A connect rate below about 65% has a cause, and it is usually one of five things. Check them in this order — the first two explain most cases.
1. Your numbers are flagged
Open Phone Health. Look at the spam risk band per number:
| Band | Score |
|---|---|
| Low | 0–30 |
| Medium | 31–60 |
| High | 61–80 |
| Critical | 81–100 |
A high immediate hangup rate means spam filtering, not rejection — the handset is warning people before they decide. A short call rate above 30% says the same thing.
Fix: take the flagged numbers out of rotation, submit them to the Free Caller Registry (linked from the phone health guidance), and replace any the dashboard marks Replace Immediately. Full detail in Phone health and spam risk.
2. Your numbers are not registered
Check Registrations. Unregistered numbers get Level C attestation — no verification — and carriers treat them accordingly. The dialer warns about this directly in its settings panel.
Fix: complete the business profile, then SHAKEN/STIR on every number, then CNAM. See The compliance centre. Attestation takes time to show up; check phone health again a week later.
3. You are calling at the wrong hours
Open the Call Performance Heatmap in analytics and compare where your volume is against where your connects are. They are usually not the same hours.
Then check the local time window filter on the contacts toolbar. It keeps contacts whose local time is inside the window, re-checked on every batch. If it is off, and your list spans timezones, you are calling people at breakfast.
4. Your caller ID is wrong for the market
An out-of-area number reads as a sales call before anyone decides.
Fix: local area dialing if you are US-only, or region based dialing otherwise. See Choosing which number you call from.
5. Your data is bad
Open Connect Rates → By area code and List Performance. If one list or one area code is dragging the average, the problem is the data, not the dialing.
Check the Pickup Rate filter too — it estimates from number type, and a list that is mostly landlines or internet phone numbers will never perform like one that is mostly mobile.
Fix: stop working the bad list, and go back to whoever supplied it.
Things that look like causes and are not
Parallel dialing. It does not lower your connect rate — it raises your dials, so the same rate produces more conversations. It does raise your abandoned-call rate, which feeds back into point 1 over weeks, so keep Hang up other calls once connected on.
Rep performance. Connect rate is decided before anyone says hello. Look at the conversation rate for rep performance, not the connect rate.
The order matters
Registering numbers while continuing to dial 800 calls a day from one of them will not help. Fix the volume distribution and the calling hours first, then register, then judge the result a week later.