|
|
|
This all started when we were approached by a company whose service reps often
had to submit more than one search in order to find customers in their massive
database. Many customers did not know if they opened their account under
their cell phone or their home phone. The reps would try each phone
number until they found them.
Last name and zip code searches were not helping either. Many times they
ended up searching on the first two characters of the last name plus
the zip code. They paged through a large result set until they found
the record of the impatient customer on the other end of the phone.
The reps wanted to look up names based on how they sound
and NOT how they were spelled. They also thought it would be helpful if
when they typed "Bob" into their search page the application was smart enough
to offer "Robert" as a possible match. So the idea for SoundsLike was
born.
After researching and testing several algorithms, including the outdated
SOUNDEX algorithm, Metaphone, etc. we finally came up with something that
worked for us.
We originally wrote this .Net component to integrate in to the various systems
we build and had no intentions on selling it. Since we
have successfully enriched the searching capabilities of many of our
applications, we thought others may benefit from it as well.
How it works 
|
|
 |
|
|
|
