6 Little-Known Ways To Enhance Your CRM Data Quality

You may have invested a few hundred dollars in implementing CRM software to better understand your customers’ needs, organize your database and offer personalized services to drive your sales opportunities. However, simply implementing the software without providing CRM training to your workforce may not help you achieve the desired results.

Research suggests that around 30-50% of all CRM projects fail outrightly. And though over one-third of all CRM deployment projects fail, CRM is still a business necessity for both SMEs and large enterprises. Why? Because it comes with indispensable tools and features that are helpful in enhancing the data quality, automating mundane and repetitive processes, improving customer satisfaction and retention rate, and centralizing your workforce to drive positive outcomes.

If you want to make the most of your CRM spending, you should focus on devising a strategic plan to improve your CRM data quality so that critical business actions can be taken in seconds. Let’s discuss in detail how you can keep your CRM data in a healthy state.

1. Collect Data from Online Sources Only

Many companies collect data from various sources like events, direct customer interactions, interviews, online forms, feedback, etc. Collating such scattered data to gain insights about your customers or prospects becomes a challenging task. It is advisable to gather data from online sources since it becomes easy to integrate the collected data into your CRM software. Besides this, it is advisable to avoid using open-ended questions in your data collection forms. Instead, allow your customers to answer the questions by selecting one of the four options (MCQ type) or through rating options.

2. Communicate Your Goals or Pain Points Clearly

The next step to improve your CRM data quality is to share the company’s goals with your workforce clearly yet briefly. Before you begin, ensure that the data you have on hand is complete, since lack of adequate data is one of the primary reasons for poor data quality. Once you are done with this, share it across with your personnel so that they can start working on the pain points and bring insights that cater to your customers’ needs. This will help you save on both time and money.

3. Train Your Workforce To Use The Software

You must provide complete training and support to your workforce on how to use the software and the best data quality practices that they should adopt to make the most of this tool. By organizing training on a weekly or monthly basis, you can not only educate your workforce but also address the common queries they are facing. You can also go a step ahead and create a library of resources to empower newbies on how to use the CRM tool effectively. This will help you make the most of your customer relationship management (CRM) system.

4. Avoid CRM Data Entry Mistakes

Double-checking the data while entering it into the CRM can significantly reduce inaccuracy. To validate the accuracy of data that is keyed-in, you can do the following:

• Don’t forget to use the spell-check feature of the CRM software you’re using. 
• For entering specific values or characters, you can make use of predefined lists to key in data accurately.  
• To avoid the repetition of values in bulk data, you may opt for CRM data entry services. 

5. Schedule downtime to clean your CRM data

You can avoid duplicate or incomplete data while doing manual CRM data entry by cross-checking it. Remember, if an inaccuracy is left unaddressed, it can put a dent in your bottom line. To ensure your CRM works at its best, it is recommended to schedule downtime for periodic data clean-ups to overcome the negative outcomes and improve the data quality.

6. Automate repetitive tasks

Businesses that implement a CRM system can automate repetitive tasks to reduce the turnaround time and extract more accurate information. By automating the mundane tasks, you can not only reduce the possibility of errors but also keep your CRM data healthy.

Wrapping Up

When it comes to improving the quality of your data, always keep in mind that – ‘what you put into your CRM is what you get out of it’. To get the best ROI on your CRM, we suggest you follow the 6 CRM data management best practices discussed in this post. At any point in time, if you need an expert’s help, you can write an email to info@data-entry-india.com.