GENESYS Clears Up Confusion Over “Wireless ID” Services

Due to some recent product announcements, GENESYS feels compelled to clear up the confusion among survey researchers caused by the naming/branding of some offerings and as to what these new services actually provide. 

GENESYS developed the industry’s first telephone number screening service, GENESYS-ID, over fifteen years ago to aid in the identification of business and non-working numbers in RDD samples.  Over the past five years, the limited effectiveness of this technology has been substantially replaced by GENESYS-IDplus, our significantly more effective attended screening service that identifies nearly twice as many non-productive numbers.  GENESYS is proud of both of these industry-first “ID” applications. 

Recently, so-called “wireless ID” services have been introduced by The Direct Marketing Association (DMA), “sample suppliers”, and others.  These services simply classify telephone numbers as to whether they are in dedicated cellular/mixed-use exchanges or in hundred-series blocks assigned to cellular carriers.  While imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, it can be confusing when renegade “ID” services are introduced into the marketplace. 

Additionally, it is confusing to us why anyone would pay for such a service or even need to: 

• Dedicated and mixed-use wireless exchange identification and/or elimination has been standard in both GENESYS RDD and Listed samples for over 15 years.
• The Telephone Industry data required to accomplish exchange “flagging” has always been readily available to anyone, for a nominal fee.
• Cellular/wireless exchange and block identification, while currently the only method available, does nothing to identify cellular numbers that have been ported from landlines.
• And, GENESYS’ offer to some of our survey research industry associations to make such a wireless ID service available at NO CHARGE TO YOU remains unanswered.

Industry associations have denoted “cellular exchange identification” as a BEST PRACTICE and thus the service has been promoted commercially as the “researchers’ best effort”.  Actually, it’s NO EFFORT – we have, and always will provide this to our clients for free.   

From a researcher’s perspective, we are encouraged that both industry groups and our competition have adopted a practice that we have been following for years.  But, we need to make clear that such fee-for-service offerings are not associated with GENESYS or our line of ID services.  We will continue to offer exchange-type flagging as a free service to our clients. 

We continue to test and evaluate new methods for the reliable identification of ALL cellular/wireless numbers, including ported landlines.  Such a solution will most certainly “raise the bar” of the survey researcher’s “Best Practice”.  If and when such a service is practical, we will make it available so that survey researchers can fully comply with TCPA regulations.