Masked phone numbers‑also referred to as proxy phone numbers‑are used to hide the private telephone numbers of people participating in a conversation via voice calls or text messages. Masking phone numbers is important for protecting the privacy and personal data of your customers as well as your company’s team members.
Phone Number Masking
Experience the freedom of secure communication between your business and your customers with anonymized voice calls and SMS messages.
What are masked phone numbers?
How does masking phone numbers work?
First, an incoming call to a virtual phone number is routed through a cloud-based API proxy service like Voximplant. The proxy service hides the caller’s personal phone number from the recipient when it directs their call through the cloud. In turn, the call recipient’s contact information is also masked and not visible to the caller. To see phone number masking in action, consider a customer booking a ride through a ride-hailing app.
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After requesting a ride on the app, the rider calls the assigned driver. The app displays a false driver phone number 555-1234 to the rider.
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The call first goes through the Voximplant platform, which requests the driver’s number from the ride-hailing app.
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The call is then routed to the driver’s private number.
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When the driver receives the call, Voximplant masks the rider’s real number as well. The rider’s number is displayed as 555-1234 to the driver.
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Once the driver answers the call, both parties are connected, but neither of their actual phone numbers is revealed.
Masked phone numbers provide you with additional convenience and privacy across all channels
When building customized unified communications, phone number masking plays a vital role in seamless interactions across both voice and messaging channels.
Privacy for all your business communications
Today’s consumers are concerned about the security of their personal information—and rightfully so. Based on a number of studies, the number of data breaches has increased over the last 15 years. It’s critical that you take steps to protect your customers’ private information with all possible measures. Masking phone numbers during customer and employee interactions allows both parties to freely communicate without exposing sensitive information.
Avoid the risk of revenue leakage
For online marketplaces or ride-hailing apps, it’s important to keep communications and transactions on your platform. Off-platform engagement puts involved parties at risk and can lead to revenue loss for your business. When buyers and sellers handle transactions off of your platform, they cut you out of the sale completely, which hurts your bottom line. Call masking ensures that all user interactions with your business take place on your platform, so you don’t experience revenue leakage.
Tracking and analysis
Keeping track of KPIs like your call-abandonment rate and cost per contact is essential to your business’s success. Masking phone numbers through a communications API like Voximplant allows you to capture insights directly from your customers calls. Record and analyze both incoming and outgoing calls to monitor agent performance and learn how you can improve the customer experience.
Phone number masking use cases for every industry
Keeping personal data private should be a priority for every business, regardless of the industry. Phone number masking allows companies to deliver a secure communications experience to their customers and prevents misuse of sensitive information.
Temporary transactions
Some e-commerce marketplaces are riddled with scams. Use phone number masking services to let your users know that their contact information will remain safe when using your site. Let marketplace buyers and sellers trade more confidently knowing they aren’t jeopardizing their privacy and security. Many transactions don’t require long-term communications between a buyer and seller. Call masking lets you equip sellers with temporary phone numbers that can easily be disabled outside of regular business hours or when an offer is no longer available.
On-demand service apps
From delivery services, ride-sharing, and even house maintenance, many people now turn to on-demand service apps to link them to a service business. Masking phone numbers helps you centralize interactions between service providers and app users under one company account. Not only does this offer you broad insights into your overall business communications, but it also keeps all transactions on your platform. Temporary phone numbers also protect the privacy of service recipients. For example, users of an app for on-demand delivery can feel safer knowing that drivers won’t have access to their real numbers once a delivery is complete.
Anonymous debt-collector phone calls
Getting a hold of people for payment collections isn’t the easiest task—especially when they recognize your call based on the caller-ID display. If debtors ignore your legitimate collection calls, you can increase your chances of reaching them using an alternative masked number.
International business communications
Your business may be headquartered in one location, but chances are, you have customers all over the world. Instead of going the costly route and setting up call centers around the world, use masked phone numbers to show customers that you have a presence in their region.
Use Voximplant for phone number masking and much more
Whether you need a virtual phone number, a voicebot, or are looking for ways to enhance outgoing call campaigns, Voximplant gives you the flexibility to add communications to your product. That’s because the Voximplant Platform is the most powerful serverless communications platform for building quickly without sacrificing future flexibility.