Increase right-party contact with Phone Number ID™ [sponsored]

Third-party debt collectors and collection agencies have a tough balancing act to perform. They need to optimize their outbound communications and right-party contacts (RPCs) but must do so within the confines of strict regulations. Effectively reaching debtors can be difficult when facing a sea of internal and external pressures. You don’t want to expend too many resources on a wrong number, but you don’t want to give up on a good number too soon. With dedicated RPC tools, you can streamline your processes, transforming a difficult task into a manageable one. 

Phone Number ID™ by Experian helps increase RPC rates and optimize skip tracing by scoring customer phone numbers at the beginning of the debt cycle. This tool works within the confines of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA) and Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), providing you with a quality scrub that’s easy to use. 

Collection agencies and debt collectors face unique challenges 

Collection agencies and debt collectors face a number of challenges unique to their industry. 

First, there are strict rules in place protecting consumers by restricting outbound communications. And violations can be costly. Every unsolicited call or text sent to a wireless device can lead to a fine ranging from $500 to $1,500, putting a lot of stress on debt collectors. 

However, the stress facing debt collectors goes beyond compliance. There’s extreme pressure to improve your RPC rates as quickly and efficiently as possible. Time is money and wasting it by calling a bad phone number can cost precious resources. But it can also be costly to move away from a phone number too fast because your resources erroneously indicated that it might not be a reliable contact. 

That’s where Phone Number ID can help. Improving contact management processes at the beginning of a debt cycle can help you maintain compliance while increasing your RPC rates even if your resources are constrained. 

How Phone Number ID works to improve RPC 

Phone Number ID is an industry-leading solution that helps you maximize the effectiveness of your contact management strategy while minimizing the risk of fines. Phone Number ID validates phone ownership and phone types with more than 5,000 local exchange carriers in real-time, checking categories such as: 

• Phone number ownership. 
• Line type (wireless, landline, etc.). 
• Carrier. 
• Activation date. 
• If the number moved from a landline to a wireless carrier or voice-over IP. 

Phone Number ID takes your call list and sends it to carriers for verification (while protecting consumer information). If a number doesn’t have a name linked to it, the number is sent to Experian contact databases to be located. Complete customer profiles are then returned to you from the carriers, including consumer name, line type, current carrier and activation date. 

Your records are transparent and include match scores from 0 to 99 based on the quality of the customer’s phone number. The match score represents how well a consumer record matches carrier data, helping you maximize RPC. 

A thoughtful start to your debt cycle leads to cost savings 

Phone Number ID increases efficiency by allowing you to be more thoughtful at the beginning of a debt cycle. Rather than arbitrarily calling each number in your database a specific number of times, you can fine-tune your outreach based on accurate scrubbing data. 

At the beginning of a debt cycle, run your phone numbers through Phone Number ID. If it assigns a match score of 20 or lower to a number, you’ll know that number is very risky and should be skip-traced. A score that low indicates an active mismatch, such as a typo, a fake number given to collections or a prepaid phone number that now belongs to someone else. 

In contrast, a match score of 90 or higher means you have the best phone number for that person, and there is no point in skip tracing. 

This means, that for each debt cycle, instead of assigning an arbitrary number of phone calls to every number, you can do the following: 

• Call a number 10 to 20 times if it has a match score of 90 or higher. 
• Call a number with a match score of 20 to 40 once and move to skip tracing. 
• Send a match score lower than 20 straight to skip tracing. 

Phone Number ID maximizes your calls in numerous scenarios 

Phone Number ID can maximize debt collectors’ effectiveness in numerous scenarios. Here are just three examples of use cases you might encounter, but there are many more possibilities. 

• If you’re a debt buyer, you might receive a list of phone numbers that were charged off and haven’t made payments in four to six months or longer. Because it’s been so long since they were used, the numbers could be high risk. You’ll want to scrub all of them for quality before you call any of them. 
• You have a new number that belongs to someone who signed up for a credit card years ago, and just recently started missing payments. It’s been a long time since the number was verified, so scrubbing it right away makes sense. 
• You’ve been given access to a database that tells you whether or not a number was ported. You might be tempted to dispose of all the ported numbers, but you could miss out on valuable contacts. Phone Number ID will tell you if a number was ported and if it’s still owned by the same person. 

Follow up your match scores with optimal skip tracing 

When Phone Number ID delivers low-match scores for some of your contacts, you’ll want to skip-trace the numbers to see if there’s a new number you can use instead. Luckily, we have a solution. 

TrueTrace™ is Experian’s most powerful skip tracing product, and it’s the natural follow-up to Phone Number ID. TrueTrace offers superior matching logic that ensures accurate data that’s streamlined to integrate with internal or third-party software. 

Why partner with Experian? 

Phone Number ID allows you to feel confident about your database, knowing that you’re reaching out to the right people and staying updated on any contact information changes as they occur. 

The benefits of leveraging our best-in-class solution include: 

• Providing seamless contact management integration and affordability. 
• Delivering detailed consumer contact information verification in real-time. 
• Monitoring customer phone numbers’ line type, ownership, portability and carrier. 
• Validating phone ownership and type across 5,000+ exchange carriers. 
• Delivering comprehensive coverage with up to a 97 percent hit rate. 
• Utilizing proprietary matching and scoring logic. 
• Mitigating compliance risk with the TCPA, while enhancing RPC rates and skip tracing. 

Experian is committed to helping you optimize your outbound communications. 

Contact us today to learn how Phone Number ID can help you.