Options
for repairing the damage caused by Area Code Changes |
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IntroductionAccording to Martek Global Services, "Over the past 8 years, more than 270 million telephone numbers have changed their area codes." If you dial any of those numbers, you will get a standard "This number is not connected" message. Or you will reach the person to whom that number has been re-issued. There is only one certainty: you will NEVER reach the person you are trying to call. In 1947, there were 82 area codes for the entire United States. There was little change until the early 1990's, and the area code expansion really got underway in 1995, driven by telephone company deregulation and the demand for internet connection. In 1997 alone, 40 new area codes were added. Today, there are 215. In the next 12 to 24 months, that number will grow by 70, to 285, according to official Government sources. During the period 1995 to 2000, telephone-based marketing took a back seat to the Internet, which was regarded as the "new way" to do outbound marketing. Telephone marketers, for the most part, manually corrected the telephone numbers they called. With management focus on the Internet, which included an expectation that telephony and fax would become much less important in an Internet future, few companies spent time or money resolving the steady termiting of their telephone and fax number databases that was resulting from the explosive introduction of new area codes. The end of the Internet boom, combined with recessionary business trends, has not caused much change to database correction techniques. The sales department may recognize the problem, but they are not aware of the range of potential solutions. In many cases, sales managers are justifying poor sales performance by pointing to the economy. Further, the inefficiencies introduced using customer contact information raises the cost of outbound telemarketing activities substantially. Poor sales figures become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Companies that are expanding their outbound telephone marketing activities, using their old customer files, are discovering in many cases that over 35% of the telephone and numbers in their files are now bad, simply as a result of area code changes. Over 90% of non-working telephone numbers are directly caused by changes in area codes, not by physical relocation! While some organizations have devised maintenance plans for their most current information bases, many companies are still doing their updating manually, leaving the responsibility for correcting fax and telephone numbers with the actual user. Many organizations have no concrete plans to resolve these issues, for the following reasons:
As a result, most organizations are still using their sales staff to update telephone numbers manually. By adding this time-wasting task, the obvious result is a reduction is the time sales staff spend selling, which results in a drop in revenues per salesperson. The cost of maintenance is continuing to grow as the area code changes accelerate. The problem is aggravated by the fact that most companies maintain multiple databases: for example, the individual salesperson may be using ACT!, and their records are not usually centralized. Further, the organization usually has a completely separate accounting system. The phone number may be updated correctly in one database, and not in the other. As time goes by, there is more and more divergence in the various corporate databases, and there is no clear picture of which number in any of the databases is actually correct. To add to the confusion, many of the new telephone area code splits are happening over the top of older splits. This is introducing situations where, if the age of the phone number is not known, that there could be two or even three possible area codes! Fax numbers present a unique problem. They are not published in any national directory, so a corrupted fax database is particularly difficult and expensive to correct. Most companies' fax directories for their customers and suppliers are increasingly at risk. More companies are now recognizing their file degradation problems, often as a result of hiring new telemarketing staff. However, most organizations are still unaware that there are any easy solutions available, or how to go about the process of identifying and repairing faulty telephone numbers. (Several are reviewed later in this paper.) In more mature organizations, there is also a wealth of information locked in older customer files that is no longer available to the organization. This is a result of past decisions being made that the effort and cost of data maintenance was not justified based on the perceived benefit. Data mining activities may produce tangible proof of buying patterns, but if the archived data contains telephone numbers corrupted by area code changes, the old customer base cannot be reliably contacted by phone to expand the marketing opportunities. |
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Top Management ConcernsThe dilemma for top management in times of rapid technological innovation is to choose the technology applications that are most likely to improve bottom line performance. Between 1995 and 2000, most top management focused their company's efforts in expanding sales on Internet-based activities, and downsized their human sales forces, expecting higher sales volumes from a smaller sales force. Many companies let their internal name and address files lie fallow while they promoted a web presence, developed email lists and implemented new Internet communication techniques. It was during these years when the North American Numbering Administration began introducing new area codes at record rates, which obsoleted telephone and fax numbers in customer files at record rates. As a consequence of smaller sales forces and less outbound calls, only the telephone and fax numbers most frequently dialed were updated. Those that were not became less and less trustworthy. By late 2000, it was obvious to most companies that this strategy was not working. The economy moved into recession, and to maintain sales volumes, companies found themselves scrambling back to basics. The sales dynamic that has emerged uses a human sales force to motivate customers and close sales opportunities, using a web site to adjunctively provide product education in the form of photographs, product descriptions, and even user manuals. Now that most organizations have high speed Internet access, the sales rep can instantly provide product brochures and product education simply by walking the customer through their web site, replacing much of the need for physically knocking on the customer's door to deliver brochures. The efficiencies that result speed up the sales cycle, and allows sales reps to manage a larger territory. While other departments are impacted as a result of telephone and fax area code errors, the impact in sales is where it is most profound. Inefficiencies here result in lower sales, reduced cash flow and reduced profitability. |
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Sales Management IssuesThe trustworthiness of a name and address file has its greatest economic impact on the sales department, which is dependent on good information to maintain company sales. While the accounting department makes outbound calls to the customer base on an intermittent exception basis for collection purposes, sales staff use the company's customer base information on a daily basis to generate the company's revenues. Many sales departments have been leaving telephone correction problems to their sales staff, expecting them to correct the telephone area codes in their sales territory. For long term staff, who have been managing their own data, this data problem has been managed on a gradual basis as a hidden cost which also has reduced sales productivity downsides. The issue tends to be highlighted when new staff are added to the mix, and the information they inherit on their territory has a high percentage of non-working numbers. This is particularly common if a sales objective is to contact older customers who have not been contacted for some time. The rate of new area code splits is increasing. If the problem of telephone number degradation continues to be managed by the sales staff at field rep level, without serious examination by senior sales management, the central records will become more corrupted at an ever-increasing rate. By the end of 2002, it is estimated that 70% of the telephone numbers in metropolitan areas will have been changed by area code splits at least once! In most companies, the sales database of names and telephone numbers are maintained in contact software such as Act!. If sales reps depart without updating the company's records, the problems for new sales staff are substantially greater. The time it takes a sales rep to become productive, if they have to do telephone area code correction manually, is substantially longer if they have errors in their files which requires correcting before they can get busy selling. For some, the answer is sending files out for correction. Others bring the project in-house. As one Sales Manager put it: "My sales people are expensive. We pay them salary, commission, expense accounts, travels costs -- and so on. But you know they are worth it, because without sales, we have no business. Since they are expensive, anything I can do that will make them more efficient means more money for the business. Using good area code correction software is a quick, low-cost way to better sales efficiency. With their phone numbers corrected, our sales staff don't lose sales because of wrong numbers, or waste their valuable time digging around in telephone directories -- they should be spending their time doing what they are really good at, which is closing sales." If you are a technically-oriented sales manager, with sufficient skills to manage Excel, you should have no problem understanding and operating any of the software currently available for area code correction. Have a look at Area Code File and Database Analysis Tools below. These products are all covered in the section "Commercially available software solutions" below. |
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Information Technology IssuesThe IT departments of most companies are service departments responding to internal corporate demand. The area code correction problem may not yet have been escalated to them as an issue that requires their attention. With no requests for intervention, many IT departments are unaware of the corporate need for area code correction, and have not studied the role they might play in assisting with the resolution. With an avalanche of new area code splits and overlays in the offing, unaddressed area code change issues are going to become a pressing corporate problem in need of a solution. IT departments should be preparing to receive these requests, and have some kind of action plan ready when their services are requested. This document has been designed to assist in that planning process. |
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Useful LinksIt is redundant to re-publish information that is already well covered on the web. For this reason, we start this white paper with links that provide in-depth information on the topic. http://www.lincmad.com http://www.areacode-info.com
http://www.prodial.com/codes1.html
http://www.fcc.gov/Bureaus/Common_Carrier/Factsheets/areacode.html
http://www.nanpa.com http://www.dialright.com/faq.asp
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Free Area Code File and Database Analysis ToolsMany organizations are already aware that they have a problem with the continuing decay of long distance telephone numbers in their files. There is an excellent way of defining the problem. There are three analytical tools available as free downloads from PhoneSeal: Analyzer Standard, Analyzer Advanced, and Analyzer Professional. To understand which Analyzer you should run, I would suggest you have a look at the issue of ambiguous numbers. These are the result of a second area code split in the same geographic area at a later date, and these 'second round' splits are becoming increasingly common in both highly populated and rapid growth regions. You can find information on area code splits here, and information on ambiguous numbers here. Analyzer Standard reflects the capabilities of most of the software available. If you have telephone numbers that fall in an ambiguous geography, they will be reported, but in the correction process, they require manual intervention. That is, you will have to telephone to actually confirm which number is current. Analyzer Advanced and Professional are in a different class, for correction accuracy. They are date sensitive, either on a per-record basis, or using a file date range, which reduces ambiguous numbers substantially. They also have the ability to check the ambiguous number options by comparing them by ZIP code, and pick the right area code from the possible options. This reduces the percentage of ambiguous numbers quite dramatically. If you want more details on the differences between the Standard, Advanced, and Professional options, visit PhoneSeal's information page here. Here is a direct link to the home page on PhoneSeal's website. There is a step-through tutorial on the Analyzers here. If you have intermediate sized files which need substantial correction, we would recommend downloading both Analyzers and comparing the results. They cost nothing, and they will accurately define the problems you have. If you are looking at purchasing software to resolve the problems you find, a two-way comparison of the issues will generally give you a much clearer picture of the best option. If your file analysis indicates you have a problem that requires addressing, there is a list of software options for file correction below. (Link to the beginning of the software section below.) |
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Area Code File and Database Correction Options |
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Out-of-house servicesSend your files out for cleaning
For organizations that have little computer expertise, and do not want to go through the learning curve of yet another software application, this is a viable alternative. It usually proves to be substantially more expensive than buying the right software for you, and doing it yourself, but where knowledge and/or time preclude, this is a viable option. This can be awkward where the file size is larger. The files may be sent by mail, which means saving them, mailing them, and waiting for them to be returned by mail. For electronic transmission, most of these companies use email for file transmission, rather than ftp. Your email must be able to send and accept files at least as large as the files you wish to upload and download, which can pose problems. If you are thinking of using these kinds of services, you should check the dynamics with your ISP regarding email file size restrictions, or your web master if you have your own email server. Cost comparison For smaller organizations with small files and little in-house computer expertise, this is probably their only choice as an alternative to in-house manual repair. For larger organizations, or organizations with some data processing savvy, it is very expensive in comparison with the commercially available software solutions listed below. Security If you choose to use an outside service, and there is a possibility that your data may be of commercial interest to other organizations, you should consider using encryption. You cannot assume that the information you transmit unencrypted is in any way secure. Protecting the privacy of your data is not the responsibility of the Internet. You should also check out the company with whom you are entrusting your data for correction. You may get your files back corrected, but there is always the possibility that the list may be added to telemarketing databases without your knowledge. The larger the list, and the more specific the target base, the more valuable it has to data pirates. |
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In-House Area Code Correction SolutionsThe major benefit of doing anything in-house is the absolute control of the entire process. The tough part is choosing and implementing the approach that works for your organization. The choices are either to purchase software, or to develop a software solution in-house. To first determine the extent of the problem, the PhoneSeal Analyzer family will give you an accurate count of the number of corrections required, and also the number of ambiguous numbers. Faced with the 'make or buy' decision, in a high precision environment, the choices come down to trying to write a custom application that will meet your specific needs, or purchasing software that will do the job you need doing. |
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Commercially available software solutionsIf you are going to correct your own files, then there are several commercially available software solutions that you can use. The correction process works as follows. A long distance telephone number has three components: the area code, the exchange, and the local number.
When an area code split takes place, the usual procedure is to move an entire exchange to the new area code. In 1998, when the 415 area code split into both 415 and 650, the 373 exchange moved to the new 650 area code. So all the numbers that were '(415) 373' numbers became '(650) 373' numbers. Area code correction software uses a large database of this kind of information to determine whether or not a number should be corrected. Now a word of caution. If the software is not "date sensitive", it will make the correction for (415) 373 XXXX to (650) 373 XXXX automatically. In some cases, this will be wrong, because the number may have been re-issued in a new (415) 373 XXXX since 1998. If the software is "date sensitive", it will be able to make the change correctly, or flag the correction as being potentially ambiguous. One company (PhoneSeal) actually uses a Zip Code to area code comparator to ensure the accuracy of correction in two of their software suites. Date sensitivity is mentioned below in the summary "features you might need to know about", in case, dear reader, you skimmed this section. The software you choose depends on the accuracy of correction you require. The cheapest options, at around the $100 mark, still offer a huge saving over any manual correction alternative, and will correct telephone numbers with an accuracy exceeding 95%. If you have larger files, or require more accurate correction, the price is going to be over $700, but the accuracy rises to above 99.99%. The following software solutions all process in a PC environment. This does not restrict the data to be processed to the PC environment, however. Features you might need to know about:
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Standard area code correction softwarePhoneSeal have a free Standard Analyzer which will give you an accurate count of numbers that need correcting. It is strongly recommended that you run one of the PhoneSeal Analyzers before you begin to define your needs. Most of these packages cost no more than the price of a temp for one or two days, which makes the purchase decision a simple one. PhoneSeal Standard, Area Code Update, and DialRight are general-purpose file and/or database managers for correcting area codes. MaxScrub and Split Wizard are application-specific, designed to be an adjunct to contact software (Maximizer and ACT! respectively).
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Advanced area code correction softwarePhoneSeal have free Analyzers (Advanced and Professional) that will give an accurate count of the numbers that need correcting. Currently, the only two products that address high- end needs for very sophisticated error correction with very low manual correction rates. They are both from PhoneSeal (PhoneSeal Advanced and PhoneSeal Professional), so we lose the opportunity to do product comparisons with competing products. Both PhoneSeal Advanced and PhoneSeal Professional have identical features. The difference lies in processing speed. While PhoneSeal Advanced performs at the same speed as PhoneSeal Standard, PhoneSeal Professional is a real performance package, running up to 60 times faster! The accuracy is achieved by first checking the numbers using telephone area code splits information. When PhoneSeal Advanced or Professional encounters ambiguous numbers, it uses a second information base to choose the correct area code from the available ambiguous numbers. If there is no match, the number is reported as ambiguous. In our testing, we took very large old files that had a high ambiguity rate with other products. The savings in manual correction time were very substantial. We found that Advanced and Professional resolved all the ambiguities we encountered. The only way we were able to get an error message was by providing faulty information. PhoneSeal Professional was blindingly fast, processing CSV files at over 390,000 records a second, or 60 megabytes per minute, correcting 6 telephone numbers per record on the fly! The test machine had an AMD 1600+ processor with 512 Megabytes of RAM and a 5,200-RPM IDE hard disk. While PhoneSeal Standard recognizes over 80 telephone number formats, PhoneSeal Advanced and professional have a utility that allows you to specify unusual formats of your own. If files contain telephone numbers with extensions, or prefixes that are non-standard, the user can use the number format utility to specify the format, which Advanced/Professional then add to the standard format list. If there are any unrecognizable formats, they are reported in an edit list when the user runs the software, which is an easy prompt to add a new number format. In a correction environment where a high degree of accuracy and a low human intervention rate is highly desirable, these software suites are unbeatable. PhoneSeal Advanced should meet the needs of most users. PhoneSeal Professional is designed for that smaller number of users who have very large files. If you are in doubt regarding which product you should use, download the free PhoneSeal Analyzers and compare processing times.
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Custom SoftwareFor some large organizations in a specialized hardware environment (such as an IBM mainframe) with very large files, this is their current choice. However, it requires an extensive knowledge of the kinds of splits that are now taking place (see http://www.lincmad.com/areacode.html), and a tedious resolution of ambiguities. In the past, this was a much more viable option. However, with the increasing complexity of area code splits, and the fact that many of these complex new splits are taking place over the top of older splits, the complexity of writing an area code correction application in-house is escalating, along with the cost. There is the cost of programming staff that have some knowledge of area code splits. Then there is the cost of acquiring a reliable database. There are two resources for splits databases we know of. They are listed below: First, the North American Numbering Plan Administration that manages the issuing of new area codes sells this database, but they are very secretive about their pricing. The price NANPA charge for their database depends on the responses you give to a lengthy questionnaire, and can run as high as $18,000, depending on company size and the purposes for which the database being licensed. This questionnaire is only supplied on a confidential basis, and may not be disclosed to third parties. The marketing of this database is managed by Telcordia Technologies, and is right in line with the FCC policy of selling everything to the highest bidder. Although the responsibility for NANPA moved to Bellcore in 1998, the database is still available from Telcordia here. Second, PhoneSeal licenses their database for a flat $1,800, with a further $900 a year for the updates, which are provided every two months. The database commences January 1990, and includes every split published, including future planned splits. For further information on database licensing, contact phoneseal. |
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ConclusionWith the continuing rapid change in area codes, area code correction software is becoming a mainstream necessity in the routine maintenance of name and address information. It is only a matter of time that before every organization implements some kind of software solution to take care of this problem. With the range of options now available, the decision to implement a software solution is not whether, but when. If you enjoyed this whitepaper, please feel free to forward it to anybody who you think would find it useful! This whitepaper was written by Gregory de Vries. If you have any comments on this White Paper, please send them to me at gregorydv@hotmail.com . |
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