Customer Data Verification is What Your Company Needs
Customer data is one of the most valuable assets every business has. Its quality dictates the company’s ability to develop, grow, and succeed. Unfortunately, without proper data maintenance, decision-makers don’t have access to accurate data.
Poor data quality costs companies over $15 million a year. Besides hindering the decision-making process, it affects customer relationships, brand reputation, retention, and much more.
By implementing customer data verification practices, businesses cleanse their databases and extract more value from the information they collect.
Let’s take a closer look at customer data verification and the way it can work for you.
What Is Customer Data Verification?
Customer data verification is the process of ensuring the accuracy, consistency, and reliability of the data related to your customers. It involves verifying the information to eliminate errors, inconsistencies, and outdated records. By implementing robust data validation solutions, businesses can enhance the quality of their data and improve overall operational efficiency.
In today’s data-driven world, customer data plays a major role in:
- Making strategic business decisions
- Creating personalized marketing campaigns
- Delivering exceptional customer experiences
However, relying on inaccurate data can have detrimental effects on your business. It can lead to wasted resources, ineffective marketing efforts, poor customer service, and missed business opportunities.
To battle data inaccuracies, businesses choose to implement various data verification solutions. They enable companies to make informed decisions based on reliable customer insights.
Customer data verification improves marketing campaigns by ensuring targeted and personalized communications. It also enhances customer service efforts and streamlines branding tactics.
Customer Data Validation Techniques
Solutions that you can implement to improve customer data quality can take advantage of various approaches. Some of these techniques include:
Validation
Validation is the most important step in customer data verification. It involves thoroughly checking the accuracy and consistency of customer data. This process includes verifying that the data:
- Has the correct format
- Adheres to proper syntax
- Maintains logical integrity
By validating your data, you make sure that it is complete, standardized, and accurate. An example of a data validation solution is an email validation tool. This program checks email addresses for inaccuracies, typos, expired domains, and spam traps. By running an email validator regularly, a company can streamline its email marketing campaigns, avoid high bounce rates, and maintain successful customer relationships.
Deduplication
Deduplication is the process of identifying and eliminating duplicate records within a customer database. This step is needed to create an accurate view of each customer.
The presence of duplicate records usually leads to confusion and inaccurate analysis. By identifying and merging these records, businesses can ensure that customer information is consistent. This helps streamline operations, enhances data integrity, and provides a holistic view of customer interactions with the company.
Verification
Verification involves cross-referencing customer information against reliable external sources to confirm its validity. This process typically includes checking the accuracy of customer information. For example, you could be using a USPS database to check that the customer’s address exists.
By verifying customer data (phone numbers, email addresses, postal addresses, demographics, etc.), businesses can ensure that the information is up-to-date and associated with legitimate customers. This can help you maintain accurate contact information, reduce returned mail, and enhance customer communication.
Cleansing
Cleansing is the process of removing irrelevant, incomplete, or outdated customer data from a database. This step helps maintain a reliable data repository.
The cleansing process involves:
- Correcting errors
- Updating missing information
- Eliminating irrelevant or non-compliant data
For instance, it may involve removing customers who have unsubscribed or updating contact details that have changed. By cleansing the data, businesses can improve the efficiency of marketing campaigns and ensure compliance with data protection regulations.
Benefits of Customer Data Validation
Since customer data plays a major role in business growth and development, keeping it in top shape is always on the agenda. The key benefits of verifying all customer-related information before using it for marketing and sales purposes include:
Enhanced Decision-Making
Accurate and reliable customer data serves as a solid foundation for making informed business decisions. By verifying the accuracy and consistency of this data, you can make sure that the insights derived from the data are trustworthy.
This enables organizations to make data-driven decisions regarding marketing strategies, product development, customer segmentation, and more. Informed decision-making allows you to reduce risks and enjoy higher profitability.
Personalized Marketing Campaigns
Customer data verification allows businesses to have a deep understanding of their customers’ preferences. By ensuring the accuracy of customer records, companies can segment their customer base effectively and deliver personalized marketing campaigns.
Almost 100% of marketers agree that personalization advances customer relationships. This, in turn, increases the likelihood of conversions, brand loyalty, and retention.
Improved Customer Service
Customer data verification helps maintain accurate and up-to-date customer information. This allows you to provide exceptional customer service. With verified data, companies can have a comprehensive view of each customer, including their purchase history, preferences, and contact details.
This allows you to arrange:
- More personalized customer service interactions
- Efficient resolutions of multiple issues
- Tailored recommendations
By improving customer services, you are increasing customer satisfaction, boosting customer retention, and driving brand ambassadorship.
Cost Savings
Inaccurate customer data can lead to wasted resources and unnecessary expenses. By implementing data verification services and solutions, you can identify and eliminate duplicate records, reducing data redundancy and associated costs.
Moreover, accurate information reduces the chances of failed marketing campaigns, returned mail, and ineffective communication. All of this can help you avoid unexpected expenses and achieve the desired marketing return on investment (ROI).
Compliance with Data Protection Regulations
With the increasing focus on data privacy and protection, businesses must comply with regulations such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) or the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA).
Customer verification helps ensure that the data collected and stored by your company is accurate, relevant, and compliant. By verifying customer data, you can identify and rectify non-compliance, thus reducing the risk of legal penalties and reputational damage.
Streamlined Operations
When you verify customer data, you streamline operations by maintaining a clean and reliable database. By removing irrelevant or erroneous data, you can reduce clutter and improve data integrity.
This can lead to more efficient data analysis, faster response times, and streamlined processes across departments. With verified customer data, your team can optimize its operations and focus on delivering value to the customers.
How to Implement Customer Data Verification Practices in Your Company
By following a systematic approach, you can establish robust data verification processes that will yield reliable customer information. Here are some steps to help you implement data verification practices:
Assess Current Data Quality
Begin by evaluating the quality of your existing customer data. Identify any common issues such as duplicates, incomplete information, or outdated records. This assessment will serve as a baseline for improvement and help you prioritize areas that require immediate attention.
Define Data Verification Standards
Establish clear standards and guidelines for data verification. Define the criteria and rules that customer data must adhere to, such as correct formats, valid syntax, and logical integrity. These standards can serve as a reference point for ensuring consistent and accurate data across your systems.
Select Data Verification Tools
Explore data verification services and solutions that align with your company’s needs and budget. Look for tools that offer features such as:
- Validation
- Deduplication
- Verification against external sources
- Data cleansing capabilities
For each tool, evaluate its ease of use, scalability, and integration capabilities with your existing systems.
Implement Data Verification Processes
Develop standardized processes for data verification and integrate them into your existing workflows. Determine when and how data verification should be performed, such as during data entry, periodic audits, or before major campaigns.
Establish Data Governance Policies
Create data governance policies that outline the responsibilities and roles for managing customer data. Then you would need to designate employees or teams responsible for data verification.
Make sure to establish protocols for data access, updates, and security to maintain data integrity. Otherwise, you could face compliance issues.
Monitor the Verification Process
Regularly monitor the effectiveness of your data verification practices. Besides checking the accuracy of your data, you can also monitor the effect it has on your marketing and sales campaigns. For example, if you successfully implement email validation solutions and clean your outdated email list, you could notice email marketing campaign improvements almost immediately.
Educate and Train Employees
Educate your employees on the importance of data verification. Give them the time and information needed to master the validation tools. Emphasize the significance of accurate data and the impact it has on the company’s success.
To make sure that customer data issues don’t hinder your operations, consider fostering a culture of data quality.
Improving Customer Data Quality
Customer data quality is the driving force behind successful decision-making. Without a data verification process, it’s easy to make serious mistakes by leveraging duplicate, inaccurate, or inconsistent information.
By using the right tools and implementing customer verification processes in your company’s operations, you can reap significant clean data benefits and avoid compliance issues.
