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Airtel rolls out Business Name Display to prevent spam call confusion
Building on its spam filter service, Bharti Airtel on Monday announced a Business Name Display (BND) feature that will allow businesses to display their brand name on the recipient's mobile screen during outgoing calls.
Launched in September last year, the Artificial Intelligence (AI)-powered spam filter uses a proprietary algorithm to identify and classify calls and SMSes as 'Suspected SPAM' for Airtel users.
However, Airtel Business said the filter had led more people to ignore calls flagged as spam or from unknown numbers — resulting in important calls from trusted brands being tagged incorrectly. Consequently, customers were missing critical calls from banks, food delivery services, courier companies, and hospitals.
The Business Name Display feature aims to solve this challenge by clearly showing the name of the company making the call. This allows businesses to stand out while helping protect customers from fraudulent callers. Additionally, businesses will gain access to call engagement analytics, such as answer rates and interaction patterns.
The solution has been successfully piloted with over 250 businesses across sectors including banking, retail, food delivery, mobility, quick commerce, and logistics. These businesses used over 1.5 million phone numbers to make 12.8 million calls in the past 30 days, resulting in a significant increase in customer engagement.
'With Business Name Display, we will be helping businesses establish trust and stand out with every call, while simultaneously giving customers the confidence of knowing who is reaching out to them. It is about making communication more personal, secure, and seamless for both sides,' said Sharat Sinha, Director & CEO, Airtel Business.
In December, the telecom company had announced that it flagged 8 billion spam calls and 0.8 billion spam SMSes within 2.5 months of the spam filter's launch. Airtel said it identified nearly 1 million spammers every day on its network, where 6 per cent of all calls and 2 per cent of all SMSes were classified as spam.
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