Automatically detect and remove duplicate customer profiles using Amazon’s Identity Resolution API
Key Takeaways:
- Amazon Connect has a new capability in preview that can merge duplicate Customer Profiles using the Identity Resolution API
- The API uses machine learning to find matching profiles and then automatically surfaces them, so users have access to accurate customer information
- The API uses the name, phone number, and email info to identify duplicates
Amazon Connect Customer Profiles unifies contacts across several applications, such as Salesforce, Zendesk, and ServiceNow. When bringing together contacts from different applications, there are bound to be duplicates. These can result in confusion and information that’s difficult for contact center agents to use when interacting with customers. Manually going through and identifying duplicate contacts is tedious can take many hours, tying up valuable human resources.
However, Amazon Connect is now previewing an API that can automatically detect duplicate Customer Profiles within your domain. This is made possible with an Identity Resolution API that uses machine learning to figure out which contacts are duplicates. You can then check out the results before merging the duplicated contacts with the MergeProfiles API.
How Identity Resolution APIs find duplicate profiles
Identity Resolution takes advantage of machine learning to analyze similar names, phone numbers, and email addresses. Its algorithms can find names, numbers, and emails that may be the same — regardless of which apps they come from — and automatically flag them as duplicates. It can also find spelling errors that may result in different profile info in one field yet matching info in another.
Detecting spelling errors
Identity Resolution can also find spelling mistakes that could prevent valuable information from being associated with the correct name. For example, if a name was input as “Mary Smith” in Salesforce and “Mry Smith” in ServiceNow, Identity Resolution detects the spelling mistake and flags these two profiles for their info to be merged. This way, if someone entered info regarding the last conversation with “Mry Smith” in SalesForce, another contact center representative won’t have to go searching for it; all the information will automatically be merged into the correct “Mary Smith” profile.
Detecting numbers entered using different formats
The Identity Resolution API can also find phone numbers that have been entered differently for the same contact. For example, if a customer named Bill Russell has a number entered as 617-111-1111 but also as 1 (617) 111-1111, Identity Resolution recognizes they are the same and flags the two profiles to be merged.
Analyzing incoming profiles
When a contact center agent contacts a customer, Customer Profiles uses the Identity Resolution API to match the profile information coming in with what’s already in the system. It then automatically surfaces an accurate, unified profile for the agent.
Benefits of the Identity Resolution API
The Identity Resolution API enables customer contact representatives to get the most out of Amazon Connect Customer Profiles without worrying about whether they have accurate or complete contact info. It also makes it easier to merge different applications without going through the time-consuming task of sorting through all the contacts to ensure you don’t have duplicates.
For example, if your company had been using Marketo and ZenDesk and recently combined the info from each app using Amazon Connect, there’s no way to know how the info had been entered for each contact. For example, ZenDesk users may have included the country code before the phone number, and Marketo users may have left it out. Similarly, contacts may have been entered using abbreviated names or nicknames, such as Jim instead of Jimmy or James. The Identity Resolution API can discover these discrepancies and surface the correct contact info for you.
How to start using the Identity Resolution API
The first step is to enable Amazon Connect to use the Identity Resolution API. To do this, you need to use the UpdateDomain or CreateDomain features within Amazon Connect’s settings. Set the “Matching” value to “True.” Keep in mind that this API is still in preview, so it may be subject to change as Amazon continues to test and optimize it before general release.
Once the API is enabled, Amazon Connect will find them using a batch process that runs Saturdays at 12:00 am UTC.
With the Identity Resolution API, you can merge several applications within Connect Customer without having to worry about whether your records are muddied with confusing duplicates. The machine learning that powers the API finds the duplicates for you, enabling the Identity Resolution API to provide your staff with the correct info.
To learn more about how the Identity Resolution API and Amazon Connect Customer Profiles can support your business, reach out to CloudHesive today.
