Twelve questions to ask before you put your number in somebody's product

Connecting your number to somebody's platform gives them your customer conversations and, if you are careless, control of the number itself. Twelve questions, and the ones about ownership and exit matter most.

Ownership

1. Whose Meta Business Manager will my assets live in? The answer must be yours. See the asset hierarchy.
2. Who is the registered owner of the number? If they supply it, you are renting your customer relationship.
3. If we stop paying, what happens to the number and the history? Get it in writing.

Exit

1. Can I export every conversation, with media? "Yes, contact support" is a slower no.
2. Can I do it myself, today? Try it during the trial rather than during a dispute.
3. What is the notice period, and what happens on the last day?

Data

1. Where is it stored and processed? Countries, not "the cloud".
2. Who at your company can read my conversations, and is it logged? Every vendor has support access; the question is whether it leaves a trail.
3. How long do you keep it after we leave?

Operations

1. What happens when the session ends? On the Web rail this is routine - sessions end - and the question is whether you find out from them or from a customer.
2. How do I know if messages stop sending? A status page is not an alert.
3. Can several people answer at once, with attribution? Ask to see it rather than to hear about it.

Test the answers during the trial, not after

Every answer above is a claim until you have watched it work. Four things to actually do while you can still walk away without moving your number:

1. Run the export. Download it, open it, check the media is in it and that the conversations are readable without their product.
2. Add and remove a second user. Confirm the removal actually takes effect, and that nothing else stops working when it does.
3. Break something on purpose. Unlink the session or revoke the token, and see how you find out. If the answer is "a customer told us", that is the answer in production too.
4. Ask a support question at your busiest hour and time the reply. Their response time is your response time on the day something breaks.

Use a spare number for the trial

Not the one on your shopfront. Connecting your main number to evaluate a product means an evaluation that goes badly is an outage for real customers, and it puts you in the position the ownership questions above are meant to keep you out of - committed before you have the answers.