RingCentral helps businesses stay connected with their customers. Despite existing spam detection, unwanted calls continued to disrupt work, with limited control over what counted as spam. This initiative gave businesses more control over how spam was identified and handled across their organisation.
Existing platform detection and individual blocking did not give administrators enough flexibility to define spam protection for their organisation.
Customers were asking for better protection Feedback highlighted the effort of blocking numbers across extensions. One customer threatened to cancel if unwanted calls continued.
115 cutomers reports on the ideas portal
Improving spam protection offered an opportunity to address recurring customer frustration and close gaps identified in Product’s competitive review.
261,000 blocking actions by 75,000 users
Block or block-and-report activity recorded over 30 days.
7% of negative PSAT feedback related to spam
Unwanted calls contributed to customer dissatisfaction.
I reviewed the existing blocking, trusted-number and screening settings. 1. Unclear action scope: Users couldn’t easily tell how blocking and reporting affected themselves versus their company. 2. Limited company-wide control: Admins couldn’t choose risk levels or report thresholds to define spam for their organisation. 3. Scattered settings: Blocking, trusted numbers and screening lived in separate parts of the experience.
Worked with my PM to map how the new company-level policy would interact with platform detection and personal preferences.
The flow helped us align on three questions:
Classification
What makes a number spam for an organisation?
Handling
What happens once a call is classified as spam?
Scope
How do company policies interact with personal controls?
We compared RingCentral with Zoom, Verizon and 8×8. The review highlighted gaps in account-wide policies, configurable thresholds and ease of setup.
Feature
Account-wide policy
User/Extension policy
Easy to set
Policy set by threshold
Policy set by category
Policy set by pattern
Voicemail for block call
Sparm reports
Ringcentral
❌ No
✅ Yes
❌ No
❌ No
❌ No
❌ No
❌ No
❌ No
Verison
➖ NA
✅ Yes
✅ Yes
➖ NA
✅ Yes
✅ Yes
✅ Yes
✅ Yes
8 x 8
❌ No
✅ Yes
❌ No
❌ No
❌ No
❌ No
✅ Yes
❌ No
Zoom
✅ Yes
✅ Yes
✅ Yes
✅ Yes
❌ No
❌ No
✅ Yes
❌ No
Zoom and 8x8 provided a reference for company-level policies and reporting thresholds,
while Verizon demonstrated granular filtering controls. These informed the opportunity to give organisations more flexibility beyond individual blocking.
Introduce a company-level policy between RingCentral’s detection and personal controls, giving businesses control over spam classification and handling.
Layer
Platform
Company · New
Personal
How spam is identified
RingCentral’s ML detection and community reports
Admin-selected risk levels and thresholds for employee reports
Personal spam reports and blocked numbers
How calls are handled
Provides spam classification to inform company and personal rules
Admins choose whether to allow, block or redirect spam calls
Personal handling preferences apply to calls allowed through company policy
Proposed company controls
Layer
Risk levels
Report thresholds
Call handling
Exceptions
Administrator’s choice
High only, high and medium, or all risk levels
Reports required to mark a number as spam; initially, a separate “Not SPAM” threshold to remove the label
Allow calls through, block with an announcement or route to voicemail
Manage blocked and trusted numbers
This would make protection more visible, connect related tasks and give future controls a clear place to live.
The earlier proposal included separate thresholds for marking a number as spam and removing the label through “Not SPAM” reports.
This reduced the number of interacting rules administrators had to configure.
Administrators could select risk levels, set a single reporting threshold and choose how spam calls were handled, giving each organisation control over both classification and response.
I brought blocking settings from other parts of Service Web into Spam & Call Filters, placing existing blocked and trusted-number controls alongside the new spam settings.
The reported-numbers view showed report counts and how each number was classified. Administrators could mark a number as spam or choose Use threshold to return it to automatic classification.
Status
Reported by user
Makrked spam by threshold
Marked spam by admin
Meaning
Reported, but not yet marked as spam
Reached the company’s reporting threshold
Allow calls through, block with an announcement or route to voicemail
Spam configuration was also included in AVA (AI bot) onboarding, guiding administrators through setup choices using RingCentral’s AI chat agent. Including the report threshold, communication types and call handling, alongside the settings interface.
Available to customers
RingCentral rolled out enhanced Spam & Call Filters, connecting company-level protection with individual controls.
Adoption and customer needs addressed
15% account adoption
RingCentral accounts using Spam & Call Filters.
50% of spam concerns addressed
The controls addressed needs raised in negative PSAT feedback.
What I learnt
Understand the rules before designing controls
Mapping company policies and personal preferences helped me make their relationships clearer.
Balance flexibility with clarity
Moving to one reporting threshold simplified the configuration while retaining meaningful control.
Look beyond the feature boundary
Reviewing existing settings revealed an opportunity to bring fragmented call-protection controls together.