Overview
When an individual has multiple accounts in the same ticketing system, KORE Ticketing consolidates all your information about them into a single CRM contact. This deduplication process also supports MultiDB, connecting an individual’s accounts from multiple ticketing systems to a single CRM contact. The process also consolidates variations of a company’s name into a single CRM account.
This page explains the mechanics of how deduplication works—see the deduplication rules for the actual evaluation criteria.
Deduplication
An individual might have more than one ticketing system account, even if you don’t use MultiDB (that is, you have only one ticketing system). For example, one person might have two Archtics accounts because they signed up twice using two different email addresses.
Archtics note: An Archtics account can be associated with more than one person, such as a married couple or a company where multiple people have bought tickets on the company’s behalf. During processing, we only take the primary customer name into consideration.
For each ticketing account included in an incremental update (and for every ticketing account during initial load), we first check for duplicates. When we identify a ticketing account as a duplicate, we update our mapping table (described below) and present their data in a single CRM contact. However, we do not alter the underlying data in your ticketing system.
If we are processing a ticketing account for the first time (that is, it’s not in the mapping table) and it doesn’t meet the duplicate criteria, we create a new CRM contact. This ticketing account is labeled in KORE Ticketing as the primary account. (Archtics users: This is not the same as a primary customer name.) If we later find any duplicates, whether in this batch of updates or in the future, we label them as secondary ticketing accounts.
Mapping table
Archtics note: In Archtics, a customer name ID number identifies a person’s details (like name and address) while an account ID number identifies their transactions (like purchases and attendance). More than one customer name ID can be associated with a single account ID, such as when several people purchase tickets on behalf of a company. One of these customer name IDs must be primary; the others are secondary. During deduplication, we only use details from the account ID’s primary customer—not any secondary customers. If you need to change which one of the account ID’s associated customers is primary, this must be done directly in Archtics.
The mapping table tracks which ticketing accounts are associated with which CRM contacts. During an initial load or incremental update, we receive an account ID number as part of the ticketing account data. For each account ID number, we first check the mapping table to see if we’ve already processed it before. If not, we search for a duplicate account using the matching criteria.
There are three possible outcomes: Already mapped, match, or no match.
- Already mapped: Next, we check if this account ID is the primary ticketing account in KORE Ticketing. If it is, then we update the CRM Contact with any updated information. If not, we take no action on it.
Suppose ticketing account 40901 was updated with a new email address. We check the mapping table:
Acct_ID 40901 | Primary | … | CRM_ID 9078
...
Acct_ID 50938 | Secondary | … | CRM_ID 9078Since 40901 is the primary ticketing account, we change CRM contact 9078’s email address. But if this had been ticketing account 50938, we wouldn’t update the CRM contact it since it’s a secondary ticketing account.
- Match: If the account ID was not in the mapping table but matched a CRM contact according to the deduplication rules, we check the mapping table to see if this CRM contact’s ID number is already listed. If so, we add the account ID to the mapping table as a secondary ticketing account. But if the CRM ID is not already in the mapping table, this account ID will be marked as primary. (This may happen when a CRM contact is manually created for a prospect who later makes a purchase.)
Suppose ticketing account 40132 was updated. It’s not in the mapping table, but it matches CRM ID 9166. This CRM contact already has a primary ticketing account, so we add this account ID to the mapping table as a secondary account:
Acct_ID 40028 | Primary | … | CRM_ID 9166
...
Acct_ID 40132 | Secondary | … | CRM_ID 9166Since 40132 is a secondary account, we do not use it to update the CRM contact record.
- No match: If no match is found, we create a new CRM contact for this ticketing account and add a new record to the mapping table. This ticketing account becomes the primary one in KORE Ticketing.
Suppose ticketing account 40890 was updated. It’s not in the mapping table and we couldn’t find any duplicates, so we create a new CRM contact from it and add it to the mapping table:
...
Acct_ID 40890 | Primary | … | CRM_ID 9194
If the mapping table lists a ticketing account ID as secondary but you want to make it the primary one, open KORE’s Ticketing Data Manager (TDM) from the CRM contact’s dashboard. There, you can see the different ticketing account IDs connected to this CRM contact and change which one is primary.
Companies
If a ticketing account has a company name field and it isn’t null (blank), we check for a matching CRM account. First, we create a “stripped” name using the company name deduplication rules. We then compare it to the stripped CRM account names we’ve seen before. This way, “Fed Ex Inc” matches “FedEx Ltd.”
If we find a matching stripped company name, we make the CRM contact a child of that CRM account. Otherwise, we create a new CRM account using the (unstripped) company name. This means that the first version of the company name that we encounter will be used for all CRM contacts associated with the CRM account. (For example, if we see “Coca-Cola Ltd.” first, then a CRM contact whose company is “Coca-Cola Inc.” will be a child of the “Coca-Cola Ltd.” CRM account.)
The CRM account’s name can be changed if desired, as long as the stripped version of the new company name matches the stripped version of the old name.
If you change a CRM account’s name such that it won’t match the old name during deduplication—such as changing “Acme Handtools” to “Acme Tools”—you should also update the company name in your ticketing system. Depending on which ticketing system you use, this could require changing it for every ticketing account associated with that company name. Otherwise, a new CRM account will be created using the old company name the next time any associated ticketing account gets updated.
CRM accounts and primary contacts
A CRM account only displays one CRM contact, but this doesn’t mean it’s the only CRM contact associated with it. You can use KORE’s Ticketing Account Details tool in your CRM to see additional data associated with a CRM account. This will include secondary contact information if it exists.
This can cause confusion when using the Contact Search Wizard. Its results will include a CRM account if it has a secondary CRM contact that matches your query. But when you open the linked CRM account, it will only display the primary contact’s information. The secondary contact information is viewable in Ticketing Account Details.
Broken primary connections
Sometimes, a CRM contact is left in place after a ticketing account is deleted or deactivated. This may be unintentional or for reporting purposes. A problem occurs if a new ticketing account is created for the same person later. Because the CRM contact still exists, our deduplication process identifies the new ticketing account as a duplicate and treats it as secondary information. When viewing the CRM record, this new information won’t be displayed since it’s secondary. Trying to edit the CRM contact with TDM will result in an error because TDM first tries to refresh its data from the nonexistent primary ticketing account. This prevents you from changing which ticketing account is primary. To fix this, contact our support team and request that they manually assign the new ticketing account as primary.