We love Checklists Action. Check. Done.
Retain data quality by making sure that you have the correct automated and manual processes and procedures in place:
- Ensure that a clear set of data standard instructions are defined and exist on how data is to be stored e.g. postcode to be stored without whitespace
- Encourage your staff to check and update a customer’s data each time they are in contact with them
- Validate all data entry points before saving new data or when updating existing data
- Invite your customers to maintain their own data via a secure web portal
- To reduce data entry errors, use drop-down lists in forms as much as possible
Cleaning up names
- Split the name into its elements; title, forename, surname
- Make sure that valid titles are used
- Check the syntax of the titles
- Remove all whitespacing
- Remove invalid characters
- Make sure that forename’s first letter is capitalized
- Make sure that surname’s first letter is capitalized
- Make sure that double barrelled surnames have a hypen between the names
- Do you need the gender information populated too?
Cleaning up email addresses
- Ignore any capitalization – this isn’t matter for email addresses
- Sort the emails alphabetically in order to find duplicate emails to delete
- Make sure that the email address is valid
- Remove invalid characters from the email address
- Remove all whitespacing
- Check that the domain name exists
- Test if the email will bounce back
Cleaning up addresses
- Identify typos in addresses and correct them
- Find duplicate addresses to delete
- Manually work out what County the address belongs to
- Move data into different fields to get the first line of address and street info correct
- Make sure that zipcodes are valid
- If it’s UK data, make sure that the postcodes have spacing in the right place
- Remove non-address data like email addresses
- Make sure that the Country information is correct
- Make sure that all the data has the right capitalization
Cleaning up telephone numbers
- Remove invalid characters from the data
- Remove all whitespacing from the telephone number
- Decide on whether or not the telephone numbers should be in international or national format
If you think that there’s something missing from the above checklist, let me know by leaving a comment.
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