You don't want to spam your customers with too many survey invitations. But sometimes you might accidentally upload an email address for a customer who has recently received a survey invitation. To avoid annoying this customer with another survey invitation, CustomerGauge has duplication rules in place.


A duplication rule is normally set either by email address or by order number. Below you will find some examples of different duplication rule configurations. Please note that we do not currently have the possibility for you to edit your duplication rule configuration from within the tool. If you wish to make any changes, please contact your account manager.


Examples


"email + 90 days"

This is our default, best practice duplication rule. It means that our system will not send a survey invitation to the same email address more than once per 90 days.


"email + 30 days"

This means that our system will not send a survey invitation to the same email address more than once per 30 days.


"order number"

This means that our system will not send a survey invitation based on a particular order number more than once.


"order number + 90 days"

This means that our system will not send a survey invitation for the same order number more than once per 90 days.


"email + division + 90 days"

This means that our system will not send a survey invitation for the same division to the same email address more than once per 90 days. For example:


Within a period of 90 days, Julie Fisher is in touch twice with your company's Customer Support division, and once with the Finances division. For each of these three interactions, you want to send a survey invitation. Julie will receive one survey invitation from the Finances division, and one from the Customer Support division. One of her interactions with Customer Support will not result in a survey invitation, because the duplication rule blocks it.


"email + segment_x + 90 days"

This rule works the same as the rule above ("email + division + 90 days"), except with a different data value rather than division. For example 'contact reason', or 'agent name'.


"order number + division"

This means that our system will not send a survey invitation for the same order number and division more than once. For example:


James Grant orders a product from your online shop. This should trigger a survey invitation with the data value "division" equal to "Online Shop". Two weeks later, he receives the order but he is not happy and gets in touch with your Customer Service division, which should trigger another survey invitation. James receives survey invitations for both divisions, because his purchase and his complaint concerned the same order number. But if he gets in touch with Customer Service again about the same order, he will not receive another survey invitation because the duplication rule will block it.



Be aware


A few things to keep in mind regarding the duplication rule.


One person, multiple email addresses


If you have multiple email addresses for the same person, the duplication rule will not prevent that person from receiving multiple survey invitations. The system will assume that a different email address equals a different person. For example:


Amy Johnson has both a work email address ("amy.johnson@company.com") and a personal address ("amylouisejohnson1978@gmail.com"). She logs a support ticket with your company using her personal address, and receives a survey invitation based on that support ticket. A week later, you send your quarterly relational survey invitation to all users of your product, which includes Amy's work email address. She will receive both survey invitations, because as far as the system knows, "amy.johnson@company.com" and "amylouisejohnson1978@gmail.com" are two different people.



One email address, multiple people

Conversely, if you have a single email address for multiple people, like an office@company.com email address, the duplication rule will block subsequent survey invitations. For example:


Amy and her colleague Tom Smith log a support ticket each with the general company email address "office@company.com". John's ticket is closed a few hours earlier than Amy's ticket, so when data is loaded into CustomerGauge, John's record is first. He receives the survey invitation, but Amy's record is blocked by the duplication rule. Even though Amy is a different person, the system cannot recognise the distinction because they are using the same email address.



Order dates in the past

Usually, our duplication rule is set by Order Date, meaning that the 90-day period (for example) checks for records with an Order Date in the previous 90 days. If you upload records with Order Dates far in the past, check with your CustomerGauge account manager whether your duplication rule should be edited. You may want the rule to function by Record Creation Date instead of Order Date.


CustomerGauge Double Check (Sending Safety Shut Down Mode)

CustomerGauge also implements an extra check on the data to prevent accidental multiple sends to the same email address in short periods of time.

This check works like this: if any email address is loaded to the system twice in one hour, sending for that system is stopped. CustomerGauge support staff are alerted and examine the send queue. If there are no issues uncovered then sending is restarted normally. Typically the re-start will occur quickly (within 1 hour) but can take longer.

If you are manually loading files with the same email address multiple times this can trigger this safeguard. You should always dedupe manual load files to remove duplicates in the same file. Excel has some simple features to assist with this: https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Filter-for-unique-values-or-remove-duplicate-values-ccf664b0-81d6-449b-bbe1-8daaec1e83c2