Today we’re gathering information about constituent telephone numbers and how they are used in your business. Thinking about constituent telephone numbers in your business…
What are some challenges that you have surrounding constituent phones today?
Are there trends you are seeing that could impact phone functionality in the future?
What do you like about telephone functionality in existing Tessitura?
What would you like to see changed/improved about telephone functionality?
Any other thoughts about phones, your business, and Tessitura?
Keep in mind that this may be more than just thinking about the storage and retrieval of telephone numbers. Try to think overall about how your business interacts with people via phone and how you might expect Next Gen to enable this interaction.
Thanks!
Andrew
I don't mean to dilute any of the great stuff in this thread so far on the complexities of telephone numbers, but I do want to draw attention to the fact that telephone numbers are only one example of the more general category of "Media of communication." In fact, for many people, a mobile phone represents not one but two different media of communication - a voice channel and a separate text channel. I know numbers of people who have grown deeply reluctant to speak on a mobile phone and use it almost exclusively as a text exchanger. Some have even descended to a ring of the abyss within which they will only communicate with anyone through Twitter. The not very distant future contains more of this sort of thing.
Because communication technology and use of it is subject to considerable change during the next few decades, I believe thought should be given to a generic view of media of communication. Any constituent could be associated with any number of media of communication. Each constituent would be empowered to record preferences for what kinds of communications he or she wants to receive through which media.
Each medium of communication would be specified as either real time (e.g. telephone call, video conference, knocking on a door) or message based (e.g. postal mail, email, tweet, facebook fan page). I know these categories have started to blur, a phone call may turn into a message leaving opportunity for example; but recording whether a particular medium is primarily for real time or message based communication would still be useful information to many potential applications.
Each medium would have a specified addressing element, several of them potentially as complicated as the whole telephone number format issue being discussed elsewhere in this thread. We've gotten away very easily on email addresses so far. Addresses that include other-than-roman character sets are likely to be issues for Tessitura users during the life of this product.
Each medium would have specified capabilities, for example does the medium convey sound, text, static imagery, video, moving holography?
Each medium would have a specified reach, basically is it a one to one medium like a phone call or is it a one to many medium like a facebook fan page.
Recognizing these specifications, postal address, telephone number, email address, twitter address, and many new media yet to come are each potentially important ways to communicate to constituents. While each one has special characteristics, mostly to do with addressing and capabilities, any constituent should be able to have any number of any of them and be capable of defining what sorts of communications during what time periods he or she wants to receive through which media.
Pete is on to something critical. As Pete points out, today we are using cell phone addresses with two very different means of communication, calls and text/sms.
It all boils down to an address and one or more means of communication via that address. Thinking of it broadly in these terms helps to future-proof the system and ensure we are accommodating all needs.
This even has implications for Search and Lists/Extractions. The ability to search by 'address' -- whether it is a physical, email, twitter, or some other type of address, unifies searching. For lists/extractions, once you determine "who" is on a list, you can then specify the means of communication, and pull any/all "addresses" for that list that are appropriate for that means of communication (and that the customer has indicated should be used for various purposes).