How are customer duplicates avoided?

How are customer duplicates avoided?

To make managing your customer profiles more efficient and prevent duplicate entries, we have improved the process for identifying existing customers. Below is an overview of the new duplicate prevention features and the automatic merging of customer profiles.

What’s new?

While creating a new customer profile in the calendar directly, in the customer database or appointment application, we always check the email address and mobile phone number.

When creating a new customer profile, the system now displays a banner at the top of the screen alerting you that a customer with the same contact information already exists.

Automatic Merging

Automatic merging is activated when identical contact details are used for different customer profiles and one of these customers makes an online booking with the same details. This feature ensures efficient and duplicate-free customer management.

How does it work?

• Booking Widget: While a customer schedules an appointment via the booking widget, we always check the email address and mobile phone number.

• • If the email address and/or phone number already exist, the existing customer profile is updated.
  • If the email address and/or phone number do not exist, a new customer profile is created.
• If multiple customer profiles already exist, we always update the profile that was created first.
• If this email address or phone number already exists, we overwrite the existing information in the customer profile with the new details.
• Only the fields queried during the booking process are overwritten.

Customer Attribute: Mobile Phone

• The phone number is a customer attribute that can be added as "optional" or "mandatory" during the booking.
• By default, this attribute is set to "mandatory."

Creating new customers directly in the Shore Calendar

When an appointment is created in the calendar and a new customer profile is created, the same process occurs.

• You will receive a notification about the detected duplicate.

When a customer profile is created directly in the customer file, no merging process takes place.

• You will receive a notification that the email address already exists and a link to the existing customer profile.

Example Scenarios

Case 1: An Existing Customer Profile Example 1: Same Email

• Existing Profile: Email: a@a.com, Phone: 123
• New Information: Email: a@a.com, Phone: 1234
• Result: Phone number is updated.

Example 2: Same Mobile Phone

• Existing Profile: Email: ab@a.com, Phone: 123
• New Information: Email: a@a.com, Phone: 123
• Result: Email address is updated.

Example 3: Same Email & Mobile Phone

• Existing Profile: Email: a@a.com, Phone: 123
• New Information: Email: a@a.com, Phone: 123
• Result: Profile is updated.

Example 4: Different Email & Mobile Phone

• Existing Profile: Email: ab@a.com, Phone: 123
• New Information: Email: yyy@a.com, Phone: 198
• Result: No update.

Case 2: Multiple Existing Customer Profiles Example: Two Profiles Already Exist:

• Customer A: Email: a@a.com, Phone: 123
• Customer B: Email: xx@a.com, Phone: 123
• New Information Added: Customer C: Email: xx@a.com, Phone: 123
• Current Behavior: The first created profile (Customer A) is overwritten, the second profile (Customer B) remains unchanged.

This article provides a comprehensive overview of the improved processes for avoiding customer duplicates and the automatic merging of customer profiles. If you have any further questions, we are happy to assist you.