Getting Switched Toll-Free Troubleshooting Basics

Toll-free troubleshooting is slightly more complex than standard outbound troubleshooting because handling of toll-free numbers can vary by state, LATA, area code, or by area code and the next three digits in the phone number. There are also the dual concerns of who the RespOrg is and who carries the traffic. Finally, problems with toll-free numbers might not initiate from the toll-free number at all, but can be a problem with the regular phone number it rings into, or just a systemic network issue affecting all calls that run through the point of failure.

Before you begin troubleshooting your toll-free number, it’s important to validate the toll-free number’s basic information.

• The toll-free number or feature: Has it been working in the past? If you are in the process of moving your toll-free number from one carrier to another, or adding a new service, you can have any number of provisioning problems that prevent the service from being activated. Provisioning issues are handled by your carrier’s order-entry department; see Chapter 9.

• The ring-to number: If you ordered the toll-free number to ring to your fax machine rather than the main phone line for your customer service department, that might be why everyone who calls receives an unpleasant squeal in the ear. Check the phone number to which the toll-free number points. If your order is wrong, possibly that is the source of the problem. If nothing else, you need to know the ring-to number of your toll-free number for the testing process.

• The area of coverage: If you ordered only U.S. 48 states coverage and calls are from Alaska and Hawaii fail, the source of your problem lies with the fact that you didn’t request access from those areas. Coverage on toll-free numbers can be delivered in many different levels, and your available options are dependent on what your carrier provides. Some carriers offer many options that include or exclude Canada, Alaska, Hawaii, Guam, U.S. Virgin Islands, and/or Puerto Rico, whereas other carriers give access to all these options by default.

You can troubleshoot any issues, either quality- or completion-related, with the steps in the following sections. If you have quality issues, you need to gather as many call examples as possible, both affected calls and clean calls, so that your carrier can isolate the issue (see “Talking to your staff,” earlier in this chapter). Completion issues are much easier to find, because they have a definite failure point that technicians can duplicate and find.

Step 1: Dialing the number yourself

When a customer calls in to your direct phone number to report that your toll-free number is failing, first make sure you find out the following information from your customer before you hang up the phone:

• The phone number and location from which your customer is calling

• What time the customer’s call failed

• The call treatment

Then try to dial the number yourself. It’s more common for a toll-free number to fail from all locations than from only a specific geographic area, such as a LATA or a state. If your call fails when you dial the toll-free number, all inbound calls are probably failing, regardless of the location of the caller.

If your call to your toll-free number completes, there is always the possibility that the problem is restricted to the area your customer is calling from, which is why you need to know the phone number and location of the caller. You can ask the customer to help you troubleshoot the number, or you can call your toll-free carrier to open a trouble ticket.

You should also ask your customer to place you on hold so you can try to call the toll-free number again. The customer could have dialed the number incorrectly. If the customer can complete the call, there’s a very strong chance that he or she simply misdialed the number the first time. If the call fails again, there’s an equally strong chance that the problem is of a geographical nature. Until you receive additional reports of problems from your customers, or you get feedback from your carrier, you won’t know how large the affected area is.

Write down all of your call examples and call your carrier. When you open your trouble ticket, be sure to write down the date and time, as well as the customer service rep’s name. After the ticket is open, follow up on it every two to four hours until the issue is resolved.

If the call fails when you dial your own toll-free number, the outage might be affecting everyone calling, but at least you have the ability to troubleshoot the issue. In this case, clear off a page in your notebook for test calls and proceed to Step 2.

 Tip  Always try to find someone in an affected area to retest to your toll-free number. Long-standing customers or vendors will generally be more than happy to spend five minutes making test calls. If your toll-free number always completes when you call it, you don’t assume the issue is fixed until you receive a call from the area that was previously blocked.

Step 2: Dialing the ring-to number locally

Calling the ring-to number directly can identify whether the problem is within the toll-free routing portion of the call or is caused by local carrier problems reaching your regular phone line. Figure 12-5 shows the area of your local carrier’s network that we are validating in this step.

 Remember  If you are calling from the same office that receives the toll-free number, you place a local call to validate the ring-to number. Local calls pass through your phone system and your local carrier, so if you can complete this call, you know these two portions of the system are working.

Figure 12-5: Dialing your ring-to number locally.

If the local call to the ring-to number fails in Step 2

If your local call fails, the issue has little to do with the toll-free number. You can’t complete a toll-free call if your local carrier can’t complete their portion of the inbound call. You can’t be positive at this time whether the problem is

• Caused by your local carrier being unable to route calls to your office

• Within your phone system

If you don’t have a phone system, the only possible source of the issue is your local carrier.

In this case, collect all the information about your inbound local call examples, and dial 611 to reach your local carrier to open a trouble ticket. Write down the trouble ticket number, whom you spoke with, the time and date, and then you should follow up periodically until the problem is resolved.

 Warning!  Don’t mention anything about your toll-free number to your local carrier when you open your trouble ticket. If you try to explain that you have a toll-free number that isn’t working and that you have been troubleshooting it, the local carrier will identify the number’s RespOrg and direct you to call your long-distance carrier. Instead, open the trouble ticket on a call example that shows that you can’t receive a local inbound call. That way, the carrier knows the issue exists within its own network. As long as your local carrier isn’t confused by stories of toll-free numbers, the issue will repaired in short order.

If your call completes in Step 2

If your call fails when you dial the toll-free number and completes when you dial the ring-to number, you can rest assured that neither your phone system nor your local carrier are the source of the problem. In order to resolve the problem, move on to Step 3.

Step 3: Dialing the ring-to number through your long-distance carrier

Your next step is to determine whether the issue is legitimately in the toll-free handling of the call, or if it’s simply a larger network issue within your long-distance carrier. In order to truly validate how your long-distance carrier is sending calls to your phone number, you need to have a call placed over the long-distance carrier’s network to your ring-to number. The specific area of the call you’re focusing on in Step 3 is shown in Figure 12-6.

Figure 12-6: Dialing your ring-to number through your long-distance carrier.

 Remember  If your local carrier provides your toll-free number, the carrier has a complementary carrier that provides the long-distance service. In this case, you need to know the 10-10 dial-around code for your long-distance carrier so you can make the test call.

Test calling the ring-to number on your long-distance carrier’s network

Even though calling from one line in your office to another line in the same office is a local call, you can force the call to be routed over your long-distance carrier and back in through your local carrier. If you preface your call with the 10-10 dial-around code of your long-distance carrier, the call will be sent from your local carrier to your long-distance carrier, and then forwarded back to your local carrier to ring to your office. It’s a short loop, but even a short loop can indicate the general health of your long-distance network. If your long-distance carrier is Sprint, dial your phone number like this:

10-10-333 + 1 + area code + your phone number 

 Tip  Use 10-10-288 if your carrier is AT&T; use 10-10-222 is your carrier is MCI.

Understanding inbound routing

 Technical Stuff  The most important piece of information in the world of telecom isn’t the physical location of the phone, but the physical location of the central office that provides your dial tone from the local carrier. Every call you receive is sent to that central office and forwarded to you.

Periodically, your local carrier might decide that it has too many calls running through one central office, so it moves a group of phone numbers to a different central office in the area. The local carrier then updates the national Local Exchange Routing Guide, or LERG database (which I explain in Chapter 3) to inform every telecom company about the change. However, if your long-distance carrier is slow to implement the change, it might continue to send calls to the old central office, causing them to fail.

If your carrier is handling your toll-free calls, those calls will also fail. The repair can take as little as 15 minutes if your carrier can identify the issue, or it can drag on for days. If you are aware of any changes your local carrier has made to your service, you should let your carrier know, because it can reduce your repair time.

If the test call completes in Step 3

If your call to the ring-to number, using your long-distance carrier, completes without any problem, you have validated that at least a portion of the switched network is working. Carriers commonly route toll-free calls differently than direct-dial calls. Regardless, you must accomplish your next level of research with the help of the customer service reps at your long-distance carrier, so skip the next test and jump to Step 5.

If the test call in Step 3 fails

If your call to the ring-to number over your long-distance carrier fails, you might have an issue with your long-distance carrier’s switched network. The good news is that your toll-free number isn’t the source of the problem. The bad news is that your long-distance carrier hasn’t updated the latest LERG database and is routing your calls to the incorrect central office (CO) of your local carrier (if you are having call completion issues) or the carrier is sending the call over a defective route path (if you have quality issues). What you need to determine next is whether any long-distance carrier can complete a phone call to you. To find out, move on to Step 4.

Step 4: Dialing the ring-to number over another carrier

So far, if you’ve been following all the preceding steps, you have isolated the problem with your toll-free number to the path your call is taking through your long-distance carrier to your ring-to number. If your local carrier is servicing your phone number out of a different central office, it’s possible that only your local carrier knows where to find you. Figure 12-7 shows the area of a toll-free call you are isolating by performing the test in Step 4.

Figure 12-7: Dialing your ring-to number over another long-distance carrier.

Use a different long-distance carrier to validate the inbound route path. That is, if you use Sprint, use the dial-around number for AT&T. In this case, the test call would look like this:

10-10-288 + 1 + area code + your number 

 Remember  If the call completes, AT&T charges you for the call, at any per-minute rate it chooses. If the call doesn’t connect, you won’t be charged for the call. If your test call completes, keep the conversation short to prevent being shocked when your invoice arrives.

If the call in Step 4 fails

Try a few other long-distance carriers, such as MCI (10-10-222) and Qwest (10-10-432). If these calls fail, as well, your local carrier has hidden the inbound path to your phone from all long-distance carriers. In this case, take all the call examples for the multiple carriers you have tried and dial 611 to open a trouble ticket with your local carrier. Just as with all trouble tickets, you need to write down the trouble ticket number on the paper alongside your call examples and follow up every few hours.

If the call in Step 4 completes

If the test call to your ring-to number completes over another carrier, your testing is over. This test only changes the long-distance carrier used, and every other variable remains the same. Because the results changed when you changed the long-distance carrier, the problem has to be with that carrier.

 Remember  When speaking to your carrier, open your trouble ticket as an outbound call issue and don’t mention your toll-free number if you can avoid it. Instead of telling the carrier that someone unsuccessfully tried to dial in on your toll-free number, tell the carrier that someone with the same long-distance carrier tried to call you and they failed, so you did a test call that failed. If you begin talking about your toll-free number, the carrier might open the trouble ticket on the toll-free number instead, which will delay everything.

When you open the trouble ticket, be sure to tell the technician that you forced the call from your office to the other phone number in your office by dialing the 10-10 dial-around code. Then, as usual, write down the trouble ticket number, the name of the person you spoke with, and the time you called; also make note of any additional testing that was attempted and changes made to the toll-free number or the network. Then set up a schedule to call back every few hours for updates.

Step 5: Validating the ring-to number and RespOrg

If you end up at this step, you have eliminated all the other steps that can possibly be causing this problem, except for the processes and mechanisms that make toll-free routing unique to outbound calling. You should also log some failed call examples to your toll-free number and some completed call examples to your ring-to number.

After you reach a customer service representative, you need to validate two more pieces of information before you open a trouble ticket:

• Confirm the ring-to number. This number might have been updated or input incorrectly. If your area code is 206 and the ring-to number is going to area code 602, you have found your problem. In about 15 minutes, your carrier can point your toll-free number where it needs to go and it will be working fine.

• Confirm the RespOrg. It’s uncommon for a working number to suddenly be moved from one long-distance carrier to another, but it does happen. If your toll-free number somehow migrated to another carrier by accident, someone at the new carrier might have later realized it didn’t belong to that carrier and blocked it. If the RespOrg isn’t your carrier, you have to begin the process to move it back. Please take two aspirin and go to the section in Chapter 9 about activation issues. Unfortunately, your problem is considered a provisioning issue and not a trouble reporting issue. This means that carriers deal with it with less urgency; the timeline to repair can be 7 to 10 days, as opposed to 15 minutes to 3 hours.

 Tip  This is the one time when screaming might pay off, as long as you are screaming at people who can actually help you, and that they are people you will never speak to again. I am mainly talking about the conversation you will have with the carrier that somehow is now in RespOrg control of your toll-free number. If you add emotional urgency to your discussion with the representative you speak to, he or she might not hide behind the normal 7- to 10-day time frame for migrations. Before you have this emotionally charged conversation, however, chat with your carrier first to make sure it wasn’t the carrier’s fault for letting go of the number. Also, at this time, you might choose to NASC your toll-free number back if the carriers involved are moving slower than you require (see Chapter 9).

If the ring-to number and the RespOrg match up fine, proceed with the trouble ticket. Make note of the trouble ticket number, the person you spoke with, the time and date you chatted (in case the problem takes more than one day to repair), and some brief notes that you have checked RespOrg, and the ring-to-number. Then, set your alarm clock to ring every two or three hours so that you can follow up and keep the ticket moving forward.