Humans adapting to computers – instead of the other way around
Recently, my wife and I were shopping for eye glasses at a popular national retailer. After finding frames she liked, we walked up to the sales counter to make our purchase.
“Have you purchased from us before?” the sales clerk asked my wife. In order words, he was asking if she was already a customer that he should be able to find in their customer database.
“Yes,” my wife responded, “in fact, I bought my current glasses in this very store last year.”
“Excellent,” the sales clerk said as he prepared to enter her information into the computer, “we really appreciate that you have returned to purchase from us again, what’s your last name?”
“Damianakis.”
“Uh-huh. Could I see your drivers license?”
No, my wife wasn’t getting carded before she could buy a pair of glasses. The sales clerk wanted to make sure he typed in our last name exactly as it is spelled.
“Hmmm,” the sales clerk muttered while staring at the computer screen, “I can’t seem to find your account.” To his credit, he decided (I swear that I just stood there quietly smiling) to try intentionally misspelling our last name – five different ways.
“Are you absolutely sure that you purchased your glasses from this store?”
“Yes, absolutely.”
“Oh well,” the sales clerk responded, “I guess I will just have to enter you into the system again. For the inconvenience, I will take another 5% off the price.”
I couldn’t help but think to myself – I just witnessed the creation of a duplicate customer – despite the diligent efforts of a front line employee!
It can sometimes be difficult to make a compelling business case for data quality. But what company doesn’t value repeat business? However, if your current reports are telling you that only 15% of new sales this year have been from repeat customers, how many of those apparently new customers are in fact, already a customer?
Furthermore, isn’t it time that we get computer systems to adapt to us, instead of us always adapting to their limitations?In this particular case, the sales clerk knew to try several intentional misspellings but was unable to find the right record. That’s backwards – the clerk should have entered the information he knew and the computer should have done the hard work to find the right record.
There is a better way! What are we waiting for, let’s eradicate this problem!
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Tags: Data Matching
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