Key Takeaways:
Restoring trust in the phone channel is critical to increasing call answer rates and ultimately improving the customer experience.
- 80% of consumers indicated the phone channel was important when communicating with an organization
- 60% of individuals are likely to call an agency for program information
- 80% of consumers block calls from unrecognized phone numbers
- 24% of calls from US government numbers analyzed met the standard as “trusted”
Call centers are a critical touchpoint in the multichannel government CX
While many government agencies have successfully implemented digital channels — to facilitate remote program administration via constituents’ smart devices, for example — a significant number of consumers still depend on the phone channel.
In fact, while 61% of constituents said they’re likely to visit an agency’s website to learn about benefits programs, a similar percentage (60%) were likely to call an agency, according to a TransUnion® survey of people who used government services in the past.
Our consumer survey also showed nearly 80% of respondents indicated the phone channel is important when communicating with an organization — especially when it comes to personal, high-value, urgent or complex topics. For a constituent waiting to hear about a claim, an appointment or important notification, missing that call may lead to annoyance, anxiety and eventually mistrust in the agency — not just the phone channel.
Unanswered calls result in increased call center costs and add undue friction to the customer experience because of repeated call attempts or callbacks received to an inbound call center.
Restoring trust in the phone channel is critical to increasing call answer rates and ultimately, improving the customer experience.
What’s the value of trust in government agency call center customer experiences?
It’s frustrating when your phone rings countless times a day and displays numbers you don’t recognize. If you’re like most people, you may reject these calls and block the numbers from calling in the future. As a result, legitimate calls often get lost in a tidal wave of robocalls and fraudulent calls.
Cybercriminals target the phone channel to facilitate consumer scams
However, there’s a twist. Cybercriminals are taking advantage of the authority of government agencies to scam constituents out of funds or trick them into giving up sensitive personal information that can be used for account takeover or claim fraud. The phone channel is a popular vector fraudsters use to perpetrate government agency impersonation and spoofing schemes.
- The FTC received more than 195,000 complaints of government agency impersonation scams in the first three quarters of 2024 alone. The phone channel was the top contact method reported for these scams.
- The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of Inspector General (OIG) confirmed “official HHS-OIG telephone numbers are being used as part of a spoofing scam targeting individuals throughout the country.”
- The Treasury Department OIG recently warned consumers of unsolicited telephone, text and email scams in which individuals claim to be employees of the Treasury Department.
Consumers are well aware of the many threats they face in picking up calls. Our recent consumer survey showed 80% block calls, 74% don’t answer and 64% received at least one call where the caller seemed to be impersonating someone.
In the end, government agencies aren’t reaching consumers — amid persistent fraud — and individuals are missing legitimate calls they really want.
What role can end-to-end authentication and branded calling play in restoring trust in government call center CX?
While fraudsters thrive in the phone channel, agencies have capabilities available to help reduce the frequency and efficacy of phone-based impersonation scams. For example, agencies can implement solutions — which include end-to-end call authentication — that enable them to add context, thus helping to increase constituent trust in who’s calling. Such solutions can also provide agencies the ability to digitally sign their own calls.
How end-to-end call authentication works?
How common is end-to-end call authentication?
Thankfully, effective solutions are available in the war against robocalls, spammers and spoofers. One method is through STIR/SHAKEN call authentication, a process that verifies the origin of calls, helping determine if a call was spoofed. Voice call authentication can occur when service providers and enterprises work together to certify legitimate calls to help them get through and identify illegitimate calls from bad actors. For consumers, voice call authentication provides an added layer of trust, equipping them with confidence to answer their phones.
Call authentication works by originating and terminating service providers verifying the caller is authorized to use the phone number. During the call verification process, if the signature and telephone identity are validated, a visual notification — as well as rich content — can be displayed to the called party, marking the call as either verified or suspicious.
STIR/SHAKEN has helped reduce robocalls, but for agencies trying to reach constituents, there’s still a gap in call verification. That’s because agencies use multiple voice carriers and networks, and older voice networks can’t support STIR/SHAKEN. In those cases, mobile service providers can’t tell if calls are legitimate, so the verification and rich call content is dropped before it reaches the recipient.
To make sure rich content gets to constituents — and verify the call is valid and safe to answer — you need solutions that can add a layer of protection by leveraging STIR/SHAKEN and an end-to-end verification process.
With this approach, calls that aren’t verified may be blocked completely or delivered without caller name and rich content — protecting both the agency and constituents from fraudulent branded calls.
How do constituents experience authenticated calls from government agencies?
TransUnion recently analyzed digital signatures of more than 300,000 calls placed by numbers using a caller ID name with a reference to the US government to understand the volume of calls placed with varying attestation levels.
Unfortunately, just 24% of calls had an “A” attestation (the lowest level of risk, indicating the call can be trusted), meaning just one in four calls purportedly from the government was authenticated as a legitimate call.
Analyzing government call trust
To understand constituent experiences of receiving calls with government agency caller IDs, TransUnion analyzed STIR/SHAKEN attestation signatures of phone calls over a one-week period in August 2024. We defined our sample for analysis by identifying 1,185 phone numbers that made at least 100 calls during July 2024 using a caller ID name with some association with the US government, such as a generic name like “US GOV” or specific agency name like “IRS.”[1] Phone numbers without a caller ID name were excluded from this portion of the analysis.
It’s important to note attestation data only makes it to terminating service providers (TSP) around 15% of the time (per TransUnion internal data). Even when the data does reach the TSP, it’s often signed with a value other than ‘A.’ The impacts here include:
- Legitimate calls with values other than A can be labeled as spam or blocked altogether, even if a government agency’s carrier has implemented call authentication standards correctly
- Suspicious call traffic persists from numbers claiming to represent a government agency
Regardless of cause, there’s clearly still room for improvement in how agencies digitally sign their calls, verify attestation levels and combat government impersonation scams.
How does end-to-end call authentication protect agencies from fraud?
Given the prevalence of fraud via the phone channel, it’s critical agencies investigate solutions like branded calling and end-to-end call authentication to help protect themselves and consumers. Consider the variety of emerging risk factors for the average American, such as:
- Broad exposure of constituent information due to data breaches makes it easier for scammers to claim to be an authority figure by demonstrating what they know about their victims
- Generative AI technologies can allow scammers, particularly foreign-based actors, to develop convincing call scripts and answer ad hoc questions from potential victims
- Fraudsters face a low barrier to entry for spoofing names and numbers due to the ready availability of spoofing applications and voice-over-IP service providers
- Some government agencies appear to be legitimately using unauthenticated calls from numbers with generic, often-spoofed caller IDs, increasing the risk of consumers answering illegitimate calls
- Possible government account takeover due to impersonation scams to acquire login credentials, leading to more fraud, waste and abuse for agencies
If agencies don’t find a way to cut out the noise, the likelihood consumers will be scammed, or personal or account information will be stolen to further identity theft or account takeover targeting the agency, is bound to increase.
Agencies can leverage solutions like secure branded calling and spoofed call protection that enable the addition of rich call content (such as name, logo, reason for the call) and include end-to-end call authentication — prompting constituents to pick up their calls so they can deliver on their missions.
How do authenticated, branded calls improve the constituent experience?
Calls that aren’t authenticated simply can’t be trusted. Adding context to outbound calls — while authenticating calls — arms recipients with confidence the organizations calling are what they say they are. It also helps constituents trust the call isn’t from a fraudster impersonating a legitimate organization.
Pro tip:
Three quarters of consumers who responded to our US consumer survey said branded calls would improve the customer experience when they’re expecting a call from a particular organization. Nearly the same amount (73%) said they’d be more likely to answer calls — and view the caller more favorably — if an organization displayed its name and logo on calls.
Implementing trusted call solutions to deliver positive customer experiences
Agency leaders appear poised to implement technology to help better support end-to-end call authentication and branded calling. To address outbound calling efficacy, reduce fraud and improve the customer experience, call center managers plan to deploy trusted calling solutions.
- 59% are budgeting to ensure agency name or logo appears on all outbound calls in their call centers
- 28% have already budgeted to automatically block outgoing calls from spoofers using their agency names or numbers and another 44% planned to budget for this in 2025
Source: Survey of US government contact center officials conducted on behalf of TransUnion
Restore trust and improve experiences in your own agency call center by displaying rich call content to the mobile display and authenticating calls to help prevent call spoofing. TransUnion Branded Call Display (BCD), part of our Trusted Call Solutions suite, makes it possible.
