The Cost of Invalid Data – A Data Cleaning Case Study

You know that feeling when you forget to do something…Forget to press the on button when you load the washing machine, forget to put the bins out, or even forgetting the Birthday of a loved one?

One thing we never forget here at DataXcel is to ensure our consumer Telephone data is cleaned and validated against the most up to date data compliant registers, verify the accuracy of each record, and ensure is it fit for purpose prior to an outbound telemarketing campaign.

The same should go for anyone using telephone data for an outbound campaign, whether that is data acquired through a 3rd party, new real-time customer leads, or your lapsed client data.

Below is a case study which highlights the potential volume of invalid data you could be processing at any one time, and the potential costs incurred:

Telephone data cleaning test carried out on 100 record sample of client data.

Cleaning included screening against HLR process to identify inactive mobile & landline records, and screening against NDD to identify non-compliant records.

The topline results of this test were as follows:

• Invalid/Inactive records: 12/83 = 14.45%
• Inconclusive records*: 10/83 = 12%
• Records on the NDD: 26/83 = 31%

*Inconclusive = a connection could not be made to that phone record at time of check.

Core Outcome – 26% of the file would be uncontactable ie; calling agents would have been met with a ‘dead tone’ when calling.

In order to summarise the potential savings of applying this process to an outbound campaign, it might be worth taking the below costs into consideration over a 10,000 record campaign:

Category                           Estimated Cost per Dead Call

Agent Time                        Cost of Dialling + waiting + moving on = €500 – €1,000

Telecom/Dialler Fees    Call per attempt (depending on package) = €250 – €500

Tech + Admin                   Cost of logging idle/dropped calls = €200 – €300

One other consideration, there are Regulatory or Legal Costs associated with calling a phone number that exists on the NDD which can include fines of up to €5,000 per offence from the ODPC and even larger with fines imposed off the back of Civil actions.

Do note however that explicit consent on landline data may override a data subject’s presence on the NDD.

Want to test this for free? Just send us a sample of the data you want cleaned (up to 100 records), and we will return your data file with the relevant flags appended so you can make more informed decisions on data you should, or more accurately should NOT be processing.

In the meantime, you can review further info on our Data Cleaning Solutions here Telephone Data Cleaning | Dataxcel. 

Kind regards

Laurence

laurence.masterson@dataxcel.ie