Onboarding Matching Criteria and Matching Hierarchy

During onboarding, clients define their matching criteria and matching hierarchy.

In general, a customer’s email address is the preferred identifier. If the customer’s email address is not available, the other identifying data can be used.

Updating information for an existing customer

During the onboarding process, you can set the Update customer Information option in the system configuration to allow updates of customer information. This determines whether selected customer data fields will be updated when a customer identifier matches an existing customer.

Because a customer identifier is required to identify the record to update, updates to the customer identifier(s) require additional configuration. If you require such an update, contact your TIBCO Reward’s Account Management representative to set up the process.

Important Notes on Using the LoyaltyProgramID field

Do not send a Transaction file that provides the Loyalty Program Id OR any non-whitespace character in the LoyaltyProgramID field for a non-member of your Loyalty program. This sends contradictory data that will corrupt the record of each customer for whom the contradictory data is provided.

  • Passing any non-whitespace character in the LoyaltyProgramID field of a customer's record will prevent a former Loyalty Member from re-enrolling.
  • Passing any non-whitespace character in the LoyaltyProgramID field will enroll the customer in your Loyalty Program if they have not previously been a member. Enrolling members using LoyaltyProgramID is legacy functionality that is no longer supported.

Un-enrolling customers via file import

TIBCO Reward supports the ability to un-enroll customers via batch import by setting the Loyalty Member flag to 0 (zero). Setting this flag to 0 will cause the customer to be un-enrolled as if that customer were un-enrolled via the CRMS, using the Customer Service Representative (CSR) tools.

This means:

  • Loyalty member flag is changed from 1 to 0.
  • Status is changed from Active to Inactive.
  • The Email opt-in status (bulk email) flag is changed from true to false (if applicable).
  • All registered cards are deleted.
  • Points are reset according to the rules set up in the CRMS Admin section.
  • All program and club memberships are terminated.

This unenrollment makes it impossible to send email to the customer until their status changes back to active. Also, the customer will not be able to log in into their microsite. In the CRMS support options (Customer Details page), the customer is listed as inactive, and a notation in this format is added to the record, “Customer was Un-enrolled on <date/time> via import <importID>” In this context, date/time is the RetailerReceiptDateTime of the transaction in which loyalty member is set to false: <LoyaltyMember>false</LoyaltyMember>.

Anonymous transaction: No customer information. If the Transaction file does not provide customer information for a transaction, the transaction is considered anonymous. An anonymous transaction cannot be updated to a loyalty member-related transaction. However, the anonymous transaction data is still valuable, because it provides useful data for reports..

Geographical targeting requires postal codes. To target customers based on geographical location, a client must collect postal codes. The best way to populate this data is by using Transaction files. You can also populate geographical data by using data supplied via APIs, Customer Service Representatives, or the Microsite.

Adjusting the customer’s awards eligibility date. During onboarding, a client decides whether to use purchases made by customers prior to the time they became loyalty program members.

If the client decides to use a customer’s past purchases, the client must establish the number of past days to be used. Transaction file data is used to establish the date when a customer’s purchases become eligible for rewards, as explained in the table below. In general, eligibility for awards is based on membership in a loyalty program. The client defines this variable as a value representing a number of days (for example, three). This value represents an adjusted date (that is, a date prior to a customer’s membership date by this specified number of days). The awarding process will consider the customer’s transactions to be eligible for awards if they are made on or after this adjusted date. So, for example, if a client sets the “Number of days to award past transactions” to 3, and a customer establishes a loyalty membership on May 5, then that customer’s purchases on May 2, 3, or 4 could earn loyalty member points, but purchases made before May 2 could not.

Integration prerequisite: To use records from past days, the client must give TIBCO Reward the customer information, including the member information, before sending TIBCO Reward the past transactions.

Controlling which Customers receive email with EmailOptIn. U.S. law allows customers to opt out of commercial emailings. This means that we have to include a means recording and honoring any loyalty member’s expressed wishes not to receive email. A flag in the customer data called "EmailOptIn" records this information and determines whether a customer is sent such emails. A customer who opts out will not receive marketing emails, but may still receive email with administrative content (for example, an email about a forgotten password). This flag is part of the customer data. A client can set a default value for this flag in the system configuration, as described below.

TIBCO Reward requires clients to provide the EmailOptIn flag in their customer data. In the case where EmailOptIn field information is not provided, the EmailOptIn default value will be set to 0; for such clients, all new Customers will, by default, NOT receive email.

Note: If you set the EmailOptIn flag set to 1, then you need to define the default email format for your email messages during onboarding. This is defined by the system configuration managed by the TIBCO Reward data integration team. Configuration of the DefaultEmailFormat can be set either to text or to HTML (the standard default value).

Updating custom attributes in your transaction-customer data. If you use XML files, you can assign a null value to a custom attribute after updating your data processing standards to use the new functionality. To make this change, submit a request to your TIBCO Reward Account Management Representative.