CSR Requests

Approximately 60% of port-in rejections are caused by mismatches between the service address in the port-in and the service address on file with the losing service provider.

Bandwidth provides an API that allows you to request the Customer Service Record (CSR) associated with a telephone number. The CSR includes the service address that the losing service provider has on file. If the CSR request is successful, you can eliminate address mismatches as a source of rejections for that telephone number.

Before you get too excited, however, there are some limitations you should be aware of. Of all CSR requests made to TRAM (Bandwidth’s CSR vendor),

• 40% successfully receive an automated CSR response
  • Automated, or real-time, responses are generally very fast because these service providers support an API mechanism to fetch the CSR data.
• 30% require a manual CSR request/response
  • Manual requests can take a couple of days.
  • Of the manual requests, sent only to service providers known to support manual CSRs, approximately 75% are successful.
• 30% fail outright because they are for service providers known to not supply CSR data
  • Service providers are not required to provide CSR data.

The Bandwidth /accounts/{accountId}/csrs API only supports automated, or real-time, CSR requests. This means that you can expect around a 40% success rate for all of your CSR requests.

Bandwidth has an arrangement with our CSR vendor to allow you to access their CSR portal (graphical user interface) to fetch manual CSRs. But because it can take a long time to get the response, manual CSR retrieval is generally not suitable for port-in automation.

Still, there is value in preventing some percentage of the 60% of port-in rejections caused by address mismatch. This guide describes how to use the Bandwidth /csrs API endpoint to access real-time CSR retrieval.

Creating a CSR Order

Before creating the order, collect any information from the end user as described in the request body schema for the POST /accounts/{accountId}/csrs endpoint.

Fetch the CSRs Order Status

CSR orders are processed and updated asynchronously. Processing times can vary. You may poll the status of the CSRs order using GET /accounts/{accountId}/csrs/{orderId}. Or, you can subscribe to order status changes for the CSRs order (or all CSRs orders) as described in the /subscriptions endpoint.

Update a CSRs Order

A PUT /csrs/{orderId} request provides the ability to update a CSR order with additional information requested by the carrier. CSR orders will be in either a PROCESSING or ACTION_REQUIRED status in this scenario.

Canceling a CSRs Order

PUT /csrs/{orderId} can also be used to cancel a CSR order. You must submit a request body with a Status element set to REQUESTED_CANCEL in order for the cancellation process to begin.