There is quite a bit of talk in the industry about cleaning CRM data. In fact, there is an entire cottage industry that develops tools to help you clean up your database. Today, you may need these tools to clean your database but how do you prevent it from becoming “dirty” in the future?
There are typically three reasons why data is dirty in your CRM;
- Static data decay over time (only a very small amount)
- Inaccurate data enters CRM
- Duplicate data enters CRM
Make Clean Data a Reality
Since static decay represents a very small portion of your data, I am going to address inaccurate and duplicate data here. There are three things that need to happen to make clean data a reality.
- Standardize sales processes – In many banks, the sales workflow is too general allowing for different organizations to have their own processes. It doesn’t make sense for each region or each branch to do things their own way when it impacts the overall results. Banks will continue to treat their customers in a siloed manner and never achieve a seamless omnichannel customer experience until the sales workflow is standardized across the entire organization.
- Automate the input of data – Since banking is a consultative process, each banker may interpret customer needs in a different way – even if the needs analysis is standardized. Banks must automate the input of data into a needs analysis and the resulting product recommendations to begin the standardization process. Automation puts scientifically generated product recommendations tied to customer needs directly into the CRM removing any bias, guesswork, or mistakes made by the banker.
- Integrate CRM into other systems incrementally – Most organizations tend to want to integrate the CRM system with every other system immediately which can complicate dirty data even more. Do integrations incrementally to ensure the data is clean before moving on to the next integration.
Gain New Insights
Once you automate the needs analysis and associated product recommendations, your data will give you insights, consistencies and new sales that you were never able to get before.
- You can now measure what was sold against what could have been sold – the profitability gap.
- You can now see which products resonate with customers and which ones don’t.
- You can now see that most customers qualify for 3x the number of products.
- You can now do much more targeted marketing based on searches such as “what products have been recommended in the last 90 days in certain segments that have still not closed” – enables you to market to them specifically.
- You can now track the exact flow on lead referrals and see gaps in the process that need to be filled.
- You can now make each customer a profitable customer with multiple products.
To learn more about how to make clean CRM data a reality, click here.
Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
