10 Best CRM Data Management Strategies To Improve Your Data Quality
Increasingly, CRMs are becoming a pivotal tool for banking, retail, telecommunications, insurance, and every data-driven sector.
However, do you realize that a CRM can only be as good as the data it houses? And when that data is complicated, nuanced, and a lot, it is essential to manage it effectively.
Data quality issues are classified into two groups based on:
1. System inconsistency- caused by non-standard formats, naming conventions, and semantics, resulting in
- Misspelled data
- Non-formatted data
2. Inconsistency with reality– caused by inefficient data capture, integration, or entry which results in
- Duplicate data
- Inaccurate data
- Non-integrated data (Stand-alone data)
- Incomplete data
The CRM data management best practices and strategies enable you to harness data and make it work for you.
Here’s a quick rundown.
10 Best CRM Data Management Strategies To Improve Your Data Quality
1. Capture Relevant Data
To enhance CRM data, set your business goals so that you can drive the data management process. This allows you to plan your data gathering and keeps the data management software from becoming overcrowded and disorganized. A large volume of useless data equals bad data.
2. Promote End User Adoption of CRM
Poor adoption of CRM by users is quite a crisis as it impacts data quality.
- Implement CRM training and support initiatives to help employees become more involved in the adoption process.
- The user experience is what drives adoption and encourages end users to enter quality data.
- The fact of the matter is, that both data quality and adoption feed each other. So, if you want your business to run on a CRM powered by reliable data, prioritize both.
- A piece of advice here is to select a CRM with a simple user interface that does not overwhelm users.
3. Ensure CRM’s Mobile-friendliness
Have you ever considered what it’s like for field service agents who are tied with non-mobile CRMs?
It makes updating data difficult when agents are unable to do it while on the move. We’ve just detected two pain points here; more instances of,
- missing data
- the wasted time when agents must return to their office desktop to update data.
4. Standardize Data Management
When your business lacks a consistent data management strategy, it is unsurprising that your organization would run on out-of-date, erroneous, and missing data, and duplicate records.
Here’s how you can standardize the data management process to streamline the information capture and storage in your CRM.
- Establish clearly defined user workflows for data management to aid standardization because a well-defined user workflow can help streamline information acquisition.
- Employees will be able to refer to the process if it is documented. A digital guide of the material is beneficial.
- Make sure to hold training sessions to educate employees on standard data processes.
- When filling out forms, make compulsory fields (*) for all vital business data.
- Set a criterion for the quantity of data required to produce new records by determining the fields that will give you functional information.
5. Create Conventions For Data Entry And Duplication
- Having a CRM that is clogged with duplicate, irrelevant, or misleading information, wrong formatting, and so on, can have a significant impact on all of the actions that occur throughout your sales cycle.
- Consequently, your salespeople may have to spend more time combing through data than actually making sales.
- And, conversion rates are reduced, CRM engagement is lower, and ROI becomes worse.
6. Update and Clean-Up Existing Data
At various junctures, businesses relocate, merge, and expand into new markets. Never let these alterations compromise the consistency of your data.
As a result, it is critical to do regular audits of your data and ensure its completeness to determine whether it can offer you the appropriate data to make sales and fortunes.
To clean your data, filter records with missing data, identify instances of duplicate records and merge them.
There are several methods to follow while cleaning up your existing data, some of them are as specified:
- Data filtering – This aids with the extraction of entries with missing data. Remove any records with blank spaces for essential information, such as a phone number or an email address.
- Running exception reports — Run a monthly exception report to identify records that have partial or missing information.
- Utilize mass editing – Bulk editing allows you to edit large numbers of records at once, saving time when compared to manual data editing.
- Merging or deleting duplicates – When you find duplicate records, filter them depending on the record owner and either delete or merge the duplicate.
7. Keep The Data Safe In The Future
- Duplicates should be avoided at the point of entry.
- Standardize the naming conventions and fields, and document the guidelines so that agents are aware of them.
- Create maintenance schedules.
- Validate fresh lead data as it comes in even while you sanitize your existing data.
- Take care to delete erroneous data and fill in any omissions. In most circumstances, the information that customers submit through your website or other means will not be clean and precise.
A CRM with an effective Data Management System is capable of accomplishing this!
8. Automate Data Management
Automation of data management, including data entry, not only saves your agent’s time but also increases the likelihood of keeping clean and accurate data. The other benefits are,
- Lowers the occurrence of incomplete, inaccurate, and duplicate data.
- Allows your agents to spend more time finding new prospects and pitching to them.
And if you’re still manually keeping spreadsheets and records, you’ll need automation and organization to stay competitive!
9. Implement An Efficient Cloud Database To Build Your CRM
- The secret to achieving data perfection in CRM is a robust database. Your CRM’s database stores and manages customer information.
- The CRM database manages customer relationships by centralizing customer information.
- With cloud-based databases, a third party hosts the system, which you access over the internet.
- It is less expensive and takes less time than on-premise systems because it does not require any technical setup.
- When data is managed intelligently by the database, your company can make a fortune by retaining customers for a longer time, optimizing sales routes, and creating winning marketing campaigns.
10. Secure The Data
The data has been cleaned, updated, and optimized; nevertheless, is it secure?
Ensure data security by,
- Choosing a trusted CRM solution that adheres to the strict data guidelines specified in ISO 27001.
- Look for security procedure documentation on the provider’s website or call them and demand it.
- Allow users only the necessary access to complete their tasks. CRM data security should ensure that only the appropriate user has access and privileges to your database.
- And use strong employee passwords, set up security alerts in CRM for data breaches, and train staff on what to do and what not to do in the event of a security breach.
Effect Of Poor CRM Data On Business
- Do you worry about the accuracy of the reports when you plan your marketing campaigns?
- Has the sales team’s interactions with prospects been overshadowed by duplicate contact records in the CRM?
- Are you confident about the reliability of your customer data when you reach out to prospects?
- Are you improving the lead metrics as they ought to be?
With unorganized data through poorly integrated systems, you risk sending irrelevant communications and witness great opportunities getting blown over.
Poor data quality can undermine the brand and business in the following ways:
1. Loss Of Perspective And Potential Customers
Poor data leads to a data disconnect that prevents you from zeroing in on the right customers, so you cannot nurture a lead with the perfect outreach leading to missed opportunities and lost customers.
2. Impacts Email Marketing
Bad data quality can affect the targeted email marketing campaigns. When you are unable to capture where your customers are in the buyer’s journey, you fail to send targeted emails both in terms of content and timing and thus cannot reach conversions.
3. Robs Your Time
In marketing, time is money. As a result, it is always best to ensure that you are not currently working with dead-end leads. You’re more likely to waste time on leads who aren’t interested in purchasing if you’re backed up by poor-quality data.
A recent study by LeadJen reveals, “Each year sales departments lose approximately 550 hours and $32,000 per sales rep from using bad prospect data. “
4. Poor Decision Making
Inaccurate data gives misleading insights backing upon which you make poor decisions. In the long term, misinformation or inadequate information might thwart your company’s progress.
5. Impacts on Customer Communication
Customers are likely to lose interest in your company’s opportunity or service if you misspell their name or cite outdated or incorrect data.
6. Poor ROI
Bad data leads to unforeseen expenses. Cost overruns can occur when you ship a product to the incorrect customer or apply pricing policies to the wrong customer segment.
Furthermore, when data is unreliable, it leads to poor user adoption of the CRM as well as lost opportunities, resulting in a loss of money and severe financial damage for enterprises.
What Is Data Management in CRM?
- CRM data management entails organizing, analyzing, and accessing data to improve customer relationships.
- The data management system must ensure that the information is correct, up to date, and complete. Every customer and prospect data must be able to provide a 360-degree perspective of their profile.
- When using a Customer Relationship Management technique to build long-term relationships between customers and businesses, quality CRM data makes the process go effortlessly.
How Does Kapture’s Data Management System Help?
A customer relationship management system cannot provide services to an organization unless it has high-quality and reliable data.
Kapture CRM software with data automation features improves your data by:
- Organizing contact information and making it searchable regardless of where the customer is in the buyer journey.
- Automating data entry as it facilitates the automatic logging of interactions (through email, phone, and chat). Thus, reducing the number of instances of incorrect, missing, and/or duplicate data.
- Providing multiple levels of enterprise-grade security protocols and guidelines (HIPAA, GDPR, ISO) to guarantee the safety of your data.
- Keeping track of communication history and handling demographic segmentation of customers.
Not only that, the CRM data management system integrates seamlessly with any other database platforms you could be using. With different systems for contact, email, and eCommerce, a best-in-class CRM can smoothly merge them.
Furthermore, it equips your marketing and sales staff with precise customer data, allowing you to maximize your company’s ROI.
Ultimately, take note that high data quality adds to exceptional service and long-term customer relationships.
Request a free demo to learn how to make your CRM a worthwhile investment.
About the Author | |
Seema C Mohan | |
Seema C Mohan is passionate about all things XaaS and loves to write value-added content. She has been in Business Process Management in the past and has published technology articles in journals. | |