Texting and emails may be a popular way for consumers to communicate with friends and for businesses to send automated messages to customers, but new survey data commissioned by Hiya makes clear that when the stakes are high, people turn to voice calls.
In industries like finance and healthcare, where communication often requires sharing private information, a strong majority of consumers report that voice is their preferred communication medium. Even for communicating with retail businesses, where data tends not to be so sensitive, three times as many consumers prefer voice as compared to text.
Also notable is that in certain domains, the percentage of consumers who prefer voice calls has increased. For example, when communicating with healthcare providers, 42 percent of consumers said they prefer voice in 2025 compared to 33 percent in 2024.
Those results come from the State of the Call 2025 report. Data in the report is based on a survey commissioned by Hiya of more than 12,000 consumers, 1,800 workers who use voice calls on the job, and 600 security and IT executives at businesses that depend on voice calls. Respondents were based in the UK, US, Canada, France, Germany, and Spain.
The trend surrounding voice as the go-to communication channel also holds true when it comes to the ways businesses engage their customers. A majority of workers consistently reported that they turn to voice for critical needs, like resolving customer issues and closing sales.
The preference for voice has increased in some areas over the last year. For instance, this year’s State of the Call report found that 30 percent of workers preferred voice for closing sales, compared to 27 percent in last year’s report.
Overall, 29 percent of workers said that they had increased their use of voice communications on the job over the past year, while 57 percent said it had stayed the same. Only 11 percent reported that they are relying less on voice today than a year ago.
In Hiya’s survey, 48% of consumers said they never answer unidentified calls, and 32% said they only sometimes answer unidentified calls. That means that 80% of unidentified calls are unlikely to get answered — even if they come from legitimate businesses.
So, how can businesses get customers and prospects to answer their phones? Simply identify who is calling by using branded caller ID. Branded caller ID is a technology that enables businesses to display their business name, logo, and even reason for the call on the recipient’s mobile device. Branded caller ID also provides protection against fraudsters who would spoof a company’s name or phone number to make their scams more believable.