Outbound Contact Centers are Under Pressure from Fraud and Spam

Let’s face it, readers. Consumers have never really been all that eager to receive unsolicited (“cold”) or even somewhat solicited (“warm”) outbound calls from companies. Add to this the overflowing abundance of scam and spam calls (as well as spoofing of legitimate businesses for nefarious purposes), and customers are even less inviting when it comes to being contacted for anything that isn’t a direct request for a prompt callback.

On this topic, new research commissioned by Transaction Network Services (TNS) has confirmed this fact, finding that contact center decision-makers are under extensive pressure to address growing spam, fraud and call spoofing threats. TNS released its findings in a new e-book that's titled “Fraud Prevention Insights for Outbound Contact Center Operations.” The e-book analyzes how contact center decision makers perceive emerging business threats such as AI deepfakes; resources and budget dedicated to fraud prevention; the impact of scams on the brand and its bottom line; as well as available call authentication and branded calling technologies to protect the voice channel.

TNS’s research found that 69% of respondents believe spam and fraud against commercial outbound calling is impacting their company’s bottom line. Among the respondents that make over a million outbound calls per month, 89% said they have had issues with fraudsters spoofing their business’ identity. The analysis found that decision makers were also interested in solutions that could mitigate the fraud attempts: 96% said they were either “very” or “somewhat interested” in adopting enterprise authentication and spoof protection technology for their business.

“Bad actors have increasingly targeted businesses’ outbound contact center telephone numbers in call spoofing attempts to swindle consumers out of their personal information and funds,” said Jim Tyrrell, Vice President of Global Product Strategy for TNS. “Successful spam and fraud attempts on enterprise contact centers telephone numbers have wide-reaching ramifications, leading to damaged reputations, inefficient workforce resourcing, eroded customer trust and potential revenue losses. Yet, organizations have historically under-invested in call authentication and spoof protection: approximately 7 in 10 contact center professionals surveyed say their company is spending less than 20% of their total monetary loss from fraud on prevention solutions.”