I used to think that it was clever to convert a telephone number into a word, using the letters on a telephone keypad. “What a great way to make a phone number easy to remember,” I thought back then.

But technology (actual mobile phone design) has changed all that, and companies that use words, rather than numbers, in their advertisements are showing that they are out-of-touch. And that’s exactly the effect that they are having with their device-dependent customers.

It actually is annoying to have to hunt-and-peck on a telephone when all you have to go on is the “secret word.” That’s why I told my church’s marketing team years ago that it was fine to list the phone number for Joy Lutheran Church as 1-847-362-4JOY, but that they should include the final four numbers in parentheses (1-847-362-4569).

What back then was annoying, today is harmful to potential sales and customer satisfaction. That’s because the correlation between letters and numbers on mobile phone keypads is no longer standard.

Here’s an example. I wanted to call OfficeMax regarding its MaxPerks(r) reward program. The only phone number listed in the MaxPerks brochure is 877.OFFICEMAX. The first thing I noticed is that OFFICEMAX is nine letters, and U.S. telephone numbers (minus the area code) are seven digits. So OfficeMax has tacked on two letters that are meaningless–and confusing–to a customer trying to dial.

The adventure continues, depending on the customer’s mobile phone. Here is a keypad similar to the one on my Nokia phone.

See how each number 0-9 is assigned to just one letter? That is not the way that old-time landline telephone keypads are designed. But more and more people are opting away from landlines, and using their mobile phones exclusively.

So when I tried to dial 1.877.OFFICEMAX, I experienced this:

• The letter O--no corresponding number
• The letter F--the number 4
• The letter I--no corresponding number
• The letter C--no corresponding number
• The letter E--no corresponding number
• The letter M--the number 0
• The letter A--no corresponding number
• The letter X--no corresponding number

Without the actual digits shared in the OfficeMax brochure, I was totally unable to call them. Frustrating! Would that be the case for my Blackberry friends? Oh yes!

However, their numbers 0-9 are assigned to different letters than on my Nokia, so the picture is even more muddled. Imagine a Nokia user trying to share a “decoded” number with his colleague using a Blackberry. They’ll never get the number right!

Ok, since so many creative types adore all things Apple, surely the iPhone designers anticipated this issue and made an app for it. Not really:



In fact, I’d say that iPhone users really have no chance, because their phone’s keypad makes no attempt to correlate numbers with letters. Perhaps it’s for the best, right?

If you work in advertising, marketing or sales, point your communicators to this post. It will save your customers much frustration, and prevent you from having a real “hang-up” with customer satisfaction.

One week ago, I was in the process of getting my two teenagers new mobile phones at our local AT&T store. The knowledgeable and helpful store employee took time to pitch a new service being rolled out by AT&T: FamilyMap.

The service sounded interesting. Here is how FamilyMap is described on AT&T’s website:

Locate your family members with AT&T FamilyMap!

Get peace of mind by being able to conveniently locate a family member’s wireless phone on a map from your mobile phone or PC.

Want to verify that your child arrives home from school each day? Set up a Schedule Check to automatically get location information sent to you via text message or email.

Locate any phone indoors or outdoors on the AT&T Network!

Doesn’t that sound great? Who wouldn’t want to be able to locate a family member in an emergency, or just for “peace of mind”? I decided to sign up for a 30-day trial.

Even after just one week, I can say with confidence that FamilyMap is going to lose customers pretty quickly. The reason? It’s not accurate enough.

How it works
Let’s let the AT&T FamilyMap site explain it:

AT&T FamilyMap uses a number of techniques to determine a phone’s location. AT&T phones that have A-GPS (Assisted GPS) return the most accurate locations when they have a clear line of sight to GPS satellites. For example, the phone is outside or is in a car near a window. For phones where A-GPS is not available, FamilyMap uses cell tower information to provide the most accurate location possible, which is usually within a few hundred yards to a few miles of the phone’s actual location. This includes iPhones, non A-GPS phones, as well as A-GPS phones that are not in a clear line of sight to GPS satellites.

In some situations, AT&T FamilyMap will not be able to locate a phone. The most common reasons are:

• The phone that you are trying to locate is deep inside a building or car.
• The phone is surrounded by tall buildings, hills, or trees.
• The phone is powered off.
• The phone’s battery has run out.
• The phone is not in AT&T network coverage.
• Service on the particular line/number has been terminated or suspended.

Another step to take “for security reasons” is to send a text message to each person you want to track, and they need to accept the text.

For security reasons, phones receive a text message from AT&T FamilyMap when they become locatable. Additionally, locatable phones receive a periodic notification via text message that they can be located. These messages are received about once a month.

When I signed up for the FamilyMap trial, I pictured being able to locate either of my kids when I needed to reach them and didn’t know where they were. But I won’t be able to find them if they are outside of the AT&T coverage area or have their phone turned off.

Heck, as my experience shows, I might not be able to find them even if they are within three feet of me–if I rely on the results of the FamilyMap search.

Just before writing this, I asked FamilyMap to locate me and my daughter. I had confiscated my daughter’s mobile phone until she finished her homework, so it was sitting on the computer desk, about 3 feet from my mobile phone. Here is the result:

You can see that it shows us blocks apart. You can’t tell that it has neither of us located at our home. In fact it has both of us about one mile away from our house!

In several trials, I was only impressed once by the service’s ability to locate someone. It did show exactly where my son was umpiring a baseball game at a local field. But that was the ONLY example of an accurate result.

AT&T, why would you think that sending a parent on a wild goose chase to find a child would bring us “peace of mind”?

I’m going back to the “old school” method of sending a text to my kids and having them tell me where they are. The answer may still be inaccurate, but I won’t be paying $14.99 per month for it!