Selective Insurance Group On The Benefits Of Curbing Duplicate Address Data

Maintaining quality customer data is essential for businesses to deliver targeted products to the right customers or develop marketing strategies aimed at the specific consumer segments they seek to reach.

Companies that do not have access to quality data risk losing not only customers frustrated by receiving the wrong or duplicate materials but also significant revenues due to these inefficiencies. Address and identity verification firm Melissa reported that as much as 10 percent of the average corporation’s customer list contains duplicate data, for example.

There is clearly room for improvement. Only 45 percent of 2,165 data and analytics decision-makers surveyed in a separate study reported consistently using rigorous quality checks to ensure their data’s accuracy, 60 percent admitted they lack confidence in their data, and only 10 percent believed they excel at managing data quality.

New Jersey-based holding company Selective Insurance Group, which partners with independent agents to provide insurance solutions to families and businesses, is working proactively to distinguish accurate address and customer information at the point of onboarding, no matter the channel.

James McKeown, vice president of customer experience and mobility for Selective, told PYMNTS in an interview that customers provide contact information during onboarding through a variety of sources, including the company’s self-service registration process on its website, its MySelective mobile app, customer service representatives or insurance agency partners.

“These different channels make onboarding and acquiring customers’ data easy, but [they] could increase the likelihood of having erroneous or duplicative information captured, leading to a poor, or even incorrect, customer experience,” he explained.

McKeown said the firm expressly aims to avoid such experiences by streamlining onboarding with automatic data pre-fill wherever possible. Existing customers registering for the company’s app, for example, will have their essential information, such as email addresses and cellphone numbers, automatically appear.

“This makes the registration process easier,” McKeown said. “It helps prevent incorrect or duplicated information from being entered into our systems.”

How Scrubbing Customer Data Ensures Personalized Experiences

McKeown acknowledged that sending duplicate marketing emails to a customer may be a mere inconvenience and not the end of the world. It is a much bigger problem, however, if a company sends the same invoice twice.

“At Selective, our master data management system allows us to view and scrub customers’ data,” he said. “When duplicates exist, we can understand how the information was collected and merge it into a complete customer record.”

Eliminating contact duplication has helped Selective improve service with instant customer recognition through many of its channels.

“By eliminating duplicates, for example, we can quickly and easily recognize our customers when they call us,” McKeown said. “This allows for a personalized experience where we can support the relationship with their agent and quickly serve the customer without validating who they are because we already know.”

Leveraging Technologies To Manage Data

Another way Selective works to maintain data accuracy is through its chat network, which enables employees to answer customer and agent questions during regular and extended business hours.

“The chat channel leverages our data and customer experience strategies to provide instant information to customers based on their interactions with us,” he said. “We can quickly start a conversation with ‘Good morning. Are you reaching out about the claim you opened yesterday or the bill you paid three days ago?’ Knowing who customers are and where they’re at makes them feel like they are at the head of the table and being treated as a priority, and that is at the center of our [customer experience] strategy.”

McKeown said Selective uses a variety of tools and technologies to address contact duplication, including its master data management system, which takes customer information and processes it with proprietary parameters and algorithms. The company’s relationship management system also provides staff tools that help them understand customers’ needs, and they leverage the communication preference system to allow customers to manage their information.

Companies that make the effort to drive down duplicate data have the advantage of increased revenues and savings, improved customer satisfaction, time savings and return on investment. Companies should therefore prioritize eliminating address duplicates as part of their customer experience strategies.