Siebel Loyalty Administration Guide > Working with Siebel Loyalty Program Members > About Working with Loyalty Members Using the Siebel Application Interface >

Merging Loyalty Program Members

You can merge one or more Loyalty member accounts into another member account.

For example, a merge can be useful if someone enrolled in the same Program twice by mistake and accrued points in both memberships. You can use a merge to combine these two memberships into one.

A merge can also be useful if someone enrolled in a Program as a household, but other people from the same household enrolled in the same program as individuals. You can use a merge to combine the household and individual members as a single household member.

During the member merge, there are two kinds of members:

• Surviving Member. The member that survives after the merge. You must select this member last when you do the multiselect before the merge.
• Deactivated Members. The members that do not survive after the merge. These are the members that you do not select last before the merge.

You must follow these guidelines for the merge to be successful:

• All the members must be enrolled in the same program.
• If the surviving member is an individual, then all deactivated members must be individuals.
• If the surviving member is an account or household, then the deactivated members can be of any type.

Results of the Member Merge

This topic describes how data from all the records are merged into the surviving record when you perform the merge:

• Points. Siebel Loyalty adds up the Available, Lifetime and Qualifying Points of all members, and it gives the total to the surviving member.
• Last Transaction. Siebel Loyalty compares the dates when the last transaction was processed for all members, and it uses the latest date as the last transaction of the surviving member.
• Contact Campaigns, Activities, Transactions, Vouchers, Service Requests, Statements, and Membership Cards. Siebel Loyalty gives the Contact Campaigns, Activities, Transactions, Vouchers, Service Requests, Statements, and Membership Cards of all the members to the surviving member. Siebel Loyalty combines the transaction history of all the members into a single transaction history and combines the service request history of all the members into a single service request history.
• Tiers. Siebel Loyalty allows the surviving member to retain the highest tier or the two tiers. In addition, the member's tier is recalculated based upon the new combined point total at the next regularly scheduled tier recalculation.
• Tier History. Siebel Loyalty gives the combined tier histories of all the members to the surviving member. This means that the tier history shows overlapping tiers in the same tier class for the same date.
• Contact-Level Information. For information stored at the Contact level, such as the Travel Profile:
  • If the same contact was used for all memberships, then Siebel Loyalty keeps the surviving member's information.
  • If different contacts were used and these are individual memberships, then Siebel Loyalty keeps the surviving member's information.
  • If different contacts were used and these are household or account memberships or an individual membership being merged into an account or household membership, then Siebel Loyalty adds all contacts to the surviving membership. The user decides which of these contacts to keep.
• Enrolled Promotions. The enrolled promotions of all members are combined.

Member Attributes

During the member merge process, member attributes are merged but member field attributes are not. By default, the member merge has the following results for member attributes:

• If member attributes cannot be added together, then Siebel Loyalty keeps the attribute value of the surviving member. For example, this applies to member attributes with values such as yes or no.
• If member attributes can be added together, for example, numeric totals, then they are added.

You can specify how member attributes are added by selecting an option in the Merge Action field of the Loyalty Program Administration screen, Program Level Attributes, Member Attributes view. For example:

• If Sum is selected in the Merge Action field for this member attribute, then the merge sums the values for that attribute for all the members and gives the total to the surviving member. This feature is useful, for example, if there is a member attribute to store the number of miles traveled by a member and you want the merge to sum the miles given by all the members and give the total to the surviving member.
• If Standard is selected in the Merge Action field, then the merge gives the surviving member the same value that the surviving member had for this attribute before the merge. This setting is useful, for example, when the attribute is text for which an operation such as Sum has no meaning.

The values that are available in the Merge Action field depend on the data type of the attributes, as shown in Table 33.

Changing the Results of the Merge by Setting User Properties

The following results of the merge can be changed by using Siebel Tools to change the user properties for the LOY Member business component:

• Delete Merged Tiers. If this user property is set to Y, then the surviving member retains the highest tier of the two tiers. If it is set to N, then the surviving member keeps all tiers of all merged members.
• Delete Merged Contacts. If this user property is set to Y, then the surviving member keeps only the contacts that the surviving member had before the merge. If it is set to N, then the surviving member keeps all Contact records of all merged members.
• Delete Non-Qualified Merged Promotions. If this user property is set to Y, then the surviving member keeps only the promotions that the surviving member was enrolled in before the merge. If it is set to N, then the surviving member keeps all promotions of all merged members.

Performing the Member Merge

Use this procedure to perform the member merge.

To merge a member with another member

1. Navigate to the Loyalty Members screen.
2. In the Members list, multiselect all the records you want to merge, while holding down the Shift key.

   NOTE:  Be sure to select the deactivated members first and the surviving member last. Siebel Loyalty merges all the selected records into the last-selected record.

3. In the application-level menu, choose Edit, Merge Records.
4. In the Merge Records confirmation message window, make sure the displayed Member Number (#) is that of the intended surviving member, and click OK.

   All the merged members' points, activities, vouchers, service requests, promotions, member attributes, and referrals are added to the survivor member's existing items. Member field attributes are not merged.

   NOTE:  Deactivated members' records are retained with the Status of Merged.