Why Phone Verification Is The Best Option For Verifying Customers' Identity

In order to connect with customers and provide the best marketing and communication available, you need to be able to, well, actually connect. If you have the wrong contact information, this isn’t possible. For some industries this is inconvenient, but for others this could be potentially disastrous. This is even more important when it comes to verifying a customer’s identity. Before discussing or releasing sensitive information, businesses must ensure they’re speaking to the right individual.

Either way, you need to make sure you have the right phone number and that it’s still in use. This is where phone number validation comes in, and why it’s so useful.

What is Phone Verification?

Phone validation and verification APIs look through the contact lists you upload and clean, check, and verify phone numbers. Incorrect and invalid numbers are flagged and removed, so that you only send communication out to customers that will actually be able to receive it.

Besides this, phone number validators can also be used for standardization, compliance, and audience targeting. Thus, this software has many uses beyond its primary purpose.

Benefits of Phone Verification

With the advent of smart technology and the increasing use of wireless communication, it’s now more important than ever to make sure you’re connecting with customers. Phone verification APIs ensure you’re able to do this quickly and easily. Besides offering benefits for identity verification, the best phone verification services also come with their own benefits:

• Boosts deliverability by removing invalid and inactive numbers from your contact list.
• Increases conversion rates by allowing you to better target customers.
• Saves time and money by identifying numbers as landline or wireless.
• Guarantees compliance by restricting communication by time zone and state.
• Ensures contact list standardization by removing dashes, spaces, and parentheses.

With all of these benefits that come with using phone validators, it’s only natural that validation software has become an essential part of marketing and communications strategies, especially for customer identification verification.

Why Phone Verification is the Best Option?

A common method of identity verification is to examine current government-issued identification, such as driver’s licenses, passports, and birth certificates. However, this can be time-consuming and frustrating for customers who value convenience and ease. Others may be nervous taking these documents out of a safe or other secure area, and they could easily take their business elsewhere.

Identity verification using phone validation software fixes both of these issues. Using phone verification to verify customers’ identities also offers these benefits:

• Creates a convenient, seamless customer experience.
• Saves time, money, and resources for organizations.
• Provides the highest levels of risk mitigation.

Another benefit is that phone verification can be used in a number of ways regarding customer identity verification, as we’ll discuss next.

Calling Customers to Verify Identity

Using phone verification to ensure you have the right contact information, you can call customers to electronically confirm information like birthdates, social security numbers, and PINs. Once the information has been confirmed by the customer, businesses can release, discuss, or provide access to sensitive information like financials and medical results.

If your business values customer interaction and building interpersonal relationships, this is the best method to use. Calling customers provides a more individualized experience and creates trust between an individual and an institution, in addition to communicating to customers how valued they are.

Using Phone Numbers to Verify Identity

Once businesses verify a phone number using validation software to ensure it’s correct, they can also use it to independently verify a customer’s identity. Businesses can compare information provided by the customer, including their phone number, against information provided by a consumer reporting agency, private source, public database, etc.

This option is appealing to organizations that value reliability. No identity verification method is 100% foolproof, but using independent and multiple sources to verify identity offers more security than other methods may offer. This also reduces the possibility of human error and is often more expedient.

Allowing Customers to Verify Identity

Another identity verification method is for customers to provide verification information rather than businesses collecting it. Using phone numbers that have been confirmed as correct and valid by a phone verification API, businesses can text, call, or leave a voicemail with instructions to customers on how they can verify their identity, such as directing them to an online portal.

This method is preferable for businesses who want an expedient identity verification process that won’t tie up its own time and resources. This is also more convenient for customers, as they can choose when to verify their identity and can often access the verification software outside of normal business hours.

Combining Identity Verification Methods

Businesses can combine electronic and documentary methods to verify identity, such as cross-checking government-issued documentation with identification information. Customers can provide the documentation using phone numbers that have been verified and validated and businesses can check them against sources like reporting agencies or databases, or vice versa.

For businesses specifically worried about fraud, this is the best option. This method uses several levels of customer identify verification. Customers’ contact information (i.e., their phone number) is validated, the documentation they provide is verified, and both the contact information and the documentation is then checked against another information source.