Words by Malka Townshend

Businesses have customers but how well do you really know yours? Who are they, what is going on in their lives, and how does that impact your business?
In 2014, there were 22,045 marriages in Ireland (http://ow.ly/QIbTK). In the same year, there were 29,095 deaths registered (http://ow.ly/QIcSa). The population of Ireland is estimated to be around 6.2 million (http://ow.ly/QIgNl) – but how many of those changed addresses, how many people went overseas and how many people moved to Ireland? With all of these constant changes, how can any business ensure that their customer information is always up to date?

Human error is inevitable

Customer circumstances are constantly changing, and we all need to make sure our records are up to date, whether that is through customers contacting our call centres, writing letters or making changes themselves using ‘online’ forms. But, honest mistakes, such as typing errors, can easily occur; a member of staff might mishear the pronunciation of a name over the telephone; a customer may accidentally press the wrong letter on the keyboard when completing an online form or a customer who has filled out a form may have handwriting which is hard to read – they’ve written an ‘H’ but it looks like an ‘N’.

Added to these challenges, when handling customer calls, one of the common call centre metrics is average call handling time (AHT), resulting in call centres teams being targeted to keep their call handling times to a minimum as well as maintaining a high degree of accuracy to ensure the data remains compliant with regulatory requirements.
These issues can soon add up, and before too long, customer data can be riddled with errors.

The cost of data inaccuracies
Though minor mistakes can seem inconsequential, these small errors result in:

• Customers not able to pass initial identity checks when contacting you because the details on the system are incorrect

• Increased overdue debt due to invoices and letters not containing the correct customer and address information

• Reduced ability to target customers for future sales opportunities and campaigns

• Customer correspondence being printed and posted that never reached the customer

• Sacks of returned mail which need to be processed

• Customer dissatisfaction, increased complaints and customer churn

• Regulatory non compliance

Needless to say, the cost from both a financial and reputational standpoint is vast. The number of outbound calls chasing for payment increases as bills are not received by customers, as does the amount of bad debt write-offs due to non-payment; more staff need to be brought in to manage and handle increased customer complaints; opportunities for marketing, such as the ability to up sell/cross sell are lost – and so it goes on. Soon enough, a snowball effect has taken hold, resulting in thousands – possible millions in annual revenue ceasing its flow into the business.
While everybody is aware of the huge potential in ‘Big Data’, the benefits for getting your data right are equally as important. After all, Big Data is only good if it is accurate.

The Solution
Thankfully, there is an answer.
Sagacity Solutions Limited are experts in completing customer data analysis and leaders in delivering data cleansing capability. We can address all of your data quality issues using our QTOX software, which contains sophisticated logic and matching algorithms to maximise data quality.

We can seamlessly analyse customer data, in any data format, and pinpoint data quality issues as well as cleanse customer data as one-off exercise or on an ongoing, managed service basis. Many of our telecommunications, energy, water and banking clients are already benefitting from these services and realising significant operational benefits. For example, one of our major clients in the UK had 1.7 million incomplete records from a customer base of 3 million. Using QTOX, we were able to cleanse 1.47 million records resulting in significant financial savings. Based on past experience, on a base of 250,000 customers, we expect to deliver savings of between €1 million and €3 million annually for our customers, thanks to QTOX.

How does QTOX work?
QTOX is an intelligent data system which is able to identify errors in your data and automatically fix them. In effect, it acts like a laundry for your data – your data goes into QTOX dirty and crumpled, and comes out clean and tidy.

How? The sophisticated QTOX logic automatically detects errors in key data fields, i.e. names, dates of birth, addresses, contact information – and it actively fills in the blanks, corrects the mistakes, and irons out the creases.

In addition to the internal QTOX data logic, our tool is able to connect seamlessly with multiple client and third party data sources to further enhance our client data sets. We are also delighted to announce that we are currently working with StubbsGazette to look at ways in which we could harness their extensive customer credit reference data too.

For more information about QTOX, please visit our website at sagacitysolutions.co.uk or email us at enquiries@sagacitysolutions.co.uk

COMING SOON: Sagacity Solutions Limited talk about their Revenue Assurance solutions