DQ-BE: Dear Valued Customer
Jim Harris in Blogs, Books, Data Quality tagged DQ-BE, Humor, Master Data Management, Philosophy Tuesday, February 8, 2011 at 3:00PM Data Quality By Example (DQ-BE) is an OCDQ regular segment that provides examples of data quality key concepts.
The term “valued customer” is bandied about quite frequently and is often at the heart of enterprise data management initiatives such as Customer Data Integration (CDI), 360° Customer View, and Customer Master Data Management (MDM).
The role of data quality in these initiatives is an important, but sometimes mistakenly overlooked, consideration.
For example, the Service Contract Renewal Notice (shown above) I recently received exemplifies the impact of poor data quality on Customer Relationship Management (CRM) since one of my service providers wants me—as a valued customer—to purchase a new service contract for one of my laptop computers.
Let’s give them props for generating a 100% accurate residential postal address, since how could I even consider renewing my service contract if I don’t receive the renewal notice in the mail? Let’s also acknowledge my Customer ID is also 100% accurate, since that is the “unique identifier” under which I have purchased all of my products and services from this company.
However, the biggest data quality mistake is that the name of their “Valued Customer” is not INDEPENDENT CONSULTANT. (And they get bonus negative points for writing it in ALL CAPS).
The moral of the story is that if you truly value your customers, then you should truly value your customer data quality.
At the very least—get your customer’s name right.
Related Posts
Identifying Duplicate Customers
Adventures in Data Profiling (Part 7) – Customer Name
The Quest for the Golden Copy (Part 3) – Defining “Customer”
‘Tis the Season for Data Quality
DQ-IRL (Data Quality in Real Life)
Reader Comments (2)
Jim
Your experience reminds me of the fun I've had with my mobile phone company who often change my gender or include me in business campaign mailings (even though my phone is still on a Consumer contract).
Almost 2 years ago I wrote about it: Golden Databases – a slight return
My wife gets post from our satellite TV company which has her firstname spelled (and I use this word loosely) phonetically (Sh-nade, instead of Sinead). Which would be OK if we hadn't actually filled out a paper based form to get the contract and if we hadn't updated their error a few times via their web portal.
I suppose it could be worse . . . I saw a data quality tool once correct my wife's name to "Sin Aid".
Elton John wrote a song for the Lion King inspired almost entirely by his experiences with shoddy data quality in direct mail. Nobody believes me when I tell them that "Can you feel the love tonight" is actually a sarcastic kiss off to his long distance telecommunications service provider.
I love your "bonus negative points" comment! I do that with companies that misspell my (granted, unusual) name, especially when I've carefully spelled it for them over the phone.
My favorites over the years? A cell phone company once told me "you must have spelled it wrong on the application" and tried to charge me a fee to correct the spelling of my name on their bills. And once, when the customer service rep was struggling with my patient spelling, I said, "It's like Crystal, but with no 'L.'" When I received the bill, it was addressed to "Crystal Noelle."