Update SMS Country Code when Country Field is Updated

Hey Frank and team - Would be so great if this could be fixed soon, I'm surprised to find it's been a problem since the first feature request for this in 2016.

Getting geo-location to automatically set the SMS country code (rather than it being overridden by the contact owner's country code) seems like a no brainer/ expected behaviour.

Support told me that the only option is to add a country field to all our optin forms, which seems like a clunky workaround, which we want to avoid, as more fields = reduced conversions.

To me this seems less like a feature request and more like a fix of a missing link up between geo-locate + SMS.

We add the contact first, then run geo-ip. The reason is that the geo-ip process relies on a lookup, and that can take some time. So rather than delay the form processing, or risk not writing the contact record if there's a failure in the geo-ip database lookup, we write the contact record first. At the time the SMS number is added, there is no country field, even though it is filled in a bit later. The rules above then apply.

We don't like to edit a field that's already filled because geo-ip is somewhat unreliable. Our geo-ip for Santa Barbara returns San Jose as the city, for example, and it's not too unusual to have the same issue with the country code. The best solution right now is to add the Country field to the form so it writes to the contact record, and then the SMS field is formatted.

But, some way to automatically update the SMS field if geo-locate fills in the country would be nice. This FR is to investigate a method that will solve this problem without creating other problems!

Thanks so much for explaining this process Frank, I understand the complexity of it now! That makes a lot of sense that geo-locate fills in after the contact record is created.

Do you know, is there some way I could set up an automation or custom operation to do this, or does it have to be that the user submits the country field at the same time as the SMS field?

Ie. is there a way to copy the SMS field, minus the first three characters (ie +61) and then reenter-it with a new country code based on the country field once geo-locate updates it?

If this were possible, I realise it may cause errors sometimes when geo-locate is wrong, but that would be much better than the many more errors that will come up using only the +61 Australia code for all contacts.

I'll be meeting with Will later this morning and we will discuss if there's a way to update this field automatically based on a later country being added. 

Yes, this is so annoying that even though OP recognizes the country of a contact is recognized and updated into the country, before that happens you will update their phone number prefix code to be US.

This means that any automated SMS campaigns will fail and the contact is then opted out of SMS campaigns even if they opted in during filling in the form.

The option provided by support was to go against all best practices for filling out subscription forms and add an additional field for the contact to complete.

Instead, you should just wait to update the SMS country code until after the country field is updated.

Any update on this? Or a better and more modern way to update the country code when entering the SMS number? Lots of other services have solved this problem.