Skip tracing accuracy is not a single number
When a vendor says their service is '90% accurate,' that figure almost always refers to hit rate — the share of records where at least one phone number was returned. That is a coverage metric, not a quality metric. Returning a disconnected landline from four years ago still counts as a hit in most vendor methodologies.
The metrics that actually matter to a dialing or texting campaign are contact rate (what percentage of returned numbers reach a live person) and right-party confirmation rate (what percentage of those live contacts are actually the property owner). Vendors rarely publish either figure because both require downstream outcome data they do not collect.
- Hit rate: a number was returned for the record
- Contact rate: the number connected to a live person
- Right-party rate: the live person confirmed as the owner
- Match rate: the record could be linked to a known identity at all
- Data freshness: when the underlying source was last updated
Hit rate and contact rate are not the same metric — a vendor can claim 90% hit rate while delivering a contact rate closer to 30%.
