OTM – Identify Customer

By using Identify customer for a new quote request you avoid creating duplicates of previously stored customer records.

A) Users with the role of supervisor will be prompted to identify a customer in the >Task Board whenever OTM recognizes certain similarities between the customer record of a new quote request and customer records that have been previously stored in the database.

B) When a project manager creates a new customer record using >Create new customer OTM checks whether the new customer record might be a duplicate of any other record already stored in the database and shows a list of these other records.

How is a new customer record created?

A new customer record in OTM is created

1. if you use >Create new customer to save a new customer record;
2. if a quote request is stored without being assigned to a previous customer record:
   2.1 either through the public quote request form;
   2.2 through you as a project manager by using >Create new project.

Every new customer record in OTM will undergo an automated duplicate check for similarities with customer records that have been previously stored in OTM. OTM will compare the following data:

• Company name
• Gender, Title, first name, and surname of the contact person
• E-mail address as a whole
• Domain of the e-mail address

If the duplicate check finds identical data (matches) or significant similarities you will be prompted to carry out the customer identification process. OTM will show a list of customers with similar or identical data that you have to compare to the new customer data.

In which cases can I rule out the danger of creating a duplicate?

1. If the customer has placed a quote request using the customer portal (customer service pages) there is no danger of adding a duplicate.
2. No duplicates can be added if a project manager uses the customer administration inside OTM to add a new quote request for a specific customer contact person (>Customer administration >Customer contact person >Create project).

Use the Graylist in order to ignore specific e-mail-domains

An identical e-mail domain is very likely to trigger the customer identification process.

On one hand this is necessary in order to avoid the duplication of customer records for companies that use their own e-mail domains. On the other hand it can lead to unnecessary customer identification processes where mass providers of e-mail addresses like gmail.com come into play.

Therefore in the administration section, you can register certain e-mail-domains in a Graylist. E-mail domains on that list are much less likely to cause the customer identification process (>Administration >Preferences >Customer identification).