Today’s consumers have multiple options when it comes to interacting with businesses they rely on. However, voice remains the most important communication channel because it enables a more personal experience—especially when it comes to urgent issues. Unfortunately, it’s also a favored channel for fraudsters.
In our recent webinar, Kate Leggett, Vice President and Principal Analyst with Forrester Research and Jonjie Sena, Vice President of Product Management at TransUnion, discussed how businesses can foster trusted communications by delivering consistent brand experiences — leveraging the most up-to-date customer contact intelligence and implementing branded calling and call authentication solutions.
The two experts also revealed how communication solutions can help companies increase productivity, reduce costs and drive revenue.
View the webinar in its entirety here: The State of Outbound Communications 2025.
Below is a Q&A summary of highlights from the event.
How can companies deliver trusted experiences to their customers?
Kate Leggett: In every industry we’ve surveyed, there's a correlation between being able to deliver great experiences and a business’ top-line revenue.
Providing a strong foundation for delivering great customer experiences hinges on a framework Forrester calls the “three E’s”:
- Ease: Experiences must be seamless and simple. Customers should be able to engage with you with as little friction as possible.
- Effectiveness: They must comply with regulatory policy and improve right-party contact rates for outbound communications.
- Emotion: They need to be delivered in an empathetic way.
What challenges prevent companies from delivering experiences that align with customer expectations?
Kate Leggett: The rise of spoofing and robocalls has made customers more cautious, especially with phone calls. Many consumers just don’t pick up the phone — even when the call is legitimate — since they don’t really know who’s calling. This gap makes it harder for businesses to connect, no matter how good the experience they’re trying to deliver.
Why are consumers reluctant to engage?
Jonjie Sena: Right — it goes back to trust. Based on our internal research, 80% of customers don’t pick up phone calls. Part of that’s because they don't know who's calling. But they're also worried about spoofing scams and imposter fraud. And they have good reason to think this way — a large percentage of those calls are fraudulent.
There are so many ways customers can interact with companies — does it matter if they don’t want to take voice calls?
Kate Leggett: The research we just conducted showed 86% of decision-makers believe voice is the most important outbound channel. It’s an intimate channel where people can work through high-priority interactions like an urgent customer service request. It’s also the best channel to interact with a customer when dealing with personal situations that involve any type of emotion or anxiety.
So, is cracking down on spoofing the solution?
Jonjie Sena: In my opinion, spoofing is a symptom of a bigger issue. It’s about authentication and whether people can trust the communications they receive. Can you authenticate this business? Can you authenticate that consumer? Is that channel you’re using, in fact, a trusted channel? These are questions that get to the heart of the issue.
How are businesses working to make their outbound calls more trustworthy and effective?
Kate Leggett: Businesses are focusing on displaying accurate caller info: 62% want to see the call is authenticated and 58% want their company logo displayed. This not only helps build trust by confirming to the consumer the call’s legitimate — but also makes it harder for scammers to spoof numbers. When people recognize a company’s name or logo, they’re more likely to answer, rebuilding confidence in outbound calls.
What is TransUnion doing to restore trust in voice calls?
Jonjie Sena: We’re working hard to transform trust in this space. If you’re an enterprise, you want to promote your brand when you engage with customers. But you also want to protect your brand and your customers from the sort of fraudulent activities we’ve spoken about. Our goal is to provide the yin and yang of those capabilities through our Customer Contact Intelligence and Trusted Call Solutions portfolios.
Can you give us an illustration of how the technology works in practice?
Jonjie Sena: Our Customer Contact Intelligence solutions help businesses optimize customer outreach by ensuring they have the right data and insights to improve who they contact and how.
This set of solutions answers the questions:
- Is your information complete?
- Is it accurate?
- Are you allowed to call these people?
- If you're going to call them, when's the best time and on what channel should you communicate?
Our Trusted Call Solutions portfolio helps businesses brand calls by displaying name, logo and reason for the call. In addition, branded calling authenticates calls to ensure they haven’t been spoofed — giving customers a reason to answer. As adoption of secure branded calling grows, especially among larger enterprises, outbound calling will be more effective while the risk of fraudulent calls will be reduced.
What are the main points listeners should take away from today?
Kate Leggett: We’ve seen over the last few years, there’s been an explosion of communication volumes. But communication with customers is getting harder — so the right channel for the right type of engagement is essential.
Companies don't have full contact information intelligence on when to contact customers. But it's also about fraud and spam.
So, what can you do about it? First, your contact center needs to have up-to-date, accurate CRM records or customer data with preference information. And you need to start building trust with your customers by providing them with rich content on your calls through branded calling to reassure them it’s you calling.
Do both things right and you can improve customer trust, increase productivity and drive revenue.
Watch the webinar and download the study. Learn more about our award-winning Spoofed Call Protection, Branded Call Display, and Phone Behavior Intelligence and Email Behavior Intelligence.
