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Duplicate Customers in your SEOM customer
database can be costly and embarrassing.
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Business Intelligence and data mining reports
may not return accurate results when orders and other
important customer info is spread across multiple customer
records.
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These dupes may prevent you from identifying
opportunities to develop repeat business and
up-sell/cross-sell qualified customers costing you hard
earned business.
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Duplicate customers can also be a source of
embarrassment when customers receive multiple solicitations
for the same marketing campaigns. No one likes to get
spam and sending multiple solicitations to the same customer
is a sure way to have your emails considered spam and cause
customers to take their business elsewhere.
It's easy and does not take long to get duplicate
customers in your SEOM database. There are several reasons
why this may occur. The most prevalent reason is a change
to customer data since the last order. These changes could be
something as simple as abbreviating or misspelling words, format
changes, to new phone numbers, E-mail address, etc.
Data changes since the last customer order will
likely cause a new customer recorded to be added to your SEOM
customer database along with a new Customer ID. Once this
occurs, there will be a disconnect between customer records and
each will be treated as different customers.
The Merge and Purge Utility is designed to help
you identify duplicate customers. You can compare customer
data side by side to determine if in fact the customers are
duplicates so you can either merge or purge them from your
database. If they are not duplicate customers then you can
just ignore it.
How are Dupes and Dupe Sets
Determined?
There are a variety of ways to
determine if customers records are potentially duplicate
entries. Some methods are more complicated than others,
but we choose to use a rather loose set of criteria making it
easier to find the most customer dupe sets possible. We
use the customer full name and state as the match key.
These 2 data elements are least likely to change and least
likely to have misspellings then other customer data fields like
email, phone, address, etc.
The downside in using a loose set of criteria for
matching customer records is a higher number of false matches.
It's likely using you will find dupe sets which are not the same
customer. You can ignore these and move on to other dupe
sets. In the grander scheme of things, it's better of have
false positives than to miss dupe sets because the match key
criteria is too restrictive.
Working with Customer Dupe
Sets?
Using the Merge and Purge Customer
Dupes utility is pretty easy and straight forward. When at
the main screen, select any one of the alpha filters at the
bottom. Be care about selecting the all button since it
will return every single dupe set in your customer database.
For those with a few hundred, it's probably ok.
For those with thousands then you may have a long wait.
Try different alpha filters see how many dupe sets are returned
to get an idea before you click on the all alpha filter.
Once the dupe sets are loaded, you are ready to
begin de-duping your customer database. Once you select
any dupe set listed, the matching customer records will be
listed below the dupe set. Most of the information your
need to determine match will be listed along with the customer.
If you need to compare more customer info and customer orders,
select "View Details" located to the left of the utility in the
Task section of the task bar. You can also double click on
the main window and the customer details page will appear.
The customer details page arranges each customer
record side by side for easy comparison. The orders tab
will list all orders from all potential matches so you can view
the order history to help determine if they should be merged.
The customer information is fully editable so you can copy data
from customer record to customer record.
If you use custom customer fields in SEOM, you
will find those listed in the custom fields category.
Purging Customers
Purging a customer is limited and used for
the sole purpose of literally deleting a customer from your
customer database. Purging can only be used with customers
who have no associated orders. SEOM does provide the
ability to transfers orders from one customer to another, which
can leave some customer records without any orders. These
types of customers are perfect candidates for purging.
Merging
Customer Dupe Sets
Merging customers dupe sets is
straightforward and easy to accomplish. Once you've
determined which customer record to keep, select the customer
and right mouse click on the customer record and select "Merge
Dupes" from the popup menu, select "Merge Dupes" from the
taskbar, or you can use your keyboard and press Ctrl + M
simultaneously. The "Merge Duplicates" screen similar to
the one displayed to the right should appear.
The target is the customer record you wish to
keep. The customer info for the target is displayed on
screen for you to review. In the section titled "Select
which customer(s) to merge with the target", select one or more
customers to merge.
If 2 or more customer records are available to
merge with the target, choose which customers to merge.
You can select as many or as few as you like; however, at least
1 must be selected in order to complete the merge process.
Once you've selected the customer records to
merge, click on the merge button to merge the selected customer
records with the target. If you decide not to complete the
merge process, press cancel to quit without merging any customer
records.
Merging customer records is a
permanent action and cannot be undone. Once the merge has
completed, you cannot go back. Be sure you are satisfied
with your selections before you continue with the merge.
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