Customer Story
Schwan’s experiences a 25% decrease in new customer duplicate data
500
locations in U.S.
50
countries
1952
company founded
Overview
Schwan’s Home Service, the home delivery business of The Schwan Food Company, has nearly 500 sales and distribution centers in the United States. Given the vast scope of business, it needed to manage thousands of customer records entering their system per day. Records are entered from various touch points as customers place orders online, by phone, or directly from the Customer Service Manager at their doorstep. With multiple customer touch points, it was easy to overwhelm the system with duplicate customer records. Recognizing this process presented significant challenges for coordinating orders and scheduling deliveries, the company implemented the Precisely Spectrum.
Challenge
A potential home delivery customer registering for an account at Schwans.com or through the call center would be assigned a customer number. Meanwhile, the local depot would be alerted to schedule service for the potential customer. A Customer Service Manager (CSM) would then visit the customer and re-enter their information into a handheld device used to collect sales orders, deliveries and track inventory.
This disconnect between customer touch points resulted in the creation of two separate records for the same customer, which led to missed sales, overlapping delivery cycles, duplicate mailings, and ultimately, customer dissatisfaction. The company needed a comprehensive data quality solution to help improve customer service and depot efficiency
Industry
Food & Beverage
Client profile
- Distributor of fine frozen foods via multiple channels
- Multibillion-dollar private company
- Products available in 50 countries
Results
- Saved costs of duplicate mailings
- Gained a more complete view of the individual customer
- Addressed validation performed in real-time
Solution
“After we implemented the Precisely Spectrum Enterprise Data Quality Solution customer matching module, we saw a 25 percent reduction in the number of new customers being created by the handhelds.”
Connie Gugel Senior Systems Analyst
Solution
The Precisely Spectrum Technology Platform seamlessly integrates with Schwan’s Home Service’s web store, call center application and the handheld devices used by Customer Service Managers (CSMs) in the field. When the web store registers a new customer, the data quality solution standardizes the address and attempts to match it to an existing customer record— thereby preventing the creation of duplicate records.
Customer address validation and standardization is performed in real-time while new addresses are being entered into the system. Addresses that are not able to be validated or standardized in real-time are automatically submitted for the daily address scrubbing process. While in the field, CSM handheld devices run in a disconnected mode, uploading customer data at the end of each day to corporate headquarters.
“Precisely solutions have provided our organization with efficiency improvement across sales, order fulfillment, and even in the field.”
Connie Gugel, Senior Systems Analyst Schwan Food Company
Results and benefits
- Schwan’s Home Services experienced a 25 percent reduction in the number of new customers being created by handheld devices in the field.
- Previously, each time a new customer was registered, scheduled orders needed to be manually entered into the delivery route. Implementing the data quality solution eliminated this inefficiency.
- Prospect lists are compared against the company’s database, preventing duplicate mailings.
- Better customer data quality resulted in a more complete, 360-degree view of the customer.
Spectrum Quality
Ensure your data is accurate, valid and complete to deliver the trusted data that fuels customer understanding and engagement