What does ANI provide?

ANI is the telecom feature that provides the phone number of the person placing the incoming call.

What does Salesforce do with ANI data?

Salesforce uses ANI data to search for matching records and display them to the agent before the call is answered.

Why does phone number formatting matter for ANI matching?

ANI matching compares strings, so inconsistent formatting between the incoming ANI and stored phone numbers causes legitimate matches to fail.

Automatic Number Identification (ANI)

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Definition

Automatic Number Identification (ANI) in Salesforce CTI (Computer-Telephony Integration) is the telephony feature that identifies the phone number of an incoming caller. Within Salesforce, ANI data is used to perform screen pops, matching the caller's phone number to existing Contact, Account, or Lead records so the agent sees the caller's information before answering.

Real-World Example

At their company, a support manager at QuickAssist leverages Automatic Number Identification (ANI) to improve response times and customer satisfaction scores. After implementing Automatic Number Identification (ANI), agents have the tools and context they need to resolve issues on the first contact. Average handle time decreases by 20% and CSAT scores climb to an all-time high of 94%.

Why Automatic Number Identification (ANI) Matters

ANI is a telecom feature that provides the phone number of the originating caller on an incoming call, and in Salesforce CTI integrations it's the piece of data that drives screen pops. When a call arrives at a Salesforce-integrated softphone (Open CTI, Service Cloud Voice, or a CTI adapter), the system takes the ANI, searches Salesforce for a Contact, Account, or Lead with a matching phone number, and displays the matched record to the agent before they answer the call.

The quality of ANI-based screen pops depends on two things: clean phone number data in Salesforce (formatting matters; matching '+14155551234' to '(415) 555-1234' requires normalization) and intelligent matching logic for cases where multiple records share a phone number (like a shared company mainline). Well-configured ANI matching saves agents meaningful time on every call and dramatically improves the customer experience because the agent already knows who is calling when the conversation begins.

How Organizations Use Automatic Number Identification (ANI)

•QuickAssist — Relies on ANI matching to pop the right Contact record on every inbound call. Their Knowledge base is 90% accurate, and agents begin conversations with full context about the caller's recent Cases and Account history.
•ShieldGuard Security — Built a custom matching rule that uses ANI to find the Account for a shared company mainline, then presents a list of Contacts at that Account for the agent to pick from. Raw ANI alone wasn't enough because multiple people share the main number.
•CloudNine Solutions — Normalized all phone numbers in their org to E.164 format as part of an ANI-matching project. The normalization dramatically improved match rates from 70% to 95% because caller numbers came in via ANI in E.164 format.