Report of potential duplicate customers in e-automate.
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Overview | Samples | Variables | Alert Functionality | Best Practices & Tips | Related Alerts
Overview
Overview
ID926 compares data between two Customer Records, looking for identical or near-identical data. If it finds two records that are ‘enough alike’ on the initial run, both will be flagged as potential duplicates. If it finds a new record later, only that new record will be flagged. It essentially assigns ‘points’ for each matching field and looks for at least four points total.
**Please note this alert will only notify you ONCE of possible duplicates, unless changes are made to the customer record matching the alert triggers. This alert looks at ALL Customer Records regardless of relationships to each other (i.e., BillTo, Parent/Child).
This alert does not show the identified duplicate(s) because duplicates are a training issue. The effort of tracking down the original should help the user learn not to make the same mistake next time. The initial output does show both the original and any dupes, because at that point it's a clean-up issue.
Run Schedule: Daily
Type of Output: Email
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Sample
Sample
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Variables
Variables
This alert does not have any variables.
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Alert Functionality
Alert Functionality
1. The alert assigns points based on the following criteria:
--Phonetic match of Customer Names: This drives the process overall and is worth two points.
In the above example, the customer named Amys Yoga Studio and Amy's Yoga are similar enough to trigger the alert. The newly created Amy's Yoga would receive two points for a customer name similarity.
--Numerical match of non-blank phone 1: Either identical or one ‘containing’ the other (for instance, 682-555-1212 contains 555-1212) and ignoring any punctuation. This is worth one point.
--Numerical match of phone 2: Identical to above. This is worth one point.
Amy's Yoga does not have a match in the phone 1 field. The Phone 2 field is blank for both records, so that field does not trigger a point for the Amy's Yoga customer. The total points for Amy's Yoga is 2.
In the above example, Amy's Flower and Gifts would be given 1 point based on the phone 1 containing 555-1234, which matches the phone 1 for Amy's Yoga Studio.
--Close edit-distance match of a non-blank e-mail address. This is worth one point.
The email address for Amy's Yoga does match the email listed on Amys Yoga Studio. This will add one point to the total, Amy's Yoga now has three points.
--Matching City & State or matching ZIP code: Each individually is worth one point; if both conditions are met, only one point is given, not two.
The combination of Portland and ME for Amy's Yoga does not match the combination of West Des Moines and IA listed on Amys Yoga Studio, no additional points are awarded to Amy's Yoga.
The zip code for Amy's Yoga is blank, therefore it does not match the zip code of Amys Yoga Studio. No additional points are awarded to Amy's Yoga.
2. After the criteria are checked, only customer records that have four or more points will report on the alert. In our example of the Amy's Yoga customer, this customer would not report on the alert as it only totaled three points.
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Best Practices & Tips
Best Practices & Tips
We discussed having the alert look at street address for more points of similarity, even built out alpha logic to do it, but decided against it for three reasons. The first is technical, the SQL load added by twice-comparing address fields (you have to compare once by stripping out all alpha characters, then again by stripping out all numerics for a phonetic check) is substantial. Second, customer-moved-to-new-address is the #2 reason causing duplicate customer records in our experience (#1 being poorly-trained-agent) so different address does not have as much weight as you might expect. Third was feedback from our beta testers, who indicated that comparing address was not a dealbreaker for them, although they did ask us to display it in the output for a quick mark-1-eyeball check on the initial run.
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Related Alerts
Related Alerts
ID735 - Duplicate Contacts Created
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