Dear Friends,
Nowadays I am thinking of form of “real contact” verification methods. By “real contact”, I mean phoning, text messaging, forcing customer to act for a phone call or sms, rather than getting a reply to e-mail.
E-mail confirmation and verification is good indeed, but just for validating your further communication channel; not for validating and verifying that you are contacting with a “real” person.
Phone Verification (automatically) calls given number, plays prerecorded script. In the script there is a need to announce a password or pin to access a secure page or complete a transaction. Costs to merchant, your customer pays nothing.
Reverse Phone Verification is a step to make Phone Verification a little more complex; it’s again an automatic call, but password or pin is not announced, rather is gotten on the phone. Your customer need to enter “pin” or “password” on the phone. A callback is fired to your web site. Again costs to the you, your customer does not pay anything.
SMS Verification, is another method of delivery of the pin/password to your end user. You send out an SMS (Text message) to your customer. Well, your customer need to provide some personal mobile number. Usually merhants pays all, but in some cases, customer may be billed by his operator. Delivery may be delayed due to operator, mobile phone coverage, and some other issues. But it’s worldwide, and really cost effective.
In Call In Phone Verification, your customer need to call a local/domestic/toll-free number from the registered phone (number). Your customer either gets a “pin” or “password”, or enters the pin. This will cost to the business, and may also cost to the end user. This method lowers your automatic verification costs. Providing a local phone number, you limit your customer base to be local in a way. The advantage over the SMS Verification is that your customer does not have to provide his mobile number, he may register and call from any phone number.
There are several ways to automatically verify your customers using phone calls or sms. I tried to summarize them, and I think “Call in Phone Verification” is really a good alternative to “SMS Verification” by means of cost, easy of use.
Let me know what you think