The big news out of my hometown, is their battle over the past few weeks to be named Kraft’s Hockeyville — a competition to find the biggest ice hockey town in the United States. Johnstown, a former steel city in Western Pennsylvania — famous for the movie Slapshot, has made it to the final round. The community has been encouraging each other to cast their votes through every means necessary. They have been using social media posts, email blasts, and are even calling local hockey enthusiasts, which is how I heard about this competition — by mistake.
Earlier this week I received a call to my mobile phone asking me to vote in the competition. However, the person on the other end was looking for someone named “Tyler” – apparently a frequent shopper at a local sporting goods store not far from where my parents live.
When I moved away years ago, like so many others, I never changed my mobile phone number. I still have a Pennsylvania number even though I live in North Carolina now. The local sporting goods store called to reach “Tyler,” someone they knew was interested in hockey based on his purchasing behavior. When they couldn’t reach “Tyler” with the inaccurate phone number that they had in their system, they changed the final digit by one and contacted me instead. While this isn’t a great way to source a better phone number for your customers, it made me think. What if this call was more critical? What if it was urgent that this company reach “Tyler”? What if “Tyler” was waiting for this phone call? Talk about a negative customer experience!
A Missed Call, a Missed Customer Opportunity
This brings me full circle to our newest product offering, an update to our Phone Validation product that verifies phone numbers throughout the world. For telephone numbers in over 240 countries and territories, the Phone Validation offering from Informatica Data as a Service will ensure accuracy, identify the phone type (mobile, landline, free, VoIP), as well as the phone carrier (such as Verizon, AT&T, or Vodafone). The service will also identify geographic data such as locality information including time zone – so that you don’t call “Tyler” in the middle of the night to encourage him to vote.
The real power of the Phone Validation service comes when it’s combined with our Email Verification and Address Verification services to validate all of the most critical components of a customer’s contact record. This Contact Record Verification service can be easily implemented anywhere that contact data, such as phone numbers, email addresses, and postal addresses, are acquired or stored. This will ensure that when you try to reach a contact in an urgent situation that you can reach the right person, the first time – without fail.
Does Your Company Reach the Right Customer, the First Time?
To learn more about our Phone Validation and Contact Record Verification services, check out this informative webinar recording.
Oh – and good luck to Johnstown. You have my vote, and I’ll be interested to see this weekend if you bring home the prize to Flood City!
The post “I’m Sorry – You have the Wrong Number.” appeared first on The Informatica Blog - Perspectives for the Data Ready Enterprise.