Report or tool to help eliminate duplicate customers
There should be a report or tool to allow quick identification of duplicate customers and then feed the names into the merge tool.
There should also be a way for customers booking online to either know they are already in our database, or when the reservation comes in it should be flagged as a possible duplicate customer in the database.
John Battista
shared this idea
Now available! See the blog for more details: http://bit.ly/aOuALG
11 comments
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Kristi's At Kg Lodge commented
I'm in the same boat with Peggy! This is way too much time consuming even when we have "free" time. When I catch an existing guest who made the on-line reservation, I have to print the information, delete and re-input the reservation which not very efficient.
Kris in NY
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Andy Fisher
commented
I realize that this is already started, but when I used Rez Desktop and Webervations online reservations were downloaded to it, they were often identified as duplicates. Actually a window came up requiring you to create a new record or pick an existing contact record to associate the new reservation with. Sometimes the algorithm worked and other times it didn't. What's frustrating is that many of my guests are not letting me know if they are "returning guests" in the Source. My experience tells me that this is because this and the Reason and Special Notes are confusingly an afterthought in the booking engine process. I understand the idea behind booking simplification so customers don't give up, but we're talking about B&Bs and smaller inns for the most part and most guest want to let you know this stuff. It makes it more personal for them. The BE system currently thwarts that by confirming the reservation and then offering an opportunity to provide it way down the page. Please consider all these things together when devising a solution for tracking guests. It's pretty important for me to be able to go to the door and say "welcome back," even if I can't possibly remember 300-400 guests a year.
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Tony and Peggy Barthel
commented
Ben, I like that idea of a filter to help find duplicates. I've been messing with the customer list for a few days, when I have time, and finally finished the "B" section! Having help searching those out would save a lot of time! The criteria I concentrate on now is last and first names, then city to help me seek out the duplicates.
Peggy
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AdminBen
(Admin, RezOvation)
commented
John - good point, I think adding some created date info would help determine which contact is the oldest / most recent.
One solution would be to add a new filter on the left side of the customer list named "Duplicates" or something like this, that would show you all contacts that are potentially dupes (based on last / first name, or perhaps phone # or some other unique identifier). That way, you could select the filter and then easily highlight / merge the duplicates, without having to the leave the screen. What do you guys think?
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John Battista
commented
Thanks ben for the feedback and yes the tools in place now are a help, but I have noticed since we are using the online booking the number of duplicates is going up significantly.
I used this as a work around for now. I exported my entire customer list into Excel. I concatenated the last, then first name into a new column. I added a column called "count" and placed a number 1 in each record. I then used Excels "Sub Total" function to group on the new "last name first name" column and then sub total on the new count column. I then sorted the collapsed list on the "count" column. This showed me any counts above 1, which let me know where i had potential duplicates. I then went into Rezo, looked up the reocrds and merged them.
It would be helpful in the "merge" window which pops up to inlcude the record creation date or something which can better identify which record you want to select to have the others merge into.
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AdminBen
(Admin, RezOvation)
commented
This feature has been there for a while, actually -- but glad that you know about it now!
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Tony and Peggy Barthel
commented
Oh My Gosh Thank you Ben! Was that always available? Oh, who cares! I'm just happy to learn that it's there!
Peggy
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AdminBen
(Admin, RezOvation)
commented
Tony, we do already have a feature to merge existing customers. Simply select the customers you wish to merge (you can select as many as you want by clicking and dragging to select customers, or by holding CTRL on your keyboard and clicking each customer), then right-click on any selected customer and choose "merge" or click the Merge icon on the toolbar. To make this process even easier, use the quick search to filter by name first -- and then select the duplicates.
I agree though that having some report or other tool that flags customers as possible duplicates would be useful.
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Tony and Peggy Barthel
commented
I too would LOVE this feature. We are fairly new to this B&B and there are "a million" past customers listed already, it's a bummer when return guests wind up with "new" customer files. If I could merge them, I wouldn't even mind spending the time to find the duplicates.
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AdminBen
(Admin, RezOvation)
commented
John: thanks for the suggestion! I would agree that this would be helpful. One note -- currently, if a customer books online, they do have a way to create a login so that next time they make a reservation, they can just login in and their reservation will get attached to their existing account. If they don't create an account, and they've stayed with you before, it is booked under a new contact record and then you have to merge it.
Hilary: I'm not aware of any feature in Rezo Desktop to locate duplicates automatically. I am missing something? In Rezo GT, you can do it now sort of manually by using the quick search to filter by last name (or address, or phone number, or zip code, etc.), or sort by last name.
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Hilary Jones
commented
Yes. V. important especially for reservations made through booking engine. Its easy to get dupes. Rezo Desktop has this - would love to see it in GT too
