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How to Find out Quickly If a Phone Number Is Okay to Use

Featured image from geralt on Pixabay

Clean up a list of leads quickly and simply by using an automatic phone number validator.

Did You Just Download a Large List of Possible Leads?

Imagine you have a large contact list with literally hundreds of phone numbers. A certain percentage of these are attached to genuine leads that you could convert easily as long as you stay in touch on a regular basis. But if any of the remaining numbers aren’t valid, you’ll just be wasting time that you could be spending on your best customers.

Customers give out fake phone numbers to businesses because they’re fearful of marketing calls. When your sales team calls a disconnected number, it’s probably due to someone making it up as opposed to a simple mistake. There are even services that create temporary numbers for consumers who are concerned about phone spam.

Fortunately, you can clean your list of leads out quickly, simply by using an automatic phone number validator.

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Use a Phone Number Verification Tool

Scrubbing a list of contacts is simple if you already have it formatted in a way for computers to understand. Once you’ve configured your new piece of software, all you have to do is feed your existing contact list in. The system will automatically remove any malformed phone numbers or any that don’t point to the individual who claims to be using it. If someone put down a number that obviously belongs to a retail chain or other popular establishment, then your phone validator software will spot this kind of irregularity.

It’s fairly simple to validate phone numbers in the United States. This is because each 10-digit code has an attached location routing number that verifies it. The North American Numbering Plan Administration maintains all of these codes. Therefore, it’s relatively easy for a computer algorithm to spot irregularities. According to phone validator experts from CDYNE, “[The] LRN is a unique 10-digit number that represents a telephone switch through which multiple phone numbers are routed.”

When a program spots a number in your list that doesn’t match a valid LRN record, it immediately marks it as problematic. If you don’t have your contact lists in a format that’s easy for machines to parse, don’t fret. You can choose from a variety of tools that can help assuage this problem.

Reformatting Phone Listings for Validator Programs

By using a custom phone number validator API, your IT department staffers can automatically standardize your organization’s contact list. Depending on the type of input your team has fed into the API, it can remove dashes or spaces. It can even extract parentheses placed around area codes. While these might be useful for human observers, they can confuse AI-based validation software. This is because rounded brackets sometimes take on special meanings in the world of computer science.

Depending on the length of your contact list, this process should only take a few moments at the most. Once the API is done reformatting your contacts, it will begin to scrub out any that don’t match the individuals they’re attached to. The software will then return a preformatted list devoid of any illegitimate numbers.

While it might seem like a great deal of work, the software does all of the heavy lifting. All you have to do is just sit back and get ready to call your best leads.