Is it a telephone number?
Over many years of implementing large systems, integrating systems that shouldn't be integrated, and converting data that couldn't be converted, something has become all too clear:
Telemarketers the data is not your fault !!!
Whereas most companies convert and manage one set of data, telemarketers (TM's) get a new set of data for just about every customer they take on board.
Even the most basic of elements that a TM company needs, the telephone number, is likely to be poorly formatted.
Here are some examples of how numbers show up in TM data:
01908-592534
0190859254
01908 592534
+44-01908-592534
+44(0)1908-592534
01908-592534 Peter is the DM
Assuming that I am calling from the UK, probably only a couple can actually be called directly as they are not in National, International or E164 format.
If a TM is international then the telephone formatting for VOIP can be worse!
Here is a number (fictitious) that might be in a German customer's data - 07873 22334.
To someone from the UK, this looks like a mobile number, albeit with a digit missing so trying to call this as-is will just result in an error.
Can it get worse? Errmm, yes it can!
If you have operators calling internationally as the dialing prefix might be different between countries. For example, the UK international dialing prefix is "00" whereas in the US its "011" or in Russia "810".
Most software used within the TM arena does not cope with these variations very well so operators are left to manually dial the number or the administrators use Excel to create the correct number for the operator to call, which is time-consuming on both fronts.
As part of our SmileCRM Genesis release, we embedded Google telephone number technology into our software to use the operator's country to format the telephone number as National or International formatting ready for a VOIP call.
This technology is just a small part of the efforts we have put into SmileCRM to help TM's with their data problems.
Call us on 01908-592534 or email peterban@1stconsulting.com for more information.