What causes duplicate customer records and why are they a problem?

Duplicates arise when the same person exists in multiple source systems or rows and integrations write without reconciliation. They cause double invoices, duplicate mail and appointments, broken workflows, slower closes, missed revenue, and higher support volume.

How do I stop duplicates at the source?

Dedupe at source by choosing a canonical system, enforce a composite unique ID (for example external_id + normalized phone + normalized email), validate on write, and reject writes that lack the required identifier.

What is a golden record and how do I enforce it?

A golden record is a single authoritative customer identity used for all downstream actions. Enforce it with merge rules, one canonical write system, promotion of the golden record, and write-time validation to prevent new conflicting rows.

How should direct mail be handled to avoid duplicate sends?

Hold physical mail until a clean golden record is confirmed. Queue mail jobs as pending, include a tracking or DMA code on each piece, then reconcile vendor tracking back to the golden record before marking sends as delivered.

What engineering patterns reduce noisy or duplicate writes?

Use idempotency keys on API writes, return fast idempotent responses, move heavy work to background workers or lambdas, retry safely, and normalize and validate data at write time.

How do I secure webhooks to prevent spoofing and replay attacks?

Verify an HMAC SHA-256 signature header using a shared secret, check a timestamp header and reject events outside a short window, apply idempotency to events, and log each event in an append-only audit trail.

Which metrics should I track to measure stabilization progress?

Track duplicate count, API 95th percentile latency, requeue and webhook failure rates, postcard match rate (tracking codes matched to golden records), and ROAS on cleaned lists. Run weekly audits and trend reports.

What is a concise checklist I can follow now?

Identify the authoritative source; enforce a composite unique ID; add idempotency to writes; verify webhooks with HMAC and timestamps; queue heavy work to workers; hold mail until tracking matches the golden record; record append-only audit logs; measure duplicates and latency weekly.

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