Identity Resolution

Bringing together customer data from multiple sources is essential for a complete view of each customer. Identity Resolution seamlessly combines this data, unifying all information about a customer—whether from an email, phone number, or another identifier—into a single, accurate profile. This ensures you always have a clear and comprehensive view of each customer.

A key aspect of this process in Data Cloud is the usage of :

• Standard Identifiers, such as email addresses and mobile numbers.

• Custom Identifiers such as MRN or Customer ID.

These identifiers play a crucial role in merging data from different sources.

Standard Identifiers

Email addresses and phone numbers are the go-to identifiers in Data Cloud, working on an 'or' condition to ensure profiles are accurately merged. Let’s look at a simple example of sources of information and how they are merged:

• Source 1: This source only has the phone number of a customer.

• Source 2: This one comes with more details, including an email address and the same phone number from Source 1. Since the phone numbers match, these two profiles are merged into one. The resulting profile includes all fields from both Source 1 and Source 2, minus the common field, which is the phone number.

• Source 3: Here, it is only an email address for the customer—no phone number. However, since the email address matches the one in the merged profile from Source 2, Source 3’s data is now combined with the existing profile.

This way Data Cloud ensures that even if just one key identifier (like an email address or phone number) matches, the profiles are merged, giving a complete and accurate view of a profile.

Custom Identifiers

Custom Identifiers allow you to define and use unique fields that are specific to your business or organization. These could include loyalty card numbers, membership IDs, or any other custom data that helps you accurately identify and merge customer profiles. For example, if your business uses a Member Reference Number (MRN) or Customer ID, you can set these up as Custom Identifiers.

To learn more on creating a custom object and making it a customer identifier, refer to the Create your Data Model section.