Mastering CRM Data Cleansing: Best Practices and Pro Tips

Author

Chakshu Chhabrra

Best Practices and Tips to Clean the CRM Data
Collecting customer data is the cornerstone of your marketing and customer relationship development strategy. However, there’s a problem- this customer data can become invalid or outdated over time. And you will encounter this problem over and over again. In fact, the more CRM data your business collects and utilizes, the worse it gets. Inaccurate input, outdated contact information, or unsubscribed users can clutter your CRM data, which can have severe consequences, such as failed marketing efforts, missed opportunities, reduced sales team productivity, or compromised decision-making. Don’t worry! You can avoid these problems and maintain CRM data integrity with regular CRM Data cleansing In this article, we have rounded up the best practices and pro tips to get started with CRM data cleansing.

Best Practices and Tips to Get Started with CRM Data Cleaning

Best Practices and Tips to Get Started with CRM Data Cleaning Maintaining hygienic CRM data can help you unleash its full potential to improve customer interactions. Conversely, not keeping your CRM data clean and updated can cause a snowball effect, leading to missed opportunities and a ruined business reputation. So, here are some CRM Data cleansing tips following which you can clean your CRM data and maintain its hygiene:
  • Optimize Data Collection

When it comes to CRM data cleansing, many overlook focusing on how actually data is being collected and stored. It’s reported that 32% of sales representatives spend almost an hour of their working hours on manual data entry. And manual data entry is usually prone to errors. Instead, you should implement a CRM platform with automated data entry to improve your data collection process. It can contribute to a correct, cleaner customer contact information database. 
  • Fix Formatting Issues and Standardize Formats 

Formatting issues are the common problems you can experience with your customer data. For instance, there could be formatting inconsistencies with capitalization in name fields, state abbreviations, contact number formatting, etc. While you might think of inconsistent formatting as a minor problem, it can cause major headaches. So, one of the most vital CRM Data cleansing best practices is to fix the formatting issues and standardize the formats. You should address formatting issues and standardize the formats for the entire database at the start of your CRM data cleanup process. It will boost the effectiveness of removing unwanted data, deduplication, or other efforts.
  • Get Rid of Unnecessary Data 

  Get Rid of Unnecessary Data The more decluttered your CRM data is, the easier it becomes to utilize it. Establish a clear understanding of what customer data your business needs and delete the data that isn’t valuable for your company.  Whether it’s old phone numbers or email addresses, get rid of everything unwanted. Moreover, there might be some customers with no contact details in your database. Such contacts are of no use for your business. Look for these contacts and either remove them or update their information.  In addition, remove the leads from your CRM system that aren’t responsive and clog the system instead. Doing this can help sales representatives focus ideally on the leads that have the potential to convert into existing customers.
  • Merge Duplicate Records

Duplicate customer records become inevitable as your CRM database grows. Your company collects leads from multiple channels and systems, and inconsistent data entry can lead to the generation of duplicate records. Multiple customer records can make it difficult to locate the needed information. That’s why deduplication is among the essential CRM Data cleansing tips you should work on. 
  • Create and Consolidate the Right Fields

You might find it counterintuitive, but having more customer data is not always good. The reason? The more customer data you collect and store, the harder it gets to keep it clean. Of course, you look forward to knowing every detail about all leads, prospects, and existing customers. However, excess fields in your CRM database can open doors for formatting issues, data entry errors, duplicate records, etc. Instead of running behind numbers, consider creating the fields that can contribute more to your marketing strategy. Next, consolidate your CRM data to the most vital fields. 
  • Create and Implement a CRM Data Maintenance Schedule

Although a one-time CRM data cleaning is a good starting point, it’s only the foundational step to the long-term solution. Regardless of your data entry and formatting standards, your CRM data will always have inaccuracies, typo mistakes, and other human errors. It’s simply impossible to maintain hygienic CRM data without regular cleansing. So, it’s a good idea to have a clearly defined CRM Data cleansing schedule to make the most out of your data cleaning efforts. You can set up monthly or quarterly CRM data cleanup based on your workload to keep the database updated and error-free. 
  • Run Reports

Another CRM data cleaning practice you should follow is running advanced reports to identify potential gaps and inconsistencies in your data management process.  By doing this, you can track customer engagement and get rid of unresponsive contact records from your CRM database. It can also save your marketing efforts. For instance, you don’t need to repeatedly email customers who are no longer interested in your business. Moreover, using advanced reports can aid in monitoring the performance of your email campaigns. You can further use this information to find out the customer contacts for which emails bounce. Therefore, after identifying the invalid email addresses, remove such contacts from your CRM database.

Enhance Your Customer Relationship Management Efforts with Acelerar’s Data Cleansing Services

Decluttering your CRM data with Acelerar’s data cleansing services can empower customer relationships. Our team of experts will update the contact details of all your customers and clean and standardize sales data, helping you easily reach out to customers who are interested in your business. Therefore, convert your leads into customers by transforming your CRM into a powerful tool with Acelerar. 

Similar Blogs