Will Your Leads Actually Answer the Callback? What Canadian Survey Data Says About Unknown Numbers

Every article we've written about automated outbound calling has an unspoken assumption baked into it: that the call gets answered. It's worth checking that assumption against real data, especially given how much has changed about how Canadians treat an unfamiliar number on their phone.

The Survey: What Canadians Actually Do With Unknown Numbers

Between May 9 and 11, 2025, Narrative Research and the Logit Group surveyed 1,231 Canadians, weighted to 2021 census figures for age, gender, and region, about how they handle spam and unfamiliar callers. The headline finding: 66% of Canadians still choose to answer a call from an unknown number, while roughly one-third say they never do. The release also reports that older Canadians are the least likely to answer an unknown number and that millennials are the most likely — a detail we've looked at separately in a companion article. Only about two in ten Canadians have registered on the National Do Not Call List, and twice as many Canadians feel they're getting more spam calls and texts than a year earlier as feel it's decreasing.

Why Canadians Are Primed to Distrust Unknown Numbers

This wariness didn't appear out of nowhere. Spoofed and fraudulent robocalls became common enough on Canadian networks that the CRTC, in Decision 2021-123, required phone companies to implement STIR/SHAKEN caller ID authentication on IP-based voice calls, effective November 30, 2021. The CRTC isn't treating the problem as solved: in 2026 it opened Notice of Consultation 2026-132, a review of its Unsolicited Telecommunications Rules covering the National Do Not Call List, telemarketing, and automated calls. The practical takeaway: caller suspicion toward unknown numbers is a structural feature of the Canadian phone system right now, not a passing mood.

Why We Only Call Leads Who Opted In

There's an honest caveat worth stating plainly: a legitimate business number can still end up labelled "Spam Likely." Carriers and call-screening apps score phone numbers largely on behaviour — how many calls a number places, how often those calls go unanswered or get rejected, how short they are, and whether recipients report them. A business dialing cold lists at volume can trip those signals just as easily as a scammer, and once a number is flagged, every call it makes, including the legitimate ones, gets answered less often.

That's why our outbound calling only ever goes to leads who have opted in: someone who submitted a form on your website, filled out a Facebook lead ad, sent your business an Instagram DM, or completed a lead form anywhere else you advertise. Every call reaches a person who contacted you recently and is expecting to hear back. Those calls get answered more often, run longer, and rarely get reported — exactly the pattern that keeps a number's reputation clean. Calls also go out from your business's own consistent, published number rather than a rotating pool, so a lead who has called you before or looks the number up recognizes who's calling.

It's also the direction the rules are heading. The CRTC's 2026 consultation specifically asks what forms of express consent should be acceptable and how the rules for automated and AI-generated voice calls should apply. This isn't legal advice, but a consent-first approach is a sound position to be in while that review plays out.

What Else Improves the Odds of an Answer

Beyond calling opted-in leads from a consistent number, two things help. Texting as part of the same sequence means the number is no longer a cold unknown by the time the phone rings. And speed matters: a lead who submitted a form two minutes ago is still holding their phone and still thinking about your business, which is the strongest case for calling back immediately rather than hours later.

The Honest Read on the Baseline Number

Two-thirds of Canadians answering an unknown number is a reasonable baseline, not a reason to doubt outbound calling — and a lead who opted in minutes earlier isn't the average unknown caller. It's also worth comparing to the alternative: a lead who doesn't answer still sees a missed call and, often, a voicemail, which carry a different kind of follow-up weight than a text sitting unread among dozens of others. Outbound calling was never meant to replace other channels; understanding the real numbers behind it is how you tune it rather than guess.

Sources

• Narrative Research and the Logit Group, survey of 1,231 Canadians on spam calls and texts, fielded May 9–11, 2025, weighted to the 2021 Census. Source for the 66% / one-third answer figures, the age ranking, the Do Not Call List figure, and spam-volume perceptions.
• CRTC, Compliance and Enforcement and Telecom Decision CRTC 2021-123 (April 6, 2021). Source for the STIR/SHAKEN requirement and its November 30, 2021 effective date.
• CRTC, Compliance and Enforcement Notice of Consultation CRTC 2026-132 (2026). Source for the review of the Unsolicited Telecommunications Rules, including express consent and automated or AI-generated voice calls.

Where this article draws conclusions about outbound business calling, including how carrier spam scoring works, that's our own analysis rather than a claim made by these sources.