What branded calling communicates about your customer experience
With texts, e-mail messages and video chats all becoming standard forms of everyday communication, the majority of unexpected phone calls consumers get might mostly come from companies. When the screen comes up blank, however, they might assume they’re in for a negative experience, such as a pre-recorded sales pitch or a scam intended to defraud them.
According to a recent report from advocacy firm the U.S. PIRG Education Fund, Americans are now fielding 2.5 billion spam and robocalls every month. For companies that want to actually get through to customers, branded calling may become the only option.
Unlike calls that come through with nothing more than an unfamiliar phone number, for instance, branded calling service show consumers both the name and logo of the organization who want them to pick up. Some services can even indicate the reason for the call, such as an order confirmation. This goes beyond caller ID or CNAM, which was limited to showing a name or generic label.
Connor Runnels, senior product manager with Oakland, Calif.-based Infobip, defines branded calling more broadly, describing it as a way to foster confidence in who’s making an outbound call to a consumer, and why.
Infobip has introduced a branded calling solution that runs over its voice network, which is made up of more than 9,700 global connections. The company uses SecureG, a signing agent that’s part of the Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association (CTIA) ecosystem, to act as an originating service provider. NumHub, meanwhile, serves as Infobip’s outboarding agent to let brands become part of the system.
“It is kind of like the next frontier in how we distinguish our good calls from all those bad robocallers,” Runnels told 360 Magazine. “I think there has to be a level of trust that comes along with the call.”
Branded calling isn’t limited to traditional phone services, Runnels added. Infobip also works with brands who want to use services such as Meta’s WhatsApp Business as a means of customer outreach.
Runnels said branded calling not only encourages customers to engage over the phone but addresses fraud and risk concerns by following the STIR/SHAKEN framework, a set of standards designed to enhance call verification through cryptographic signing of voice calls.
Under STIR/SHAKEN, an originating service provider like Infobip must send a request to a service that authenticates the caller’s phone numbers and includes a timestamp as well as a trust attestation level.
When a call is made, the originating service provider sends a request to an authentication service to verify the call’s details, like the originating and receiving phone numbers, timestamp, and a trust level (Attestation Level).
The service provider can then mark a call as trusted or block it based on an identity header with a signature and certificate the authentication service delivers.
Runnels said early adopters of branded calling include brands in health-care and financial services, where fraud concerns are particularly high. However he also said it’s an approach that could deepen customer relationships with brands they’re only just getting to know. A customer might have had an initial meeting with a money manager, for instance, but hasn’t saved that person’s name and contact details in their phone yet. Branded calling could help move the conversation forward in a trusted way.
“I’m really interested (how it will help support) client relationship management,” he said. “It really depends on the question of, how core is that outbound call to your business?”
Besides Infobip, branded calling solutions have recently been introduced by Verizon and T-Mobile through Numeracle, and Telus for Canadian customers via TransUnion.
