumers who prefer voice calls climbed from 33% to 42% in a single year.

So voice deserves a central place in enrollment planning. But a call only creates value if it connects. With spam calling, consumer suspicion and strict telemarketing rules all in play, the trust attached to your numbers, and how those numbers display, has never mattered more.

What makes enrollment outreach so difficult

Enrollment is when insurers most need to reach people, and also when reaching them is hardest. Consumers already field several unwanted calls a day, and many simply stop answering numbers they don’t recognise. Research from the Pew Research Center found that roughly 80% of calls from unknown numbers go unanswered.

Even a reputable insurer can get the "missed call" treatment, and the risk grows when outreach is handled by third-party administrators (TPAs) and independent marketing organisations (IMOs). Keeping your own caller ID accurate is one job; making sure every vendor calling on your behalf is accurate is a much bigger one. When people can’t tell who’s calling, they don’t pick up.

Scammers make the problem worse. During enrollment they use increasingly sophisticated tactics, from deepfake and cloned voices to social engineering built on stolen details such as Social Security numbers, policy information and knowledge of how insurers operate. McAfee research reported in the press found that 39% of consumers encountered a deepfake communication around major sales events in 2025. You can’t remove fraudsters from the picture, but you can make your own numbers easier to trust.

Competing for members’ attention

Part of the challenge is sheer volume. During enrollment, a member might hear from many different organisations about the same coverage:

• Health plans themselves
• Member services teams
• Enrollment support centers
• FMOs, NMOs and IMOs
• Licensed agents and brokers
• Third-party administrators

Faced with that many calls, people become overwhelmed and start ignoring unfamiliar numbers altogether. Worse, the crowd gives fraudsters cover: they only need to reach the few people who do answer.

Most of this ecosystem is made up of legitimate businesses that share the same concern: inaccurate caller ID. Labels such as "Unknown number," "Spam risk" and "Scam likely" are what cause calls to be dropped or ignored. Staying competitive means keeping caller IDs accurate across the entire calling chain, not just on the insurer’s own lines.

How caller ID shapes the member experience

When a caller ID is wrong or carries a warning, fewer people answer, and calls that genuinely matter never happen. For insurers, the knock-on effects are serious:

• Members miss eligibility verification calls.
• Applications stall while questions go unanswered.
• Plan comparisons and guidance are left unfinished.
• Brokers struggle to reach prospects efficiently.
• Agents lose time to repeated redials.
• Members begin to doubt that any call is legitimate.
• First impressions are damaged before a word is spoken.

Over time, negative caller ID markers lower contact rates, stretch enrollment cycles, frustrate agents and raise costs as teams fall back on slower channels like text and email. Above all, they chip away at member confidence at the very moment insurers need it most. The fix, in principle, is simple: make it easier for members to pick up the phone with confidence.

Building an enrollment calling strategy

A consistent, high-performing strategy needs to cover every point where a member might be contacted. In practice, that means:

1. Scan and validate every number before it’s used, so you start the season with clean lines.
2. Monitor number reputation every day during enrollment, when labels can appear within hours.
3. Rotate and remediate strategically, resting busy numbers and clearing labels rather than simply swapping in new ones.
4. Dial compliantly and ethically, respecting consent, timing and opt-outs.

Just as important, bring your partners along. Brokers, field agents and third-party vendors should follow the same approach. Without a shared strategy, blind spots appear that weaken member trust and can even create security gaps.

Caller ID reputation as a competitive advantage

Think of your caller ID as the sign above your shop door. Members make a split-second decision about whether to answer based on what they see, and that display signals legitimacy, or a lack of it. Accurate, trusted caller ID delivers:

• Higher contact and enrollment rates
• Stronger trust with seniors and vulnerable members
• Smoother workflows for agents and brokers
• Less exposure to fraud
• Better protection for your brand
• Reliable operations during peak demand

Thoughtful dialing habits also keep your calls flowing properly through carrier networks, giving you several levers to build trust in your voice channel.

Keeping your caller ID trusted with Spam Checker

Spam Checker helps insurers and their partners call with confidence. Instead of a one-off snapshot, you get a running history of each number’s reputation, so you can see where you stand and where things are heading. That includes real-time monitoring, real-device screenshots through Device Cloud, early warning of new flags, help finding the root cause, alerts for spoofing activity and support for teams spread across several vendors. If you’d prefer not to handle disputes yourself, our remediation team can take care of them.

Bringing vendors and brokers into the plan

Because members can’t tell the difference between your own team and the partners calling for you, every party in the calling chain needs to work from the same playbook. A few practical steps make that easier:

• Ask for a number inventory. Have each broker, agency and outsourced team share the numbers they use for your campaigns.
• Set shared standards. Agree on daily volume limits per number, calling hours, consent requirements and how opt-outs are handled.
• Monitor centrally. Track partner numbers alongside your own so problems are spotted no matter who is dialing.
• Agree on a response plan. Decide in advance who rests a flagged number and who handles the dispute.

Helping members tell real calls from scams

Insurers can’t stop fraudsters from trying, but they can make legitimate outreach easier to recognise. Tell members, in mailings and on your website, which numbers you call from and what you will never ask for on a call. Encourage them to hang up and call back on a published number if they’re unsure. Combined with clean, consistent caller IDs and branded calling, those simple messages make scam calls stand out and genuine calls feel safe to answer.

Measuring enrollment calling success

Track contact rate, answer rate per number, average call length and the number of flags per week throughout the season. If contact rates drop for one vendor or one group of numbers, investigate straight away. Comparing results against the previous enrollment period also shows whether your number strategy is improving year on year.

Frequently asked questions

Why do enrollment calls get flagged more often?

Call volumes rise sharply across the whole industry, answer rates fall and scam activity increases, all of which make carrier and app algorithms more cautious.

Do vendor and broker numbers affect our reputation?

Members see every call about their coverage as coming from "the insurer," so poor practices anywhere in the chain can make your calls less likely to be answered.

When should we start preparing?

Ideally several weeks before enrollment begins, so there’s time to audit numbers, clear existing flags and plan capacity.