Force Email and/or Mobile Number Verification

On the Customer Detail screen you may notice a couple of new links that say "Force Email Verification" and "Force Mobile Number Verification."

These should be used with caution.  Allow us to explain the process a bit.

When a customer creates an Online Profile using the "Register Now" button, our system is going to collect their email address along the way.  Once registered our system will send them a welcome email.  At the bottom of that welcome email is a prompt that begins with "One more thing .. " and request that they follow a link back to our system.  The customer doing that is our way of knowing they got the email and will result in a verified email address.

Separately our system now allows a customer to add a mobile number if you're using our Bill Notification Service (BNS).  Similarly our system will send the customer a text message containing a PIN which the customer must enter back into our system in order for us to verify we have the correct phone number.  This results in a verified mobile number.

These tactics are done primarily for our BNS.  Rest assured that a customer is NOT REQUIRED to verify their email address or mobile number in order to make payments.  But if you use our BNS then the customer must first verify in order to opt into bill notifications.  The reason for this is that we do not want a customer with an errant email address typo or simply an invalid email address to opt into bill notifications and never receive those notifications.  That could put you in a compromising situation where the customer never receives bill notifications, and therefore never pays, and goes on to get a late fee or even get their meter locked only to complain about never receiving the notifications.  The verification process cuts down on that liability. 

You may opt to manually force the email address and mobile number to be validated in order to grant access to the bill notifications.

And now for a word of caution:  Remember that if you force an email or mobile number to be verified, and then a customer enrolls in bill notifications, then if that email or mobile number is not actually valid then the customer will not receive the notifications.  You have to be very specific if you are to manually force the verification, only use these features if you know FOR SURE the displayed unverified email and mobile number are in fact valid and you can safely force the verification.

If you have any question please don't hesitate to submit your question.