The Cost of Dirty and Duplicate Database Records
"The value of your database is directly proportional to its cleanliness"
Rodney Lake – President of
Precision Data and Microsoft MVP
Dirty data from duplicate customer database records can be costly, risky and
embarrassing in the following ways:
Costly:
- Direct marketing communications are doubled up unnecessarily.
- Valuable sales opportunities could be missed because of incomplete data.
- Product shipments and customer-site based services could be sent to the
wrong address due to an incorrect duplicate record being used.
- Your sales reporting may be inaccurate due to an over-inflated number of
customers.
- Inaccurate sales analysis due to sales being split between multiple
records that represent the same customer, resulting in an undervaluing of
some key customers.
Risky:
- Mistakes could be made based on incomplete customer data, or data that is
spread across multiple duplications of the customer. Such mistakes expose
your organization to litigation and unforeseen financial risks.
- You might accidently market to a contact on a DNCL (Do Not Call List in
the US) or TPS/FPS (Telephone/Fax Preference Service in the UK). This could
happen if you correctly mark a customer or prospect as ‘do not call’ –
without knowing that a duplicate of that same person is not marked and
remains open to calling. You risk fines of $5000 and above for failing to
respect their request to not call.
Embarrassing:
- You may not have a complete picture of the sales and communication history
for a given customer, as it might be spread across different duplicate
records of the same customer.
- Doubled-up marketing communications gives your customers a perception of
sloppiness and unprofessionalism.
- Customers will get frustrated when dealing with your organization if their
history isn’t available because they exist multiple times.