Is Your Data Damaging Your Business?
CRM stands for customer relationship management, and CRM software is one of the most vital applications you’ll use in your business. The CRM is the brains behind the operation, and it can hold data about practically everything your employees do. According to Tijl Vuyk, every business should be aiming for a single view.
But a CRM is only as good as the data it holds. That presents a whole new challenge. You might have adopted software like Salesforce or Microsoft Dynamics, but if your staff aren’t on board, it could be a waste of money.
So can your CRM be trusted? And how do you keep it up to date?
Why Good CRMs Go Bad
The key to a useful CRM is maintenance. It’s as simple as that. The data within it should be of a good enough standard to serve any employee, no matter what they’re doing.
For most CRM software, that’s a pretty tall order. Not because the software isn’t up to the job, but because the data is often left to decay, and staff rarely update it or trust it.
Addresses change, customers move, and some contacts may ask to be completely removed from your contact databases and mailing lists. Without maintenance and attention, a good database can quickly become troublesome.
Improving the Data Quality In Your CRM
Manually reviewing all of the data in a CRM would take months – possibly years. For most companies, it’s an impossible task.
To detect duplicates and remove stale records, automated matching and deduplication software is the best way around the CRM problem.
You can use a deduplication tool that automatically hooks into the CRM database, so you don’t need to export and download data manually. That means fewer security issues and less chance of a breach. Deduplication software helps to merge identical contacts that may be misspelled, and sophisticated merging algorithms can detect matches that even a human user would struggle to detect at a glance.
Deduplicating Data in a CRM
When looking for a data quality or cleansing tool for your CRM, look for the following features:
- Easy access to the CRM data quality tool. Users should be able to clean records from a familiar interface. Easy to use; unfamiliar, complex tools will rarely be used.
- More than one simultaneous user login. In order to process and match duplicate data in the CRM, the system must be efficient and accessible.
- Comprehensive matching algorithms. Simply matching contact names with contact information isn’t good enough. Look for a tool that matches across the entire CRM database, and check that it’s sophisticated enough to match phonetically.
- Direct integration with your CRM tool. You should never have to download or export data manually: doing so can risk confidentiality. Choose a tool that integrates directly with your CRM database.
Final Thoughts
While there’s an additional investment involved in cleansing your CRM data, the results will speak for themselves: happier customers, less waste, and fewer complaints from customers. The result is a healthy, clean database that can be relied upon by all the members of your team.