Did you know that Telstra makes six million outbound calls every year? We reach out to customers every day, helping with all kinds of services from sales and service to activations and faults.

One of our biggest challenges is getting customers to answer. Fraud and spam levels are increasing rapidly so it makes sense customers are reluctant to answer the ‘unknown number’ we’ve been using until now.

Telstra has launched Branded Calling to help customers recognise our calls. When we call, ‘Telstra’ now appears on the screen with a green tick and store or centre location—making it clear it’s us, not a scammer.

A trial of the feature we did in January showed very positive results. Customers were quicker to answer, and we experienced a 4 to 11% increase in the number of calls answered, depending on the time we called (naturally, evenings were more successful). Customer sentiment also improved because we were able to get to the heart of the matter more quickly. Customers not only felt more reassured from the start, they also spent less time on the phone.

We're excited about the reassurance Telstra Branded Calling will provide our customers as more experience this important feature every day.