Shawn Cordner (00:13.038)

Hey everyone and welcome to the Amplitude of Tech Podcast. I’m Shawn Cordner, Chief Marketing Officer of Amplix. This is the Inside Amplix edition of the podcast. What does that mean? We’re going to bring you thought leadership from Amplix employees, actionable intel and insights that we’ve learned by doing thousands and thousands of technology transformation projects. Hope you enjoy the episode.

 

Shawn Cordner (00:38.318)

All right, Michan Griffin, welcome to the Amplitude of Tech Podcast, the Inside Amplix edition.

 

Michan Griffin (00:45.144)

Glad to be here.

 

Shawn Cordner (00:46.51)

Michan, maybe you could just start off by telling people who you are and what you do here at Amplix.

 

Michan Griffin (00:51.598)

Sure. So Michan Griffin, I’m a solution architect here. and I support account executives, account managers as they’re going about their day, to make sure that we’re picking the right technical solution for each one of our customers’ needs. been with Amplix for about two years. Before that I was on the carrier side working with Verizon and Windstream, going back to the early aughts. So

 

It was quite the jump to come onto the channel side, but it’s it’s very refreshing to be here. So

 

Shawn Cordner (01:26.476)

Well, it’s good to have you here. so we have this I don’t know what you would call it, this group or this program that we run here and it’s called CX Connect. And it’s where a group of users that are Amplix customers that are, you know, CX clients and and users get together and we share information about them. And you did one recently where

 

You were talking about brand management as it pertains to CX. So I thought that was a really interesting topic. Me being a marketing guy, I love it when someone starts talking about the word brand. especially I I come from the branding side. So I was excited to have this conversation and then I started digging into it and I said, Well, this is not what I think of when I think of brand. And the more I thought about it though, it did start to make sense to me. So we when I think about a brand, okay, what I’m usually thinking about is

 

the perception of the company that the public is that the public has, right? So it’s usually the sum of all of the interactions and all the things that they’ve heard about the company in the marketplace and the experiences that they’ve had with the company. it’s a promise to the customer. It’s what we do day in, day out, better than anyone else that we promise to deliver for you. And then it’s usually some sort of distinctive identifier, right?

 

what do we do differently from other people in the marketplace. And when I used to do branding projects when I had a branding agency, I would think about brand in terms of a Venn diagram. So on one side of it it’s what the market demands and needs the most. Another circle would be what the competition fails to deliver. And then the other circle would be what you do best. And it’s that little overlap in the middle there that way your brand is. And the this is a long way of going about

 

saying that at the the essence of a brand is I think three things. It’s the business strategy, it’s the company culture, and then it’s trust. And trust is the one that I think we’re going to be talking about most today. So huge long intro, but that is to get to the point where you can talk to us about brand management and how that pertains to the contact center. So the floor is yours. Tell me about brand management and in CX. Sure.

 

Michan Griffin (03:53.162)

So brand management and CX and what we’re going to be talking about today is is telephone number reputation management, really. And so over the over the years, we’ve gone from just a straightforward caller ID. You know, back in the day it was a 13 character all caps caller ID. and you were pretty limited in in what you could get across there. So since then, we’ve evolved to

 

I’m sorry, I gotta I gotta start that over.

 

So what I’m gonna talk about today is number reputation management. what used to just be a thirteen character caller ID name has since morphed into something much bigger. a big part of this was the FCC’s Robocall Task Force. You may or may not have heard about it. I think it was created around twenty sixteen or somewhere thereabouts, and they came up

 

with rules to reduce or prevent robocalls, nuisance calls. now between when they set out to accomplish this and when they came out with Stir Shaken, there was kind of this gap. There was a known problem, people were still being bothered, and out of that grew a few companies who started off by crowdsourcing

 

number reputation management. So you remember back in the days you get a notice, hey, was that spam? Was that call spam? And you’d click on your phone, yes or no. There were different caller ID apps. Over the years they became so effective that when Sturshaken finally rolled out, there was still a place for them. and and so now we live with these companies who score telephone numbers

 

Michan Griffin (05:58.954)

reputation, right? And they all score a little differently. There’s a few things that go into that score, but essentially what what happens is if your score dips too low, you get that spam or potential spam tag. and and that’s really where your brand starts to suffer. If you get into that realm, your your call completion plummets.

 

And you start missing out on opportunities to talk to people.

 

Shawn Cordner (06:32.536)

Yeah, so I can remember I’ve been in this industry for almost 30 years. And early on in my career I worked for an IXC, an interexchange carrier, and basically we just did long distance. And at the time I remember you know, spam was starting to become a a challenge. And we worked with a company that had some sort of unique technology where

 

It was right around the time that the FCC put out the do not call list, right? If you remembered, put me on your list. Put me on your do not call list. So what actually happened was this company had a database of people that said, put me on the do not call list and they would use the SS seven network, which is how you signal a call before the call actually gets transmitted. So it’s kind of the signal from the the s originating central office to the terminating central office or a switch or something like that. But basically it

 

It policed the call before the call actually got connected and it would dip that database and it would say, wait, you’re a business and you’re calling someone on this do not call list and you’re not allowed to complete this call. And so it would block it. And I thought that was an incredible technology and it seemed to have go gone by the wayside and that the spam problem over time really started to explode. and I think that all this really started to the the government, the FCC really started to take

 

measures, drastic measures around the time that everybody’s car warranty was starting to expire, right? If you remember that that was like the big thing, right? You would constantly get these phone calls and your car warranty’s about to expire. so so that’s when I started to notice all the you know the the new technology and and the regulations coming out. And so I think what you’re saying is people that do make those spam calls, these unsolicited calls that are, you know

 

Michan Griffin (08:00.184)

Yeah.

 

Shawn Cordner (08:21.794)

maybe even scammy, if not spammy. And they they would there was a mechanism for the user to provide feedback and it started to crowdsource the score and say, hey, this is most likely not a legitimate call. And that started to creep its way into the zeitgeist, right? Like now we all understand when we get this phone call and it says probably spam, you don’t answer it and you let it go to voicemail.

 

And I actually just recently experienced this where a legitimate business that was a a good sized healthcare network here was calling me for a legitimate reason because I’m a patient of that network and the call came up as probably spam and so I ignored it and it ended up causing me a problem. So what you’re saying is you don’t want to be on that end of it because you have a legitimate business interest and you are a reputable business.

 

And you’re not gonna be able to connect your calls.

 

Michan Griffin (09:21.196)

Right. And and healthcare gets caught up in this all the time because you one of the ways that they score the reputation score of a telephone number is with calling patterns. And a high duration a high volume of short duration calls is a red flag for for these reputation management companies. And in healthcare, you’re you know, you have medication reminders, appointment confirmations.

 

all these types of short informational calls that now look like spam activity if you’re only looking at those call metrics. So healthcare is a is a huge they they get caught up in this a lot, unfortunately.

 

Shawn Cordner (10:05.452)

makes sense. Any business really that has a high volume of transactional type of calls, even though they’re legitimate. So what you’re saying now is there is a way these days to authenticate your identity as a business which will what override that pattern that might be recognized?

 

Michan Griffin (10:22.774)

Yeah, so there’s there’s a few ways, right? There’s some some ways that you can take on the the challenge yourself. And there’s a there’s a website called freecallregistry.com that you can go to to pre-register your numbers and say, you know, this is my number, I’m a legitimate business. and and it’s kind of effective. It’s hit or miss when you’re reacting to having been tagged as spam. Sometimes it can take weeks to get that removed if you’re going through those free channels. so

 

There are the companies that will manage that for you. So they’ll not only monitor what your reputation score is, but they can also help you to remediate it if you get onto the spam list. And there’s a mix. There are companies, all of the reputation management companies that provide these scores to the carriers, the wireless carriers, and so on, they each have their own offering to to for the originating callers.

 

To manage their scores, get visibility into it and help with remediation. so they’re they’re definitely out there.

 

Shawn Cordner (11:29.506)

Yeah. you had mentioned stir shaken. Can you just define that?

 

Michan Griffin (11:33.326)

Sure. So so Starshaken secured telephony identity revisited. it is an acronym. Everything everything with the FCC is an acronym. Essentially, it’s a it’s a token that’s created by the originating service provider. So the person making the call, their carrier, is supposed to provide a token that is an attestation. So there’s three levels: an A, a B, and a C.

 

so an A-level attestation is I know the the caller, they own the telephone number, and the call originated on my network. a B attestation is a is a attestation that the caller, I know the caller, it came from my network. I’m just not sure they own the telephone number. And there’s a lot of B attestations out there because those

 

Those number databases are pretty hard to dip in real time when generating these. So there’s there’s quite a few carriers out there that are just gonna default to a B attestation all the time. And then there’s a C attestation, which is a it’s a gateway attestation. you you really don’t want that. That’s that’s one that’s gonna be, you know, pretty much I don’t know where this call the call came from my network, but I don’t know how.

 

Right. Essentially that’s it. And the the C attestations, I think we’re starting to see some of those calls just get outright blocked. so that’s really not a a good place to be. But that the stir shaken attestation should all be worked out with your originating service provider as part of your service. That’s that’s not something that you necessarily need to go to a management company to to buy a subscription for help with.

 

Shawn Cordner (13:28.962)

Got it. So the implication of all this, I think, is twofold. Really, it’s you want to be able to reach your customers and you want to be able to do that cleanly, right? But going back to the the beginning, it’s really about trust. You need to signal to the market and to your customers that you are a reputable business. And even if I know you’re a reputable business, it does seem a little bit sketchy if you’re

 

phone call comes through and it says probably spam. And it it may even make you second guess who you’re actually talking to because we live in a world right now where cybersecurity attacks are taking a social engineering threat vector. They always have, right? But especially with the use of AI now, it’s really, really easy for a bad actor to spin up a campaign to call thousands, hundreds of thousands of people and

 

using robocalling and spoofing a phone number of a reputable business. and and now with AI, you can even, you know, have an AI voice, you can have an AI video call, right? So authentication is starting to become a problem that we’re seeing it a lot in the business world. And I just think that from a consumer perspective, awareness is going to need to start to grow and education around how to handle these things. So just talk to me briefly about spoofing and and how that kind of plays into

 

the risk of the brand.

 

Michan Griffin (14:53.676)

Yeah, so spoofing, back in the day, spoofing was actually really easy to do, right? Because if you had a PBX and and you had a a normal trunk group, your carriers would oftentimes let you just outpulse whatever number and and you could outpulse a 10 digit number and they would present it on the other side as if it was yours. there it’s it’s a little harder to do that now. Like I said, with the with the stir shaken we just talked about, there’s some ways to stop that or at least provide a little warning.

 

To say, know, this this call may not be who who they say they are. but one level further, there are companies out there that actually provide spoof prevention. and what the way this works, I’ll keep it super simple, right? but it essentially there’s an integration, usually with your session border controller, which is like a voice firewall, that creates a token that’s only good for a very short amount of time.

 

the spoof protection providers out there will work with all the downstream carriers to say, if this call doesn’t have a token, don’t deliver it. It’s not my customer. So essentially now you have it unless your SBC kicks off that request, the call’s not going through. it’s it’s pretty complex. and it’s it’s not something that everybody’s going to probably rush out.

 

and and pay for a subscription on that. It can it can get a little costly. but we do see it making a lot of sense in finance and healthcare. for for those two industries, the really, you know, the the implications of spoofing can can get pretty costly for them. So we we do see them typically taking steps to to prevent it.

 

Shawn Cordner (16:43.68)

Of course, what they have in common is they’re both high trust type of vertical markets and they’re also regulated.

 

Michan Griffin (16:51.52)

Absolutely. That’s it.

 

Shawn Cordner (16:53.778)

I’m gonna bring this up. I don’t know, you know, if people are just listening to this instead of watching, you’re not gonna see it. But you know, I shop at Saks and I also shop at Bloomingdale’s. And I don’t know if you can see that if it’s clear, but yeah. But I always think what a great branding opportunity, right? Like I’m getting these text messages and I get all these text messages from other

 

companies that I do business with because I wanted to get their discount, right? I’ll sell my soul for 10% off. But that one always stands out whenever text messages come through and it it looks refined and it looks like it’s a legit business and they’re they’re it feels higher end, right?

 

Michan Griffin (17:40.324)

yeah. No, it’s slick for sure. And and so logo deliveries out there. That don’t we can’t confuse it with branding because they’re two different things. so so branding or branded caller ID allows you to take that normal 13 character caller ID name up to 32 characters, and you can do uppercase, lowercase. So it’s it’s cap sensitive. that’s nice. You can now not only pop the name of your business.

 

But potentially the reason for your call as well, which can drastically, depending on, you know, whether you’re in collections or or prize giveaway, it can really increase your answer rate to have the reason for the call there. in addition to that, but separately in most cases, you can also do logo delivery. some of the offerings out there will only pair logo delivery up with call authentication, the spoof protection that we were talking about.

 

And others it’s a little more straightforward. You just upload a an image file for them and they’ll they’ll get it on the colour ID screen of a mobile phone.

 

Shawn Cordner (18:46.21)

You know, the the color ID use case, I could see like C V S saying, you know, C V S problem with your prescription. I’m gonna answer that, right?

 

Michan Griffin (18:55.33)

Yep. And as long as you can keep it in thirty two characters, you can you can say whatever you want. Yeah.

 

Shawn Cordner (19:03.11)

okay, so there was something else that you had brought up to me when we had a little bit of a planning session here, and that was the other side of this inbound robocall blocking. So just what is that?

 

Michan Griffin (19:16.61)

Yeah. So, you know, in inbound robocalls, nuisance calls can be a problem too. So depending on, you know, if you’ve got a contact center full of people and inbound calls can make it into that contact center, robocalls can take up your agent’s time and that quite literally costs money. also, you know, think about assisted living facilities where you have elderly people on the other end of a phone. They’re they’re highly targeted by bad actors.

 

So there are offerings out there, there are companies out there that can help. In addition to the normal spam or spam likely tags and stir shake in tokens, they have additional databases that can tell you whether it’s a sales call, whether it’s a nuisance call. They can even see whether or not the call is coming from overseas with a domestic number and red flag that. Not only can they identify all these different types of calls, but you’re not.

 

only blocking. So at this point, you can have them reroute a call to a different destination. So think about the assisted living facility. Now you can have those calls route to the front desk if you choose to and have that front desk triage the call, make sure they’re not bad actors before letting the call through it to to the resident upstairs. So quite a quite a few options out there, but that’s that’s definitely something that we see.

 

Shawn Cordner (20:44.27)

Pretty amazing the cost of bad actors and spammy operations. so this seems like something that most businesses should at least pay some attention to, at least understand what their reputation score is, make sure they know whether they come up clean or mark as spam now and remediate the problem if they are marked as spam. what would you recommend people listening do, you know, step one and step two?

 

Michan Griffin (21:13.516)

Talk to your talk to your users that are making the calls. So often these problems go on for a degree of time before they start to get their arms around it and understand why their answer rate plummeted. So understanding and trusting that, you know, your your call makers, when they’re reporting that there’s something going on, take it seriously and and look into it.

 

Make some test calls and and test some mobile phones, see if you’re seeing the spam tag. adjust your your calling patterns. So before you start to if a number gets tagged as spam, before you start cycling out numbers or trying things on your own, give us a call, have a conversation. Some of those tactics can make things much worse. So

 

you know, take a take a measured approach, talk to an expert, whether it’s us or or one of the providers out there, and and get an idea for what works in the industry before trying different things.

 

Shawn Cordner (22:24.366)

Perfect. Michan McGriffin, thank you so much for your time and expertise. Interesting subject.

 

Michan Griffin (22:29.602)

Great to be here. Thank you.