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List Watch: Keep It Clean
By Paul Miller, Senior News Editor, “Catalog Age”
This article contains material from Jim Wheaton, a
Principal at Wheaton Group. This material has been underlined
for quick reference.
Reprinted with permission from the April 1, 2001 issue of Catalog
Age, http://catalogagemag.com/ar/marketing_list_watch_keep/index.htm.
The phrase “an ounce of prevention is the best medication”
most certainly applies to list hygiene. After all, if you
enter in the names and addresses of customers correctly the first
time, you eliminate the potential for mistakes and duplicate records.
But “many catalog order reps can be sloppy in taking
information down, and that causes problems,” says database
marketing consultant Jim Wheaton, principal for Chapel Hill, NC-based
Wheaton Consulting Group. So how do you get your telephone
service reps (TSRs) to enter the customer information correctly?
Try these steps:
- Train your TSRs properly. It helps if you hire intelligent,
articulate reps with excellent typing skills, but you can teach
workers to improve their data entry. For one, have TSRs
read back key information and spell out names, streets, and cities.
You might also consider using a telephone operator alphabet, such
as “A as in apple, B as in boy,” although this can
be time-consuming, says Valley Stream, NY-based telemarketing
consultant Liz Kislik.
- Invest in smart software. List deduping software isn't
new, but mailers can now buy programs that red-flag duplicate
names or incorrect addresses upon entry, Wheaton says. This
alerts TSRs that a problem exists and enables them to correct
it right away. Many software vendors, including Trillium/Harte-Hanks,
Group 1 Software, and First Logic, market such products; Trillium,
for one, has also introduced an online version that alerts Web
shoppers of their typing errors.
- Develop or modify your own software. Some catalogers,
such as $254 million food mailer Omaha Steaks, have developed
proprietary software programs to flag bad addresses. “When
new orders come into our system, the software looks for dupes
and points them out to our order-takers,” says Ron Eike,
Omaha's director of operations. “We look at them to
ascertain if they're really dupes or two different people shipping
to the same person.”
- Use technology to detect human error. If you have deduping
software, you can use it to tabulate how many mistakes each TSR
is responsible for, Wheaton says, and use that data to train or
motivate them. If the reps know that the software can detect
their mistakes “and that it will affect their compensation,”
he adds, they may be inspired to clean up their act, so to speak.
Jim Wheaton is a Principal at Wheaton Group, and can
be reached at 919-969-8859 or jim.wheaton@wheatongroup.com.
The firm specializes in direct marketing consulting and data mining,
data quality assessment and assurance, and the delivery of cost-effective
data warehouses and marts. Jim is also a Co-Founder
of Data University www.datauniversity.org.
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