High-profile data breaches increasingly have been causing disruption, loss of revenue and loss of customer confidence for such established companies as Uber, Samsung, Nintendo, Yahoo, LinkedIn, the US government, and many other top organizations. But smaller businesses are also vulnerable to the havoc caused by breaches in security. According to Cybersecurity Dive, most organizations had a cloud-related security incident in the past year. That’s “most”!
At the same time, those organizations’ marketing and sales professionals rely on customer data and analytics to anticipate and understand the needs of their customers. Consequently, they look to their companies to ensure that data is secured and verified. Over the past few years, organizations have been improving the transparency of how they collect information and the security measures they apply to give customers more peace of mind.
The purpose of data verification is to ensure that data that are gathered are as accurate as possible, and to minimize human and instrument errors — including those which arise during data processing. Data verification is an ongoing process that should start after data migration and continue during data entry and analysis.
Why It’s Important to Verify Data Collected from Customers
Every business needs data verification for its customers regardless of location, size, or industry. Without programs in place to check data quality automatically, a business will see that errors quickly accumulate, costing time and money and making businesses more vulnerable to data breaches. The global total average cost of a data breach is $4.35 million, according to IBM’s report The Cost of a Data Breach 2022.
The importance of customer verification cannot be overstated. Sales pipelines cannot be built with inaccurate or unreliable data. Databases and lead lists are only as valuable as the information provided. Businesses also can’t create accurate reports unless they are working with validated facts. Think about the challenges that come from calling a phone number that has been disconnected or sending a message to an email address that comes back as undeliverable. In the end, you’re likely to find that you could have saved yourself—and your organization—from wasting your time and resources by investing in verification services.
Inaccurate data doesn’t just impact a business when it comes to gaining new customers. It can also make serving existing customers difficult when you need to make contact about an order or to reconnect about a new product. For a large business, manually correcting inaccurate entries is impossible. Not correcting the data isn’t an option since the consequences of poor-quality information only stop when they’re addressed and resolved.
How Address Verification Helps to Improve and Secure Data
Address verification is a big part of the data verification process and ensures that you are reaching your customers where they are. If you’ve ever started typing in an address and the field offers options for addresses that you can choose from, you are seeing address verification in action. With verification capability, users reduce address entry time by up to 78%, according to Loqate. And using an ISO-accredited service, which affirms that the organization meets global standards for business, provides an added layer of security.
One of the biggest benefits of applying tools that ensure data accuracy is that they simplify user access while providing a higher level of login security. Thanks to data verification, companies can remove social engineering risks that come with other identity verification methods. However, verification of user data that is entered during login only works if the data on file is accurate and up to date.
An issue with address verification is how protected address data is. Customers are often wary about sharing private data, which results in addresses being protected under strict privacy walls and backed up in a secure location. Part of implementing and securing address data is understanding where the data originates. Any tool your company chooses to use should be able to verify that address data is being retrieved from reliable, certified sources.
It will also be important that all managers understand the importance of data security and discuss security operations on a regular basis with employees. In-house training can prime employees on the importance of data privacy and security standards, as well as how to recognize potential breaches. The more commonplace your security rules and regulations become, the easier it will be for employees to remember them and enact them.
Combine Data Deduplication with Address Verification for Accurate Data
Identifying duplicate records is another important data verification activity. If your customer database lists the same customer three or four times, then you are likely to send them duplicate mailings. This not only costs money but it can result in a negative customer experience. To make the deduplication process more challenging, multiple records for the same customer might have been created using slightly different variations of a person’s name. Tools that use fuzzy logic to identify possible and likely matches can make the process work better.
Users of DataGroomr’s Brushr tool have long had the ability to verify emails, phone numbers and addresses individually or in bulk. However, for users accessing this data in Salesforce, there was no indication of which values were verified and which were not. We added the ability to configure fields in the Verify tab, during which you can also select fields in Salesforce that will be updated with various verification information. More information about these features can be found in our Spring 2022 Release Notes.
Customers want a friction-free verification experience. From there, they can achieve greater productivity as they multitask on their devices—getting real-time access right when they need it. Even small improvements to verification controls during user login or account setup can boost users’ overall experience with your business. And that difference can give you a leg up on competitors!
Trust DataGroomr to Verify and Dedupe Your Customer Data
DataGroomr’s data verification suite of services includes phone numbers, email addresses, and, now, street addresses. Simply add an address field to your dataset, and it’s ready for verification. This feature is available with any dataset in Brushr, Trimmr, or Importr modules.
Best of all, data verification with DataGroomr is very affordable. Each plan comes with a certain number of free verifications, and you can purchase additional verification credits, should you need them. The complete breakdown of the cost of verification credits can be viewed on our pricing page in the FAQ section.
As the only deduplication app on the AppExchange that leverages machine learning to dedupe Salesforce records, DataGroomr offers immediate deduplication with no need for rules or to download software. There is no complex setup process. Our machine learning algorithms take care of all the heavy lifting. Simply connect DataGroomr to your Salesforce and start deduping right away.
Try Datagroomr for yourself with our free 14-day trial.
