How Branded Communication Can Enable Partners To Help Customers

‘At the end of the day, it’s to be able to give that trust and transparency back to the business and then the end user so they know who’s calling and why,’ says Mike Otting, senior vice president of platform and wholesale at First Orion.

Video transcript:

CRN: In a world where people are constantly getting scam calls, branded communication helps the public decipher who is actually calling.

First Orion allows customers up to 32 characters of personalized text to customize every call with a brand name, department or reason for calling.

Mike Otting, senior vice president of platform and wholesale at First Orion, discusses how the company enables partners to help customers identify who they are when they call.

Otting: When you get a phone call today on your mobile phone, do you know who’s calling you? Generally not. Branded communication allows businesses to put their company name on the phone. At the end of the day, it’s to be able to give that trust and transparency back to the business and then the end user so they know who’s calling it and why.

CRN: Is there anything that First Orion does to really separate phone calls from scam callers?

Otting: Since we’re embedded in the network, we’re able to identify when calls are coming in. We have a time-to-live somewhere on the device to be able to minimize that spoof ability. So if that call’s coming in, we know that it’s coming from that bank and it’s also a registered business.

CRN: First Orion has expanded its reach 280 million mobile and landline devices nationally, which equates to nearly two-thirds of U.S. mobile customers.

Can you talk about the impact that it’s going to have on the telecommunications industry?

Otting: The two thirds—it’s massive. [That’s] 280 million devices. So as you’re a business and you want to be able to get in contact with your customers, you have two-thirds of the marketplace that you’re going to get through with First Orion.

CRN: How do you see phone calls evolving?

Otting: Graphics display is going to be the future. You think of like a food delivery service, your food’s getting delivered. Well, you can see who it is, who’s calling you, why they’re calling you, and it just gives you that overall better experience through that graphics display.