Article summary
Audit a mixed Madagascar WhatsApp list by separating local customers, travellers and export enquiries before interpreting +261 formatting or full-format results.
A spreadsheet labelled “Madagascar customers” may contain local consumers, hotel guests, travel contacts, exporters, overseas buyers and rows whose origin is no longer known. Those groups do not share one country code, one freshness window or one permission context. Prepending +261 to the whole column and reporting a single hit rate produces a tidy but misleading result.
This worked audit uses masked examples to show how to separate provenance before a WhatsApp Full-Format check and how to interpret the export by business context. The examples are structural illustrations, not complete test phones.
Assign a source type before assigning a country
Begin with business provenance:
- local-customer — submitted through a Madagascar form, store or event and may use national dialling notation.
- travel-guest — created during a hotel, tour or transport interaction; the phone may belong to any country and the contact window may be short.
- export-enquiry — associated with cross-border trade; the person’s location, company location and phone country can all differ.
- legacy-unknown — a phone remains, but the acquisition page, date or permission record cannot be recovered.
These categories come from operational records, not an avatar or prefix. They determine whether national notation can be transformed, whether a purpose is still active, and which cohorts may sensibly be compared.
Read +261 with the ARTEC numbering plan
Madagascar’s communications regulator ARTEC describes a nine-digit national structure, AB ZP QMCDU, in its national numbering plan. AB is a two-digit operator code, while +261 is the international country code for Madagascar’s telecommunications networks.
The regulator groups 20–29 with fixed networks and 30–39 with mobile networks, and lists resources including Telma Mobile 34 and 38, Orange Madagascar 32, and Airtel Madagascar 33. National mobile notation may begin with a trunk zero followed by the operator code and seven subscriber digits. For an international candidate, remove the trunk zero and add +261—but only when provenance and length support that transformation.
A six-row masked audit
| phone_raw | source_type | Initial reading | Disposition |
|---|---|---|---|
| 034 ** *** ** | local-customer | Candidate national mobile notation | Propose +261 34 and log the transformation |
| +261 32 ** *** ** | export-enquiry | Explicit +261 candidate | Validate against current resources, then mark ready |
| +33 6 ** ** ** ** | travel-guest | French phone, not a +261 conversion | Preserve its explicit country code |
| 033 ** *** | local-customer | Possibly truncated | Send to review-length; never add digits |
| 2613402… | legacy-unknown | May be missing a plus sign, but provenance is absent | Create a candidate only; do not auto-admit |
| 034 ** *** ** | travel-guest | Looks national, but country evidence is weak | Return to the booking form’s country selection |
The third and sixth rows show why context matters. A phone inside a Madagascar business file is not automatically a Madagascar phone. Pattern and provenance must agree.
Full Format should be selected, not assumed
A local event list that only needs WhatsApp registration status is better matched to WS Registration. A hotel use case may justify activity data only during a defined service window. An export team may need activity, avatar, business-account and mapped-phone observations together, which can support a WS Full Format task.
| Business question | Better-matched task | Inference to avoid |
|---|---|---|
| Is the phone registered on WhatsApp? | WS Registration | Registration does not prove purchase intent |
| What activity was observed recently? | WS Activity | Inactivity is not an opt-out |
| Was profile media visible? | WS Profile Picture | An avatar does not reveal citizenship or ability to pay |
| Does an approved review need several field families? | WS Full Format | A wide table is not a complete identity file |
A wider task is not inherently a more accurate answer. Unnecessary fields create interpretation, access and retention obligations—especially when a traveller supplied a phone only for a booking or service update.
Read the Excel export through provenance
The AppShai WS Full Format task can return phone, activity time, active days, gender, age, avatar, skin tone, avatar type, business status and mapped WhatsApp phone. After export, rejoin the workbook to source_type before calculating any overall rate.
For local customers, review whether national notation was transformed consistently and whether activity falls inside the decision window. For travel guests, preserve the real phone country and ask whether the service purpose has ended. For export enquiries, examine the company-contact relationship, business-account observation and mapping collisions. A legacy-unknown row does not gain a new lawful or ethical use merely because more fields were returned.
Gender, age, skin tone and avatar do not determine whether somebody is Malagasy, a traveller or a buyer. Nor do they establish language, ethnicity, income or purchasing power. Language comes from an expressed choice; commercial evidence comes from enquiries, orders and human conversation.
Use three scorecards instead of one list-quality score
The phone scorecard reports raw rows, explicit international values, explainable transformations, length exceptions and country conflicts. The task scorecard reports completed checks, task errors, unknown fields and check time. The business scorecard reports how many rows in each source still have a current purpose, need human confirmation or should no longer be used.
Do not collapse those scorecards. A travel cohort may have a high registration rate after the service purpose has expired. A local cohort may contain formatting exceptions that point to a poor form design, not poor customers. One number cannot express both facts.
Give travel contacts their own lifecycle
Travel phones are often collected for a booking confirmation, transfer, check-in or itinerary change. Store service_start, service_end and contact_purpose, then decide what remains valid when the trip ends. Continued WhatsApp registration does not extend the original service purpose.
A returning guest can receive a new contact context from a new booking rather than being ranked forever by old activity. If a hotel or tour company wants marketing permission, use a clear subscription and opt-out record; do not infer interest from avatar, activity or nationality.
Separate the person, company and market in export enquiries
A +261 phone may belong to a Madagascar exporter or to a representative working abroad. A company located in Madagascar may instead supply a +33 or another international contact. CRM should therefore separate contact_phone_country, company_country and target_market rather than forcing all three meanings into one country field.
Full-format output updates the phone and account-observation layer only. Company registration, export market and commercial relationship still come from corporate records, the enquiry and human confirmation. A changed phone then cannot silently rewrite market attribution.
Improve the next list at collection time
Local forms should require an explicit country selection and store the phone as text. Travel workflows should record when the service or permission window ends. Export enquiries should separate company, contact and phone. Partner sources should supply acquisition date and permitted purpose.
A Madagascar WhatsApp Full-Format check is valuable when it gives each business context the answer it actually needs. Separate provenance, normalize the phone, and then select the task. Reversing that order makes a broad export look informative while stripping the data of meaning.
