How Klingel Improved the Quality of its Customer Base, Reducing Returned Mail and Incorrect Addressing
The Netherlands is constantly on the move: every year, about 7% of all households relocate, thousands of people pass away, and 3% of residents change their last name due to divorce or marriage. In addition, hundreds of thousands of postcode changes occur annually, caused by municipal reorganizations, renumbering, and the construction or demolition of buildings. Many organizations don’t immediately realize that these events affect the quality of customer data.
Accurate, up-to-date customer data is essential for sound business operations. This also applies to the Klingel webshop, part of Mail Order Finance GmbH. The organization focuses on online sales of women’s and men’s fashion, household items, and home accessories, and operates in thirteen countries.
The Challenge: a Customer Base that Changes Daily
Michael Labourel of Klingel: “Our goal is to keep our database ACCU: Accurate, Correct, Complete, and Unique. This allows us to serve our customers better and cut down on returns due to incorrect addressing.”
Thanks to its extensive range and international reach, Klingel appeals to a large target group and the webshop holds a significant amount of its own customer data. Keeping this information up to date is essential for effective customer communication. The challenge is that the customer base changes daily due to events such as relocations and deaths.
Based on Klingel’s needs, we started with a quality check of the customer data. This included a quality analysis and baseline measurement, with special attention to the timeliness and accuracy of the customer data.
Step 1
Data quality analysis
Before an organization can begin improving data quality, it’s important to know where it stands. For Klingel, we first carried out a baseline measurement: mapping the current quality of the customer base. Together, we inventoried the available data and conducted a data quality analysis on 100,000 records. This provided insight into, among other things, the following elements:
• Spelling of the last name
• Accuracy of addresses
• Moves
• Deceased
• Registration in the Do Not Call Registry
Step 2
The testing phase
Klingel maintains a mutation date in the customer database. This is the date on which the last contact with a customer took place. This date was used as a starting point to check which data was most up to date: Klingel’s own customer data or EDM’s reference data.
Michael Labourel: “Submitting the data was a time-consuming task for us, mainly due to extensive internal back-and-forth about how the file should be delivered. My advice is to align this thoroughly in advance, including internally.”
To determine the accuracy of all Klingel customer data, after the testing phase the complete customer database was again compared with EDM’s reference database. Based on various elements, we assessed to what extent the data was “correct” and could be processed. Data categorized as “doubtful” and “uncertain” was checked manually.
Stefan Elsendoorn, data quality consultant at EDM: “By tightening the business ruling, only a small part of the customer database remained that required an additional manual review by Klingel staff.”
Direct mailing to customer groups
To measure whether EDM’s data quality solution improved the accuracy and timeliness of the customer data, Klingel chose to send a direct mail to the different customer groups. The number of returned mail items was an important indicator of improvement.
Step 3
Processing insights
One finding from the testing phase was a high number of deceased customers and a significant number of relocations. Based on these results, the best approach for the remaining customer groups was determined, forming the initial basis for the business ruling.
Drop in Returned Mail and Fewer Incorrect Addresses
Because Klingel gained more insight into which mail pieces would not reach customers due to relocations or deaths, they were able to significantly save on printing and shipping costs. In addition, the total number of returned mail fell from 1.3% in 2018 to 0.27% in 2019.
Improved Data Quality, a Solid Foundation for the Future
With improved data quality, Klingel has created a solid foundation to build on in the coming years, while also saving annually on unnecessary costs. The next step is a similar data quality analysis for Klingel in Belgium; EDM also offers data quality services in Belgium.
Michael Labourel: “We’re very happy with our collaboration with EDM. Communication is really good and people are always reachable. The first year was bumpy, because the file to be delivered had to go past various people internally, which regularly caused delays. This was unrelated to EDM. I’m satisfied!”