Why Data Hygiene Is Crucial to Making Your CRM Useful

Written by Sanat Sethi | May 13, 2024 10:40:06 PM

TL;DR

What Makes Your CRM So Hard to Use

CRM. For some people, it's the scariest word in existence. Why is that? Instead of being an asset filled with valuable data, it's a nightmare tool with too much data entry and not enough clean data. This is especially true of Salesforce. Salesforce promises that you'll be able to see a comprehensive view of your customers. It should be that - CRM is the lifeblood of many companies, especially those that are Business to Business (B2B). Imagine marketing, sales, customer service and other customer data in one place. That is the potential of CRM. In the real world, however...

Why Clean Data Matters

Imagine you're in your CRM. You look up "John Smith" at "ABC Company". Your search turns up 3 different "John Smith" linked to 3 different "ABC Company". Huh? The email is different in 2 of them, and isn't present at all in 1. None of the entries have the right address. Worst of all, you have 2 different Opportunities linked to different Contacts/ Accounts.This scenario isn't a hypothetical - it's something I've seen over and over again over the last decade. You end up wasting time trying to find information, miss out on opportunities and contact the same customer repeatedly. Imagine this nightmare scenario: "You're from Acme Consulting? I just spoke to one of your colleagues a few weeks ago. Don't you you guys have a CRM?" Is there anything worse than wasting a (potential) customer's time (and yours)?

The Messy Truth About CRMs

So, why do CRMs end up looking like a teenager's bedroom floor?

Manual data entry: Too much data entry ends up being manual. Sales people want to sell (as an example), not waste their time filling out customer information that could be automatically filled. Imagine having customer emails readily available as opposed to having to dig for them yourself.
Data decay: As soon as data is created, it becomes obsolete. Okay, okay, things aren't that bad, but the truth isn't that far either. People leave jobs, companies are constantly opening and closing, and contact information changes rapidly. Instead of a dynamic tool, CRM becomes a glorified rolodex.
System interrogations: Mix in a dash of system migrations and integrations that don't quite sync up, and you've got yourself a data hygiene headache.

Start by understanding what you've got. Identify duplicates, outdated info, and incomplete records. This gives you a clear picture of the task at hand.

Spring Cleaning Your CRM

I know it all seems doom and gloom, but I promise it's not. In fact, with even a few simple changes, you can greatly improve the quality of data in your CRM. The important thing is to start with understanding what you currently have, and then start little experiments to try and improve data hygiene. Here are some steps to take your CRM from cluttered to clean:

Audit and Assess: Start by understanding what you've got. Identify duplicates, outdated info, and incomplete records. This gives you a clear picture of the task at hand.
Standardize Your Processes: Build an approach to data entry that decides what will be manual and what will be automatic. Determine CRM rules that only allow data to be entered in a certain way and decide on mandatory fields. Consistency is your new best friend.
Automate Where Possible: This step is key! You don't want your employees to play "pin the data on the CRM". Instead, find the in-built and paid tools/ features that will allow your CRM to automate both data entry and data cleansing. Reduce errors and let your employees focus on their work.
Regular Check-ups: Data is supposedly the new oil. I'm not sure about that, but it's definitely a slippery fellow, constantly in danger of becoming useless. Build a system for periodic data cleaning - making it a part of your regular routine will ensure your CRM stays squeaky clean.
Embrace Data Cleaning Tools: There are tools that will help you truly take control of your data, by enriching and cleaning it. For example, you can have customer titles, emails and other details validated automatically through automated tools. Make such tools a part of your arsenal.

Salesforce Functionality for Dealing with Hygiene

There are many tools within Salesforce to help with data hygiene - I've highlighted 4 to help you start thinking in the right direction.

Wrapping It Up

Why do we care about keeping our CRM data clean? Ultimately, we're looking to become more effective as a business - we want more sales, we want to better market to customers and we want to serve them efficiently. CRM can be an enabler of all that. The starting point to achieving those goals is useful, clean CRM data. It's not an easy task, but a worthwhile and necessary one.

I'm writing a future post (or 10) that will dive deeper into data hygiene in practice - the goal of this post was to lay down groundwork for further discussions on this topic.

Thanks for reading! Check out some other resources on the topic below.