Virtual Terminal supports customer deduplication based on email, phone number or both. This can be useful when you want to avoid customers being enrolled twice, or when you want each customer to own at most one card. This functionality can be enabled for you by our customer service team and can be configured to one of the following options:
- Disabled
- Duplication detection by phone number
- Duplication detection by email
- Duplication detection by both phone number and email
When customer deduplication is enabled, meaning that it set to one of the last 3 options above, the behavior of the Virtual Terminal slightly changes in the following sections:
- Add Customer (Loyalty Section)
- Update Customer Info
- Card Reactivation
In all of these sections, a check will be performed upon submitting new customer information to verify that there are no customers with the same phone number or email, depending on the deduplication configuration. If a customer was found with the same email or phone number, the Virtual Terminal will request you to provide a different email or phone number, or both, depending on how customer deduplication was configured.
Example 1: Duplication detection by phone number when adding a new customer
When duplication detection is enabled to detect duplicate accounts based on phone number, the behavior of the Add Customer form, Update Customer Info form and Card Reactivation slightly changes. This example illustrates the slightly different behavior of the Add Customer form when duplication detection is enabled.
You will see that when enrolling a customer, the Add Customer form includes a notification stating that the phone number field is required for enrolling a customer. This is to guarantee that no duplicate accounts will be created. Upon submitting this form, an additional check will be performed to see if by enrolling this customer, no duplicate accounts will be created. This will be done by searching the customer base for customers with the same phone number. If a customer was found with the same phone number, the Virtual Terminal will not enroll this new customer but advise you to use the search functionality to search the existing card of the customer you were about to enroll.
Example 2: Duplication detection by email when updating customer information
When duplication detection is enabled to detect duplicate accounts based on email address, the behavior the Add Customer form, Update Customer Info form and Card Reactivation slightly changes. This example will illustrate the slightly different behavior of the Update Customer Info form when duplication detection is set to detect duplicate accounts based on email address.
When updating the customer info on a card, e.g. from the customer details on the search page and clicking on the Add / Edit button, you will see that a notification that the email field is required for enrolling a customer. This is to guarantee that no duplicate accounts will be created. Upon submitting this form, an additional check will be performed to see if by updating the customer information on this card, no duplicate accounts will be created. This will be done by searching the customer base for customers with the same email address. If a customer was found with the same email address, the Virtual Terminal will not update the customer information on the card, but advise you to search for the customer that uses the same email address.
Example 3: Duplication detection by both phone number and email when reactivating a card
When duplication detection is enabled to detect duplicate accounts based on both phone number and email address, the behavior of the Add Customer form, Update Customer Info form and Card Reactivation slightly changes. This example illustrates how the slightly different behavior of the Card Reactivation form when duplication detection is enabled for email address and phone number.
Upon reactivating a suspended card, a check will be performed to see if no duplicate accounts will be created when the card is reactivated. This will be done by searching the customer base for customers with the same email address or phone number as the card you are about to reactivate. If a customer was found with the same phone number or email address, the Virtual Terminal will not request a new email and / or a new phone number. The Virtual Terminal will only ask for new customer information for the fields based on which duplicate accounts were found. By providing a new, unique, phone number and / or email, the customer information on this card will be updated and reactivated.
A message will appear saying: This email is already in use. Please provide a new email address.
