Preventing duplicate clients

Maintaining a clean client database, free of duplicate records, is important for every Selly dealership. Duplicate records contaminate data, and ultimately lead to inaccurate data and frustration when finding multiple client records for the same person.

Duplicate Records Example

Let's say that John Smith contacts your dealership with an email address of [e-mail]. If a Selly user searches Selly for the client using the email address, and two Client records appear ("John Smith" and "Johnny Smith"), which record is the real record? Both records point to the same person, but which record should be used? Is there valuable data on one client record that is not present on the record? This scenario can frustrate Selly Users. 

Duplicate Prevention Alert

Selly helps to alleviate this problem of duplicate records by alerting Selly Users of potential matching clients when adding a new client either from the Web or Mobile applications. This way, duplicate records can be caught before a matching client is added. Let's now say that I have an existing Client in Selly named John Smith that has an email address of [e-mail].

If a Selly User tries to add a new client with the same email address, then the Selly system will alert the User of the potential matching record. This helps to reduce the number of duplicate records in a Selly dealership.

Client Matching Criteria

Hard vs. Soft Matches

There are two types of Client record matches in Selly: a "Soft Match" or a "Hard Match". If a User is adding a new Client, and only a "Soft Match" is found, then Selly will still allow the User to add the new Client if they want to. If a "Hard Match" is found, however, then only Manager-type Users will be able to still add the Client if they want to. Salesperson-type Users will not be able to add new Clients if there is a "Hard" match. We'll now go into the definitions of Hard and Soft matches.

Hard Matches

Selly defines a "Hard Match" as an existing Client that exactly matches a new Client being added by either Email Address, Home Phone, or Cell Phone. For example, if there is an existing client named "David Smith" with the email address  "[e-mail]", and a User tries to add a new Client named "Dave S" with the email address "[e-mail]", then Selly will consider the existing "David Smith" record to be a "Hard Match" because the existing "David Smith" record has an email address that matches email address of the new Client that is trying to be created. 

For "Hard Matches", the Phone type (Cell phone or Home phone) does not matter. If a new Client is being added with a Cell phone number of [phone], and there is an existing Client with a Home phone number of [phone], then the existing Client is still considered to be a "Hard Match".

Soft Matches

Selly defines a "Soft Match" as an existing Client that matches by first and last name only (no matches by Email Address, Home Phone, or Cell Phone). For example, if there is an existing Client record named "Jane Doe" with no contact information, and a User tries to add a new Client named "Jane Doe" with a valid Email Address and Home Number, then Selly will consider the existing "Jane Doe" record to be a "Soft Match" because the existing "Jane Doe" does not have an Email Address or Home Number to match with the "Jane Doe" that is trying to be created.