When Your Legitimate Calls Don’t Get Through: The Silent Risk Facing Every Enterprise

Voice is still central to business outcomes -- from banks confirming fraud alerts, to hospitals coordinating care, to retailers following up on customer inquiries. But legitimate calls that originate outside the U.S. and use U.S.-based numbers are increasingly and inadvertently mislabeled as spam or blocked outright due to FCC rules and fragmented verification frameworks. The result: missed connections, wasted resources and new openings for fraud.

In this Q&A with Peter Ford, Executive Vice President of Information Solutions at iconectiv, we explore why measures against illegal robocalls are backfiring, who’s being hit hardest and what enterprises must do to protect revenue, trust and security.

Why are businesses struggling to get their legitimate calls answered?

Phone calls remain critical to business operations—whether it’s a hospital coordinating follow-up care, a bank confirming fraud alerts or a retailer handling customer requests. Yet, too many legitimate calls go unanswered or are mislabeled as spam. For businesses, that means delayed decisions, wasted sales calls and frustrated customers.

Why are legitimate calls being ignored?

The absence of reliable caller identification results in recipients often assuming the worst. Consumers today receive mixed and inconsistent signals when it comes to caller ID. Some calls are labeled as spam. Others aren’t. Some show a recognizable business name, while others appear as a generic number or simply “unknown.” This inconsistency is damaging. Reports show that 92% of people believe unidentified calls are fraudulent or spam and 79% will not answer them.

What’s driving this inconsistency in caller ID and why are calls mislabeled as spam? Behind the scenes is a fragmented telecom ecosystem that’s trying to combat illegal robocalls and spoofing. Frameworks like Secure Telephone Identity Revisited (STIR) and Signature-based Handling of Asserted Information Using toKENs (SHAKEN) were designed to authenticate calls and cut down on fraud – with countries like the U.S., Brazil, Canada and France implementing such measures. They work well within their own countries – from both a compliance and security standpoint -- when both the originating and terminating communications service provider (CSP) support them. But outside these countries, adoption is uneven, causing some collateral damage. For example, calls that originate outside the U.S. but use U.S.-based numbers are especially vulnerable under FCC guidelines and often end up flagged as suspicious even when they’re legitimate.

Who is being hit hardest by this problem? Businesses that depend on voice for critical outcomes, specifically those whose calls cross borders, are exposed. That includes banks, hospitals, insurers, retailers and global contact centers. Even conferencing platforms that rely on phone numbers for access are impacted. Missed calls aren’t just unproductive for businesses—they mean lost revenue, higher operating costs and increased exposure to fraud when customers ignore real calls but fall victim to spoofed ones. Plus, it negatively impacts the customer experience for businesses when consumers aren’t answering important calls because they assume they are fraud.  

How big is the impact in business terms? With telecom fraud losses hitting $38B globally in 2023, CSPs amped up their efforts to filter calls more aggressively. Those enhanced security measures, however, often sweep up legitimate traffic – impacting all teams across an organization responsible for interfacing with customers. For instance,  sales teams already lose up to 15% of their time leaving voicemails that go unanswered. Multiply that by billions of calls across industries, and the wasted spend and lost opportunities are staggering. Voice represents the direct, real-time, personal-touch B2C engagement that people want. Nothing is more frustrating than trying to speak with someone and instead ending up in an endless loop of web forms or other interactions that are void of humans. As such, voice remains a critical communications channel that must be protected.

What solutions are emerging? Two approaches show promise. Cross-border call authentication extends STIR/SHAKEN by allowing CSPs in different countries to exchange trusted credentials—essentially a digital passport for calls. International traceback follows the path of a call through the network to confirm its true origin. Used together, these solutions give CSPs both confidence and accountability, ensuring more legitimate calls get through.

What’s the strategic takeaway for CxOs?

It’s imperative that CxOs understand the critical role that voice plays in their businesses. Across all industries, contact centers and CSPs, the ability to reach customers depends on fixing authentication gaps that are currently undermining trust. While there are countries like the U.S. that mandate call authentication measures, this is so much more than just a telco compliance issue—it’s a business continuity and security imperative. Enterprises need to view secure voice as part of the broader security stack and push CSPs on how cross-border verification is being handled, demand interoperability and align with partners who can help ensure that legitimate calls reach customers. Otherwise, missed calls will keep translating into missed revenue, higher fraud risk and weakened customer confidence.