Wrong Number: How Number Deactivation Can Cover Your Back | TeleSign

Gather around the fire friends, I’m going to tell you a story about Number Deactivation and why it’s so important in keeping you relevant and compliant.

Meet Molly. Molly started a sustainable women’s make-up line based out of Los Angeles called Mollywood in 2010. Her company absolutely exploded. Now with stores nationwide and a very heavy online presence, Mollywood maintains great communications with its customers and is able to push SMS messages out announcing flash sales. One of these such customers, Lucy, LOVES Mollywood. Any time she receives a push note, she rushes to the Mollywood site or her local brick and mortar store.

One day Lucy gets a new job and her company offers her a new, free company cell phone. Deciding that she no longer needs a personal line she cancels her cell phone account. That number is cycled and a few days later the number goes to Alexander, a 19 year old race car driver from Echo Park.

You can imagine Alexander’s confusion when he receives the following SMS.

“FLASH SALE: Come to Mollywood TODAY for 30% off sustainable bronzers!!”

What has happened here might seem to just be a mild annoyance, but it could also be a very costly compliance violation.

Every day, wireless accounts are closed and opened. With a finite amount of cell numbers available, these numbers are recycled. Perhaps you have received a phone call from someone’s Uncle Carl before. He’s looking for his niece Sophia. Wrong number Carl! Only Carl isn’t on the hook for compliance violations and brand damage.

TeleSign to the Rescue

Here is how TeleSign can help. With our Number Deactivation add-on, TeleSign can tell you if the phone number you have for a customer on file has changed since the last communication. Websites need to be able to trust their users’ phone numbers have not changed ownership. Otherwise, the website/app could be communicating with the wrong subscriber, causing frustration, annoyance, and compliance violations.

TeleSign can easily provide a simple data point in real time “date of last deactivation” and this whole headache can be avoided.

Molly is a successful entrepreneur, hustling to keep her brand at the top. Surely, she doesn’t want Mollywood to be derailed by something that can so easily be sidestepped, and neither do you.

Contact TeleSign today to learn more about Number Deactivation and how easily it is to implement.


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