With over 100 million customer records and a large legacy database to contend with, Domestic & General found that the quality of its data was having a negative impact on some areas of the business.
Domestic & General reduce address data entry time by 80% and input errors by 20% with Loqate
For more than 100 years, Domestic & General has been a trusted provider of aftercare for domestic appliances for over 16 million customers.
Today, it’s the UK’s leading provider of appliance breakdown protection, developing products and services to meet its customers’ needs.
Challenge
Solution
The first step was to undertake a large-scale data cleanse using Loqate, followed by implementing Loqate's type-ahead address capture tool for their online form.
Sucesses
- Reduce data entry time by 80% and input errors by 20%
- Improved customer experiences
- Increased conversion rates on their website
The Challenge
Domestic & General’s business model relies heavily on knowing where its customers and their appliances are located.
Because of this, the brand needs its customer data to be clean and up-to-date at all times. It’s crucial for the brand’s busy repair service, its pricing strategies, customer experience, and upselling opportunities.
But with over 100 million customer records and a large legacy database to contend with, Domestic & General found that the quality of its data was having a negative impact on some areas of the business.
As a result of natural data degradation and outdated data practices from previous suppliers, Domestic & General was starting to see an increase in returned mail, an upward trend in poor outcomes, and customer complaints around its data processing.
The solution
The brand decided it needed to consolidate and simplify its data maintenance feeds from its previous suppliers. After reaching out to several new suppliers to carry out some testing, Domestic & General chose Loqate as its data specialist partner.
We decided to partner with Loqate because it had the widest data sources and therefore the greatest accuracy.
“It was a mammoth task. So, to start with there was a lot of testing and tweaking. Not just around matching the datasets but also to make sure we were selecting the correct sources to get the balance of cost versus benefit right.
Loqate supported us every step of the way, building a solution that was just right for our specific business needs.
The first step was to undertake a large-scale data cleanse. Checked against Royal Mail PAF (the most up-to-date postcode address file), addresses were parsed, standardised, verified, cleansed and formatted.
A suppression cleanse was then carried out to flag any house movers or deceased customers. Deceased suppression is particularly important for businesses like Domestic & General as mailing deceased individuals could cause further upset to bereaved families, potentially lead to identity fraud, and damage a brand’s reputation.
Domestic & General also implemented Loqate’s real-time type-ahead capture tool in its online forms. Powered by the most precise premise -level address data, the technology works by using location biasing to return the address closest to the customer based on their physical location, within just three keystrokes. It reduces address data entry time by 80% and input errors by 20%.
All of this was done while maintaining a stable service and no interruption to Domestic & General’s customers or operations.
The Outcome
By implementing Loqate’s data maintenance service and address capture tool, Domestic & General has been able to improve customer experience, boost conversion rates and reduce wasted marketing costs.
"Thanks to the changes we’ve made, we’ve seen a huge improvement in the address quality that’s feeding into our match and merge algorithms. This drives our single customer view, which underpins everything – especially as we look to increase our number of products per customer."
On the suppression side, we’ve been able to stop sending letters to people we know aren’t there and to individuals on the deceased register. And it’s enabled us to develop more appropriate multi-channel contact strategies for goneaways.
“It makes perfect sense to avoid unnecessary costs associated with mailing – money that can be invested in multi-channel innovations and communications. Targeting investment on insight and test and learn, creates better customer experiences through data-driven decisions.”
As a business with big ambitions, Domestic & General has more exciting improvements on the horizon. Working with Loqate, the brand will be exploring the benefits of real-time email validation, as well as property intelligence datasets to add more value into its pricing and repair journey data models.
