Consumer View Matching Tool
The Consumer View Matching tool enables users match their customer file to the Experian Consumer View Data.
The Consumer View Matching tool will match on up to three different match methods:
- Name + Phone
- Name + Address
- Address only
The tool automatically chooses which match methods to apply based on which columns you pick. For example:
- If an address is specified without any name or phone data, the tool will run the Address-Only match group.
- If name and phone are specified without any address data, the tool will run the Name-Phone match group.
- If name, phone, and address are specified, the tool will run all three match groups: Name-Phone, Name-Address, and Address-Only.
If address matching is desired, CASS address standardization is required before the matching is done, which should improve match rates. You can indicate in the tool interface whether CASS has already been run on your file. If CASS has not been run, the tool will run CASS on the customer address data. If however CASS has already been run on the customer address data, the tool will skip CASS and go straight into the matching process.
If the phone is included in the match, the tool will strip any non-numerical characters from that field (creating a new field to match on).
If name fields are specified in the tool, various matching methodologies are used to try to help improve match rates. Because names can easily have differences, Soundex keys are used to help with matching.
A report output is produced by the tool, showing which types of matching were executed by the tool, along with the match rate for the file and descriptions of all of the different match levels that the tool employs.
Configure the tool
- Address Fields tab: Address fields are required to match by ‘Address-Only’ or ‘Name-Address’.
- Run file through CASS: Choose this option to run all input records through the CASS Tool for address standardization. The CASS address fields are used to match against the Experian Consumer View Household file. Specify the required fields:
- Address is a required field.
- Address2 is an optional field.
- City, State and ZIP are required. Specify if these are in separate fields or in one combined field.
- Records have already been through CASS, so do not need CASS Processing: Choose this option if your records have already been CASS certified. Specify the required fields:
- CASS Address
- CASS Suite
- CASS City
- CASS State
- CASS ZIP
- Name and Phone Fields:
- Match using Name: Name fields are required to match by ‘Name-Address’ or ‘Name-Phone’. By including the name in the match, the tool will match against the Experian Consumer View data at the individual level, and as such will return more data fields from the Consumer View data than matching at just the household level (i.e. more than just Address-Only matching). When names are selected, the tool will run through a few different match levels to try to improve the match rate of the file. It will use Soundex keys built from the fields selected by the user. Specify the required fields:
- First Name is a required field.
- Last Name is a required field.
- Match using Phone:
- Specify the Phone field.
When available, unit or suite designators are required to match households.
View the output
- R anchor: This output stream contains a report which details the number of input records that matched at each level, with a percentage based on the total number of input records. The Match Level descriptions are also provided to allow easy reference and understanding of the levels. Attach a Render Tool from the right output to write the report to the desired format.
- D anchor: The D output will be the data output of matched records, which includes all the user’s input data along with other fields (listed in the table below), except in the case of address-only matches, where the name columns from the user file are rendered empty to emphasize that the matching result for that record did not involve the individual’s name. Users who want these columns populated in the output can simply join the output back to the source file with a Join tool.
Field Name | Description |
---|---|
CVMacroFuzzyMatchOverallScore | This is the percent match found from the Fuzzy Match within the macro itself. |
CVMacroMatchGroup | The category of the Match Level. There are 3 Match Groups: Address-Only, Name-Address, and Name-Phone. Each Match Group has 1-to-6 Match Levels associated with it. For more on Match Levels, see below. |
CV MacroMatchLevel | Level of match for each record ranges from A to M. For more on Match Levels, see below. |
CVMacroRecID | A sequential number added to the users file when first input to the tool. Some records will match multiple times simply due to the nature of the Experian data and the match level. Fields worth looking at to better understand your results are the Household Person Number, ADDRESS ID, HH_ZeroBasedRecordID, and if doing name matching too PERSON ID NUMBER and IndividualZeroBasedID. |
Users input fields | Fields streaming into the tool will be included in the output. |
CASS_Address | This field will contain the input address along with any corrections or standardizations performed by the CASS tool. This may include fixed misspellings or the insertion of missing suffixes and directionals. |
CASS_Suite | Sets the suite name and number associated with the input address. |
CASS_City | If the City Property is not supplied in the input table, the CASS utility will use the official city or municipality name of the ZIP or Postal Code instead. If the City Property is supplied, the utility will only change the city name if it is incorrect or an unapproved mailing name. In these cases, the official city name for the ZIP will be returned in this field. |
CASS_State | Returns the two-letter state abbreviation associated with the input address. |
CASS_ZIP |
Returns the five-digit or nine-digit U.S. ZIP Code or the six-character Canadian Postal Code associated with the input address. This property can be input with the address to be verified in place of city and state. |
CASS_Results |
Returns a code that indicates Status and Error codes for an address. These are four-character codes (two letters followed by two numbers), delimited by commas, which indicate status and errors generated by the CASS process. A Result code for a coded address record might look something like this: “AC03, AC11, AS01, AS15.” Instead of looking at multiple fields to determine the status or error of a record, you can simply look at the output of the CASS Results field. Currently there are close to 50 possible result codes. Records that have ‘AE’ in the CASS results code are filtered out, and removed from the any of the Calgary joins. They do get detailed in the report output as 'Unable to CASS the address, results code contained an AE code'. See Result Codes for a complete list of codes. |
Fields from the Experian Individual file (if name matching was selected.) |
According to the data license agreement, this file can only be used for analytical purposes and therefore fields such as Individual names, Household address and phone numbers cannot be included in the output even though these fields can be queried. If you wish to license these fields, please contact your Customer Support Engineer. For a list of fields that can be queried and returned, please refer to the Documentation folder in the data installation directory. |
Fields from the Experian Household file | According to the data license agreement, this file can only be used for analytical purposes and therefore fields such as Individual names, Household address and phone numbers cannot be included in the output even though these fields can be queried. If you wish to license these fields, please contact your Customer Support Engineer. For a list of fields that can be queried and returned, please refer to the Documentation folder in the data installation directory. |
Match Group and Match Level Details
Match Levels for Address-Only Match Group:
- Match Level A: Record matched on CASS_Address, CASS_Suite and CASS_ZIP.
Match Levels for Name-Address Match Group:
- Match Level G: Record matched on CASS_Address, CASS_Suite, CASS_ZIP, last name field and the first name field.
- Match Level H: Record matched on CASS_Address, CASS_ZIP, last name field and the first name field.
- Match Level I: Record matched on CASS_Address, CASS_Suite, CASS_ZIP, last name field and the soundex key for the first name field.
- Match Level J: Record matched on CASS_Address, CASS_Suite, CASS_ZIP, the soundex key for the last name field and the first name field.
- Match Level K: Record matched on CASS_Address, CASS_Suite, CASS_ZIP, the soundex key for the last name field and the soundex key for the first name field.
- Match Level L: Record matched on CASS_Address, CASS_Suite, CASS_ZIP and the last name field.
- Match Level M: Record matched on CASS_Address, CASS_Suite, CASS_ZIP and the soundex key for the last name field.
Match Levels for Name-Phone Match Group:
- Match Level B: Record matched on telephone, last name field and first name field.
- Match Level C: Record matched on telephone, last name field and the soundex key for the first name field.
- Match Level D: Record matched on telephone, the soundex key for the last name field and the first name field.
- Match Level E: Record matched on telephone and the soundex keys for the last name field and the first name field.
- Match Level F: Record matched on telephone and the last name field.
More on Matching:
You can also modify the match level by filtering match level IDs from your output file by simply using a filter tool with the data output from the tool. For example:
will result in only the records that matched at either levels B, C or D being returned from the True side of the filter.