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.
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.
When building customized unified communications, phone number masking plays a vital role in seamless interactions across both voice and messaging channels.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Tracking a high volume of customer communications across multiple channels is tricky. We give you the tools to maintain a complete history of your calls in one place for easy auditing. You’ll also get easier access to rich customer insights within the platform.
Some of your customers may opt to reach out to your company via text message. Offer secure omnichannel customer support by anonymizing communications with SMS messages in addition to voice calls.
Voximplant allows you to make outgoing calls to masked numbers and receive calls to your proxy number over the phone network. You can also embed VoIP calling in mobile apps or on any web page. If you manage a fully distributed customer service team, you have the option to choose one centralized customer support number based on your desired area code. Our phone number APIs also let you select how your caller ID is displayed to your customers.
You can get more sophisticated by combining phone number masking with smart interactive voice response (IVR) voicebots. Voximplant’s customized smart IVRs let you connect with your customers in their preferred language. You can also use your IVR system to route calls to specific agents based on your customers’ individual needs.