Yesterday we had a call from British Gas (or probably a call centre hired by British Gas) explaining the great savings possible if switching from the current provider – which by the way is: British Gas. This is a classic data quality issue in direct marketing operations being accurately separating your current customers and entities belonging to new market.
As I have learned that your premier identity proof in the United Kingdom is your utility bill, this incident may be seen as somewhat disturbing – or by further thinking, maybe a business opportunity 🙂
At iDQ we develop a solution that may be positioned in the space between data quality prevention and identity check by addressing the identity resolution aspect during data capture.
The nearly two year old post The New Year in Identity Resolution explains some different kinds of identity resolution being:
- Hard core identity check
- Light weight real world alignment
- Digital identity resolution
Since then I have seen a slowly but steady convergence of these activities.
Liliendahl on Data Quality 
A classic tale. Thanks for sharing Henrik.
An action like this, where British Gas calls their own customers encouraging them to switch suppliers will probably achieve just that… and they will lose customers as a result. Sometimes it is so easy to build a positive business case for Data Quality.