Channel preferences are unique to everyone. Physical mail, email, text, phone call, messaging apps and social media are all used by organisations to communicate with their customers.

Accurate data is key to organisations that want to maintain contact with their customers or supporters.

As of 2021, 96% of UK adults have a mobile phone they actively use and choose as a channel of communication, the requirement of accurately capturing and maintaining phone numbers has never been more important.

AFD’s phone validation solution helps ensure accurate data by confirming the number of digits and format are correct, then going a step further by confirming the number is live.

Phone verification gives organisations full confidence that they can communicate with their customers. To highlight the cost an incorrect phone number can have, we caught up with a long-term customer of AFD to get their feedback.

Paul Brownlow, Systems Development Manager at South & City College Birmingham states: “The college were concerned about the accuracy of student entered phone numbers and emails. When contacting students for course interviews, open days and other key information, we found multiple instances where the mobile phone numbers provided were wrong, either due to error or intentional misinformation.

Each student studying at the college between 16 and 18 years old effectively provides us with £5,000 per annum of vital funding, whilst students over 18 provide £2,000. Preventing one or two students from slipping through the net, because they would otherwise miss a key communication and fail to enrol, more than covers the cost of email and phone validation from AFD.”