10 Use Cases for Phone Lookup APIs

Trestle focuses on phone identity APIs serving various use cases that can be broadly categorized into either lead management or call operations. In this blog post, we will double-click on these categories and articulate particular use cases where we see businesses can find value by using Trestle.

As a reminder, the phone identity APIs return the data below. This will provide context as we discuss each use case and the phone response attributes of value.

Phone Data Dictionary

Phone Metadata

• Is Valid
• Carrier
• Line Type
• Is Active
• Is Prepaid
• Is Commercial

Phone Identity Data

• Owner(s)/Subscriber Name
• Owner Demographics
• Current and Historical Addresses
• Associated People 
• Alternate Phone Numbers

Here are 10 use cases for Reverse Phone API we regularly see:

 Call Operations

1. Caller Identification/CNAM

Business Problem: Businesses within a call center are looking to identify an unknown caller – especially if it is not an existing customer and their CRM database has no records of this incoming call.

Solution: Caller Identification via Reverse Phone or Caller Identification APIs provides the phone owner’s name, thus helping the agent know who is calling in. That bit of personalization to already know who the caller is goes a long way and also ensures less time is spent on gathering names/spell checks during the call. This reduces call times, and because of that, it helps businesses with their costs and also serves customers better.

Trestle Data of Primary Value: Owner Name

2. Geographic Call Routing 

Business Problem: Let’s say a consumer calls a 1-800-BigInsuranceCo. number searched via Google. BiginsuranceCo. wants to ensure that the call is going to the local agent who specializes in this region and is licensed to serve the customer’s needs the best. 

Solution: This is where knowing who the caller is and where this caller is located can help BigInsurance Co. to route the call appropriately. Trestle’s Reverse Phone APIs provides that information through the current address attribute for the phone subscriber who is calling.

Trestle Data of Primary Value: Owner Current Address or Zip+4 data

3. Call Prioritization

Business Problem: Businesses are always looking to optimize the call queues to serve the highest value customer or the lead that is most likely to convert. These call queue optimizations range from simple rules-based prioritization to using AI algorithms to optimize the experience for your best customers. Lead prioritization depends on a lot of factors, of course, but one of the foundational data elements is knowing the identity of the caller.  

Solution: Knowing the caller is calling from a landline/mobile and not a non-fixed VoIP kind of phone. If it is a person or business calling, is it an existing customer or a new prospect, and the location of the caller are all factors we have seen businesses use to decide how the call should be prioritized depending on their specific nuances. 

Trestle Data of Primary Value: Phone Metadata, Phone Owner Demographics, Owner Name, and Current Address

4. Reputation Management

Business Problem: Businesses are having an increasingly difficult time reaching their existing and prospective clients as consumers are getting warier with any unrecognized calls and leaving them unanswered. Carriers and their analytics engines detect that and mark these calls as spam, resulting in consumers leaving even more calls unanswered. It becomes a vicious cycle. 

Solution: From proper number cleansing via longer cooling periods to not calling DNC numbers, there are a lot of things businesses should do to ensure their phone number reputation stays intact and thus avoid being marked as spam. One of those critical things to ensure this reputation is also not calling disconnected numbers or random honeypot numbers, data provided by Trestle. Non-fixed VoIP numbers (identified through line type), especially if it doesn’t belong to a business, should be avoided as typical consumers do not generally have a Skype Voice or a Twilio number. 

Trestle Data of Primary Value: Phone Metadata attributes of line type and is_active

5. Lead Form Fill and CRM Updates

Business Problem: Businesses are looking to expedite the calls while delivering an optimal customer experience. As a call comes in, getting the names of the callers in real-time and entering them in the CRM systems is a time-consuming process, especially for non-English names. It can also result in awkward conversations between the caller and the agent and inaccurate or inconsistent data collection. 

Solution: Auto-fill of the forms using the Reverse Phone API solves a lot of this back and forth, reduces the user onboarding time, ensures data accuracy, and improves customer experience significantly. 

Trestle Data of Primary Value: Trestle Owner Name and Current Address

Lead Management

6. Lead Validation and Normalization

Business Problem: Every business with any kind of lead generation engine is looking to verify if the basic lead information is legitimate. It starts with simply validating attributes, such as phone and address, and normalizing them so that they can be entered into the CRM systems in a consistent format. This consistent, normalized format also helps with identity resolution and de-duplication of customer records in the database (more on it below).  

Solution: Trestle phone validation ensures that the phone number has been assigned to a subscriber and is not disconnected. Trestle’s Address Validation API ensures that the address exists in the real world and normalizes it into a standard USPS format. 

Trestle Data of Primary Value: Phone and Address validity and normalized input responses

7. Lead Verification and Append

Business Problem: For some businesses, lead validation suffices, others want to verify that the lead is accurate and that the person is saying who they say they are. This is also to avoid lead/affiliate fraud. This includes verifying the number provided actually belongs to the person who they claim to be on the lead form and that this person actually lives at the address provided. 

On top of that, businesses want additional information, such as demographic data or alternate channels to reach the lead. At the end of the day, the goal is to know and enhance the ‘contactability’ with the lead.

Solution: Trestle’s phone data provides that verification, confirming that the name provided on the lead form matches the subscriber name on the record. In addition, appended information, such as demographic data, additional addresses and phone numbers can help businesses improve their contactability and, thus, conversions and business efficiency. 

Trestle Data of Primary Value: Phone Owner Name and Address, Alternate Phones

8. Lead Contactability

Business Problem: As described above, lead buyers and sellers are both looking to understand and enhance the lead contactability as that increases the value of the lead, improves the conversions, and also helps businesses cater to the customers who are most in need of their solution, rather than dealing with junk/spam leads. 

Solution: Trestle’s data signals, such as line type (E.g., non-fixed VoIP phones like Twilio or Skype/Google voice) and is_active flag, can immediately help weed out junk/spam leads. Owner name match and address match with Trestle’s data can confirm that there is a high chance to reach this lead and thus can be prioritized higher, improving conversions and optimizing the costs. 

Trestle Data of Primary Value: Phone metadata, such as Line type, is_active, owner name and location, demographic data

9. Lead Attribution

Business Problem: In an online-offline model, there are a lot of scenarios where a business provides a lead to another business but cannot easily track if the lead is converted. For example, a real estate marketplace provides a lead to a real estate agent. However, the agent doesn’t report back if the lead bought a house and the marketplace that provided the lead cannot get attribution to the commission made by the agent. 

Solution: The real estate marketplace can run all the leads it has gotten in the last 30/60/90 days through Trestle and see if the lead’s current address has changed. If so, that is a great indicator that the sale might have happened, and the business can investigate further to ensure the sales attribution takes place appropriately.

Trestle Data of Primary Value: Phone Owner Current Address and Historical Addresses

10. Identity Resolution and Database Cleansing

Business Problem: With an omni-channel approach, we constantly see businesses struggle with a lot of duplicate customer profiles in their database, resulting in an incorrect understanding of the target customer and, of course, a lot of wasted time and resources in reaching the same customer multiple times. 

Solution: Identity APIs, especially Reverse Phone APIs, can be of value. A customer having two profiles, one based on the phone number and another based on the address in the database collected via different means, can now be merged by running the phone number through the Reverse Phone API and checking if any other customer profile has the same address.

Trestle Data of Primary Value: Phone Owner Name and Address

These are some of the use cases where we see our customers using our Identity APIs, specifically our Phone APIs. Any use case that we are missing? Would love to know more about how we can help. Ping me at kshah [at] trestleiq [dot] com. If your business is looking to solve any of the above problems, you can start with a free API trial right away.