First Orion Celebrates One Year in Market with Branded & Verified Calling for Legitimate Business-to-Consumer Calls  

Delivering Millions of Rich Content Enhanced Calls 

Little Rock, Arkansas. August 7, 2019  – First Orion today announced the one-year anniversary of its Engage calling solution which ensures mobile customers on major carriers know which business calls are safe to answer and why. First Orion has been ahead of the curve by enabling customers to know when a trusted business partner is calling. First Orion has delivered millions of verified and branded calls for businesses looking to provide better service to their customers. 

First Orion began testing its Engage solution in Q3 2018 with businesses and carriers, offering the first rich calling technology that verifies and brands outgoing business calls to customers. The called party sees an enhanced incoming call screen with rich media graphics, customized for each business, as well as personalized messages for each consumer. In addition, legitimate businesses can control their own calling name that gets displayed on-screen.

Branded and Verified Call

“After a year of testing on millions of calls, First Orion’s Enhanced Calling solution significantly improves the customer experience and eliminates the fear of answering unknown calls,” said Scott Hambuchen, Chief Information Officer at First Orion. “Our Engage branded and verified calling makes it easier and safer for legitimate businesses to reach customers with whom they have a pre-existing relationship.”

Engage is now available in the United States on tens of millions of mobile handsets and works internationally in over 50 countries. First Orion plans to have Engage accessible to hundreds of millions of mobile users throughout North America, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa by 2020. Early adopters of Engage have seen answer rates double. Subscribers from major carriers that work with Engage will see a drastic improvement. Consumers and businesses can feel secure knowing who is on the other side and why the call is happening.

“Globe Life has been using First Orion’s Engage Calling solution to dramatically improve our customers’ incoming call experience for more than 8 months now,” said Jason Harvey, SVP, Direct Response Marketing at Globe Life.  “With Engage Calling, we’ve seen our answer rates increase quite considerably during that time.”

Due to the ongoing scam call and robocall epidemic, 70% of consumers do not answer incoming calls from unknown numbers, making it very challenging, if not impossible, for businesses to reach their customers. Recently passed legislation requires carriers to implement new caller-ID authentication technologies – aimed at preventing call spoofing of legitimate businesses – at no additional cost to consumers. Major enterprises and carriers are quickly working to introduce verified and branded calls free of charge to its subscribers.

With Engage, companies can now provide verified details about why they are calling, ensuring that their customers are not missing important calls such as:

• Airlines: Customers requesting callbacks to reschedule flights – oftentimes, consumers miss these call-backs because they come from unknown or unrecognized numbers
• Ridesharing: Coordinate pickup locations or let riders know about delays – unanswered calls from rideshare drivers lead to pick-up snafus, missed fares and revenue loss for rideshare companies along with frustration and safety concerns for consumers
• Financial Services: Verify recent credit card transactions – banks have difficult choices to make when they can’t reach consumers about possible fraudulent activity
• Deliveries: Installation and arrival confirmations to avoid rescheduling – missed deliveries or “truck-rolls” can be expensive for retailers and frustrating for consumers 
• Pharmacies: Inform customers when prescriptions are ready for pick up – provide customers with tools to manage their prescriptions
• Appointments/Services: Remind patients or clients about upcoming appointments
• On-demand food delivery: Drivers and customers can confirm orders in real-time and update as needed

See First Orion’s Engage in action and get more information on how it works here.

About First Orion

First Orion powers call management and transparency solutions for T-Mobile, Metro by T-Mobile, Boost Mobile, Sky, Virgin Mobile, and Sprint Prepaid mobile networks along with PrivacyStar applications for all smartphones. First Orion currently provides call control, call blocking, call transparency and call management solutions to millions of mobile handsets. First Orion’s Engage technology tells mobile subscribers who is calling and why, empowering them with the ability to take action, while also providing businesses the ability to verify their identity when calling their customers. With branded and white-labeled applications as well as in-network solutions, First Orion assists phone carriers in protecting mobile and fixed line subscribers by identifying and stopping millions of scam calls every day. For more information, please visit www.firstorion.com.

Media Contact:

Michelle Hua
media@firstorion.com
831.401.3175