Customer Service

The psychology of trust and voice calling: Why retailers are taking notice

Retailers are recognizing the need to work with other stakeholders to carve a path forward to restore consumer trust in voice calling and ultimately their brands.

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November 3, 2022 by Jim Tyrrell — Vice President of Enterprise Product Management, TNS

Seventy-five percent of Americans will never answer calls from unknown numbers. That's not just a data point for retailers needing to reach and engage with customers. It's a problem. A problem of trust.

Before digging into why Americans have lost trust in voice calling, it is important to understand how we got here. The answer? Unwanted robocalls. And lots of them. Americans received 79 billion robocalls in 2021 — unwanted calls from scammers seeking to trick them out of money and personal information; spammers trying to sell them services and products they do not want or need; and bad actors spreading misinformation on everything ranging from US elections to PPE loans and vaccines.

Brands in 'high touch' industries like retail that rely on voice communications to reach consumers have seen drops in trust. A 2022 PwC survey finds 87% of business executives think consumers have a high level of trust in their business. But only 3 in 10 of consumers say they do. The stakes for brands are enormous: the same survey shows that 71% of consumers who do not trust a company are unlikely to buy from them.

With this perspective on how we got here, retailers are recognizing the need to work with other stakeholders such as carriers and federal/state enforcement bodies to carve a path forward to restore consumer trust in voice calling — and ultimately their brands. There are several stakeholder strategies to consider.

Increase call transparency

While not always visible to consumers, significant progress has been made to combat robocalls — particularly by Tier-1 carriers that have implemented STIR/SHAKEN. The FCC describes STIR/SHAKEN protocols as the way to digitally validate "...the handoff of phone calls passing through the complex web of networks, allowing the phone company of the consumer receiving the call to verify that a call is in fact from the number displayed on Caller ID." While 75% of inter-carrier traffic originates from the top US carriers, more than 95% of the high-risk robocall volume originates from non-Tier-1 telephone resources.

But when it comes to restoring trust, protecting subscribers from nefarious robocalls is not enough. Consumers need more transparency into who is calling and why. Greater visibility into incoming calls is starting to be delivered through branded calling.

Branded calling allows organizations to leverage mobile networks to provide important information on an incoming call screen in a way that improves the user experience through better interaction and engagement. The case for transparency is, pun intended, clear: 78% of consumers are more willing to answer the phone if the caller ID displays the logo and name of a brand they recognize.

How much does call transparency matter when it comes to trust? In some 'high touch' industries mentioned earlier, our survey data suggests it matters a lot. Sixty-five percent of consumers are more willing to share personal information with a healthcare provider if the incoming call is branded with the organization's logo and name. Fifty-seven percent would do the same with their bank – two types of institutions that often ask their customers to share highly sensitive information.

Recognize consumer expectations

Consumers are creatures of habit. We have routines and expectations, and when something happens that falls outside the norm, it sets off alarm bells. This can be true when it comes to how and when we expect brands to contact us. If you get an email from the principal at your child's school, would you open to it and respond to it? Probably. What if that message came via a text, even though you never gave the principal your number? What if the communication came at 10 p.m. on a Saturday rather than 2 p.m. on a Tuesday? Now play out that scenario with a phone call or text from a retailer or delivery service.

The point is we have expectations on how and when brands communicate, expectations brands must account for when executing legitimate call campaigns. For example, our survey found 57% of consumers trust calls from brands that come in during normal business hours (9am-5pm) more than calls that arrive outside of business hours. And more than half (54%) of consumers trust branded calls that come in during the work week compared to those that arrive during the weekend. A call recipient may be more wary of an incoming call from a bank late at night than they are of a call from an airline regarding an upcoming flight at the same time.

Acknowledge consumer demographic differences

Retailers have no shortage of data they leverage to reach and market to every slice of the consumer market by age, geography, income, gender, etc. When it comes to restoring trust in voice calling, there are significant differences in how each generation communicates.

Older generations are more hesitant to share personal information over the phone, or even answer the call in the first place. Eighty-one percent of Americans we surveyed between the ages of 56 to 64 said they would never answer a call from an unknown number. And while 57% would be more willing to share personal information with their bank if the incoming call is branded with their logo and name, the number drops to 41% for those aged 55 to 64.

On the other end of the spectrum, greater transparency yields more trust for younger generations; Two-thirds of adults aged 18 to 24 are more willing to share personal information with their bank/financial services provider if the incoming call is branded with the company logo and name.

Retailers that rely heavily on the voice channel to deliver a superior customer experience and grow their business are suffering greatly due to the onslaught of robocalls. Tapping into the psychology of the consumer and the factors that build and undermine this trust is key to restoring it.

About Jim Tyrrell

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