Product Update for Phone Lookup APIs: Postal Code Hint
A few months ago, we launched Name Hint, a feature for our phone lookup APIs. The goal was to enhance accuracy by incorporating extra signals for prioritizing top names when multiple names are linked to the phone. Customers have responded very positively to Name Hint, as it improves data accuracy for their applications.
Likewise, customers have requested the utilization of postal code hints to further enhance accuracy. For example, if a phone subscriber has multiple addresses, can the postal code hint help? This is pretty common where someone has a vacation home and thus two current addresses or dual residence across the country, or if our data has not been informed of an address becoming historic due to a move. In such scenarios, a business’s available postal code hint can aid Trestle in prioritizing the correct address to send as part of our phone API responses.
Given this feedback and the logical progression from Name Hint, we are excited to launch the Postal Code Hint feature. Now, customers can pass the postal code hint as part of the Reverse Phone API or Caller Identification API phone query. We will use that to prioritize the addresses that should be ranked at the top within the current address array. So, for this example:
Jon Snow
- Phone: 555-555-1212
- Current Address-1: Full Address, Seattle, 98101, WA
- Current Address-2: Full Address, New York, 11101, NY
- Additional Number: 999-999-2424
- Household People: Ned Stark, Robb Stark, Arya Stark
If the customer has a postal code hint available for 11101, we will rank this address higher even though Trestle’s internal algorithm might have the Seattle address ranked first based on its current set of signals.
So, for Caller Identification API, which returns a single name and address, we will return something as follows:
- https://api.trestleiq.com/3.1/phone?api_key=[insertkey]&phone=5555551212&phone.postal_code_hint=11101
{ Name: Jon Snow
Current Address: New York, 11101, NY }
However, we didn’t stop there. Our thought was, “Can Postal Code Hint be used to prioritize names, similar to the current use of Name Hint when there are multiple names associated with the phone?” For example:
Jon Snow
- Phone: 555-555-1212
- Current Address-1: Full Address, Seattle, 98101, WA
- Current Address-2: Full Address, New York, 11101, NY
- Additional Number: 999-999-2424
- Household People: Ned Stark, Robb Stark, Arya Stark
The North LLC
- Phone: 555-555-1212
- Registered Address: Full Address, Los Angeles, 90001, CA
In this case where a person and business are associated with the same phone, if the customer only has the postal code hint of 98101, Trestle now knows that our customer is looking to know more about that person (and not the business). This is because the person (Jon Snow) has a current address postal code matching the hint provided.
There’s a couple of points that we made during the launch of Name Hint that are also worth noting here. This is not about offloading the accuracy work to our customers. Trestle is focused 100% on that and will continue to iterate there. This is about taking into consideration various verticals and use cases that we serve and optimizing our product/solution to their specific needs.
Also, note that we will not use Name Hint or Postal Code Hint to improve our coverage and associate the name or postal code hint features to the phone in our database. The query parameter is simply to improve our ranking algorithms. As previously mentioned, if there’s no associated name or address with the phone or if the provided postal code hint doesn’t match any of our addresses, we will proceed with our internal ranking algorithms.
If Postal Code Hint interests you, you can find the documentation here. If you have any questions or need any assistance to get this rolled out for your business, please contact us.