Customer Centricity: Establishing Connections
By David Loshin In our last set of posts, we looked at the relationship of location to a strategy for customer centricity, and one conclusion we can draw from that discussion is the value of organization into groups for better understanding what drives customer behavior. To say it a little differently, if “birds that flock…
What is Meant by “Flocking Together” Virtually?
By David Loshin In my last two posts, we have been reviewing the concepts of contact methods that have in the past been used for identifying a customer’s location, and the ramifications of an increasing trend in which the contact mechanism is less reliable for establishing a location. In particular, the traditional use of telephone…
Customer Centricity and Birds of a Feather
By David Loshin Why do we care to establish physical locations for individuals? One reason should be patently obvious: in every interaction between a staff member from your company and customer, both parties are always physically located somewhere, and many business performance indicators are pinned to a location dimension, such as “sales,” “customer complaints,” or…
Customer Centricity and Location Characteristics
By David Loshin In my last set of posts I began to examine the integration of the concept of “customer centricity” into business processes, starting with the ability to uniquely differentiate individuals in relation to their “contact-based” identifying characteristics, such as street address and telephone number. Interestingly, from one part of the discussion, we could…
Methods of Contact
By David Loshin In the last post, I suggested that a key aspect of managing customer centricity is the need to gain some mastery over the many varied channels for communication as well as the varied means by which individuals represent themselves within each (or many) of these channels. To that end, let’s look at…
Postal Standards and Address Quality – Take 1
By David Loshin The USPS Postal Standard (Publication 28) provides at least some of the specifications we need for address quality. For example, “The Postal Service defines a complete address as one that has all the address elements necessary to allow an exact match with the current Postal Service ZIP+4 and City State files to…
Characterizing the Quality of Address Data
By David Loshin My company is currently working on a couple of projects associated with address quality and location master data. We are reviewing a lot of the existing documentation that has been collected from a number of different operational systems, as well as reviewing the business processes to see where location data is either…
Where in the End-to-End Should Address Standardization and Correction Happen?
By David Loshin In my last post, I shared a story about how rampant address validation actually can transform accurate (if not 100% standardized) addresses into inaccurate ones. My client actually noted that with some of the tools they have seen, addresses that have been submitted to the product and standardized are then re-submitted to…
Validation, Standardization, and Correction: Tool or Process?
By David Loshin There are all sorts of tools associated with address standardization, cleansing, and validation. As an example, the USPS has a certification program for software vendors, referred to as CASS (Coding Accuracy Support System)™ certification. According to their website, CASS enables the Postal Service™ to evaluate the accuracy of address matching software…
The Relative Distinction of Address Validation, Precision, and Accuracy
By David Loshin One nice thing about addresses, especially in the United States, is that they have well-defined standards. In previous blog series, I have looked at the process of address standardization and correction, so I won’t belabor that point. However, many people confuse the differences among a valid address, a precise representation of an…