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Help the Fight Against Hunger
This weekend I
participated in the CROP Walk for Hunger. It was a beautiful day and we
had a great turnout. My wife and I completed the 6 mile walk in about 2
hours. While all the numbers aren't in yet, for the Nashua walk, the
online donations alone total nearly $4,000. So, it was definitely a
great year! If you were one of many who donated, thank you!
If you would still like to contribute, you can make a secure online credit card donation
by visiting
Craig's CROPWalk Personal Page.
Customer Data - Staying Well
by
Craig Bailey, with
input from John Nisbet, Kilcreggan Systems & Software
In our
prior article in the series Customer Data – Are You Neglecting a
Key Corporate Asset, we covered the steps you must take to get your
customer data clean. Now that you have your clean-up underway or
complete, you need to make sure your customer data remains clean on a
go-forward basis.
In addition to what we've covered in prior articles in this series,
maintaining a high-degree of integrity in your customer data involves
two main activities: inspection and prevention.
Inspection
Inspecting or auditing your customer data can take many forms. A very
simple approach would involve having a member of your customer data
quality team perform a periodic (daily, weekly or monthly) review of
all, or a random sampling of, customer records that were recently added
or modified to ensure that data entry standards were adhered to,
duplicate records were not created and that the appropriate customer
hierarchies and relationships were created or maintained.
Be sure to investigate the capabilities of your database system. Some
systems, such as Oracle, provide functionality that enables you to
automatically detect, review and merge duplicate records. These tools
can be very aggressive so you'll want to be sure to adequately test and
configure them so that you'll get the desired outcome. If such a tool is
available to you, you'll want to execute it periodically based upon the
volume of new customer creation and the number of duplicates you
identify during each run.
Prevention
Undoubtedly, during your customer data cleanup and inspection
activities, you'll find patterns of "uncleanliness" that indicate key
opportunities for improvement. To prevent similar issues from recurring,
you'll want to put in place systemic controls. This would involve
putting controls in your business applications which include, but are
not necessarily limited to:
-
Ensuring that ALL customer records have at least one
address line
-
Preventing certain strings from being input to address
lines (e.g. variations of attention, assuming that your system has
fields to capture accounts payable and shipping contacts which print
on appropriate documents)
-
Auto-populating city and state based upon entry of zip
code
-
Calling out to a routine or utility to automatically
perform address standardization at point of data entry
The complexity of a given business environment may mean that multiple
responsibilities are involved in the creation (and subsequent
maintenance) of a customer record. Automated tools that not only enforce
the consistency rules that apply in a particular organization but also
take account of specific communication patterns and 'baton passing'
between departments can be particularly valuable.
The approaches for you to consider will depend on the number of people
who have access to modify (or add to) your customer data, and your
budget.
While the topic of customer data quality may sound mundane, to some, it
is an absolutely crucial issue to every business enterprise. If you
recall, in our
first article in this series, we covered the impact of neglecting
customer data including:
-
Operational inefficiencies
-
Negative customer perception
-
Costs related to sending duplicate materials to the
same entity and returned mail
-
Inability to get an accurate count of the customer
base and perform analysis regarding customer acquisition, retention
and risk without investing significant time to massage the data
Many enterprises expect to link their sales/AR/customer service
operations to an externally integrated CRM system, which can be a
significant investment. This integration, and the associated return on
investment, will be substantially improved if the standards for customer
data quality can be clearly defined and - just as important - readily
enforced.
In closing, if you are fed up with your customer data quality issues
(you know you've got 'em), please don't hesitate to give us a call. We'd
be happy to expand on the strategies we've discussed here and explore
how we might be of assistance to you. |
Contents
+
Help the Fight Against Hunger
+ Customer Data - Staying Well
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More Satisfied Customers
Check out what some
recent customers had to say about their experiences with Customer
Centricity:
Our organization needed to move from a process-centric to a
customer-centric focus. We engaged Craig Bailey and Customer Centricity
to assist us in moving in the right direction while simultaneously
controlling costs and preserving resources. Phase I of the project was
an organization assessment and implementation plan. We are very pleased
with the outcome of Phase I and feel that the results were well worth
the investment.
Much of the success of this project is due to Craig's skill and
approach. The
fact that the staff responded so enthusiastically is a testament to his
ability to make them feel comfortable, ask them the right questions and
to express the intention of improvement rather than criticism.
The true proof of our satisfaction with Craig's services is that we will
be engaging him to oversee our Phase II implementation project. I'm
looking forward to our next steps and to moving forward to customer
centricity!
Kristy Wright
President/CEO
VNA, Western Pennsylvania
Customer Centricity has been instrumental in making the Sophos
customer survey program a reality. From concept to launch, the Customer
Centricity team guided us quickly and expertly through the process.
Their years of customer experience were instrumental in analyzing
critical customer feedback allowing us to take swift and decisive action
in a very short period of time. Our organization highly recommends
Customer Centricity and will continue to leverage their expertise in our
customer-facing programs.
Dick Faulkner
VP Sales & Operations, Americas
Sophos, Inc.
About Customer Centricity, Inc.
We strengthen overall company performance through
better service delivery and management.
We boost efficiencies in front-line customer service and technical support
teams, order processing, fulfillment, field service, logistics and other
key operations functions.
In short, we align the resources of your organization to exceed your
customers' expectations in the most effective and efficient manner
possible.
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