Four Reasons Why You Should Be Protecting Your Brand From Being Used in Scams

Trust is essential in any of life’s endeavors. If you don’t trust your car’s brakes to be in working order, you wouldn’t take it on a spin to the store. If you didn’t trust your bank to hold on to your money, you wouldn’t have your paycheck direct-deposited there. And if the guys in the kitchen of the fast-food restaurant look a little shady, you would probably do an about-face right out the door instead of ordering a cheeseburger. It doesn’t matter if you’re old-school or a Gen Z new jack. A Gen Z-er is just as likely to buy a newfangled TikTok product based on reputation alone as his grandpa was to purchase a Craftsman rachet set from Sears because his father would have too. The instinct to trust isn’t a weird generational divide; it’s as innate as survival. The only real difference these days are the names on the boxes your kids choose instead of the names your parents would.

In this article, we cover:

• The importance of trust in business.
• Four reasons to protect your brand from being used in scams.
• How to prevent imposter scams.

In other words, no matter what your racket, keeping your brand name clean and pristine is critical. In fact, in a world where word of mouth spreads at the speed of fiber optics — no longer the speed of sound — the effects of trust lost through poor reputation simply happen more swiftly and can seem almost irreversible. It doesn’t matter if your business is a household name across the nation (see Papa John’s) or a local upstart with a niche following, protecting your reputation is non-negotiable.

We spend a lot of time on this space preaching personal protection from phone scams. It so happens that this is a two-way street. Not only do individuals need to protect themselves, but businesses must spare no effort to protect themselves and their customers from the effects of phone fraud too. And it’s not as simple as avoiding being coaxed into wiring hundreds of thousands of dollars in some elaborate phishing scam. Your company better have its customers’ best interests in mind, otherwise that covenant of trust you worked so hard to cultivate could be toppled in moments.

1. Customer fraud

Here are four reasons why you should be protecting your brand from being used in scams.

Yours may be the name on the check paying your company’s bills, but it’s your customers’

patronage that puts money in bank. If you’re not doing everything in your power to stop them from getting scammed under your name — right or wrong — you will lose some business. When your customers suffer monetary fraud, it can expose your organization. It’s therefore in everyone’s best interest to keep brand imposters from calling your customers and carrying out their attacks.

2. Exposed brand reputation

The FTC received 2.8 million fraud reports from consumers in 2021. Imposter scams were the most common type of fraud reported to the agency, amounting to more than $2.3 billion in losses. The price of this activity isn’t just the amount picked from the pockets of customers, the damage to each brand’s reputation is probably even more costly. The psychological damage of imposter scams creates an avalanche effect where customers can begin to associate your brand with the attacks. You don’t want to the stink of “they’re a good company, but the amount of scams that happen around them just isn’t worth it” on you. It doesn’t matter if it’s not your fault but once your reputation starts slipping, it can be very hard to turn the tide back in your favor.

3. Declines in answer success rates

Once your brand reputation is sullied and customer sentiment takes a dive, you may start to notice answer rates on your legitimate calls take a hit. That campaign you were hoping to launch to restore your name may not even get off the ground because formerly loyal customers are skeptical to pick up when you ring because they’re uncertain it’s really you and afraid to find out. Obviously, this is not an environment conducive to growth — quite the opposite.

4. Drain on resources

When telephony imposter fraud occurs, enterprises often absorb significant human resources and expense responding to customer complaints and trying to stop the bad actors. Now you’re trying to identify fraud sources, compile evidence, and file legal procedures — all amounting to a pretty penny.

As we’ve covered, the cost of allowing your brand to be used in scams extends far beyond the initial fraud. So how can you prevent these attacks? YouMail Brand Impersonation Defender efficiently interdicts fraudsters, working on your behalf to intervene with telecommunications authorities to stop fraud at the source. The same technology that protects more than 350 million phone numbers and has stopped over a billion robocalls to date is the ideal solution to provide zero-hour threat detection that rapidly identifies the bad actors driving fraud campaigns. Our 10M node YouMail Sensor Network with patented AI algorithms detects new threats within minutes and collects the audio evidence needed to shut down their activities and preserve future sales revenue opportunities.

Need to save your brand from being used in imposter scams? Check out YouMail’s Brand Impersonation Defender right away.