CRM Data Cleaning Strategies for Accurate Customer Records

5. Update Old and Incomplete Data

Customer information will constantly change. They could change jobs, move to a new company, update their phone number and/or email address.

If you don’t update this information in your CRM it may cause issues for staff contacting them. Ensure that key customer information is regularly reviewed and updated if possible.

Start with active customers and potential leads. Check their names, phone numbers, email address, company information and job roles.

Where necessary you can contact customers to confirm their information.

When looking at incomplete data, you should focus on the information that will help your business.

For example, if your sales team rely on company names and lead status to assign customers to the correct representative ensure this information is included.

Sometimes you can use data enrichment tools to fill in some information. However always ensure the information is reliable before adding it to a key customer profile.

Having a regular process in place will help your business keep accurate and useful data.

6. Delete Unnecessary Information

Sometimes having a large CRM database can be detrimental to your customer management. Some companies will collect too much information and rarely use most of it. This can cause issues with maintaining the data.

Staff may be adding unnecessary information to the CRM such as irrelevant fields.

Look at the fields you have in your CRM and see what information you actually need.

Delete any unnecessary information or update any data that doesn’t have a purpose.

However be cautious when deleting old customer data. Some information may be needed for historical reporting, customer service or legal reasons. It may be better to archive or mark as inactive.

Also ensure that you are following your company’s data retention and privacy policies.

You want to ensure you are keeping useful data.

7. Create Simple Data Entry Guidelines for Staff

If staff aren’t entering data in the same way it can become difficult to manage your CRM.

Some staff may be adding full information about the customer, whilst others may only be adding the name and phone number. Some may be adding new profiles without checking if they already exist.

This can cause regular issues.

To avoid this you can create simple guidelines for your data entry.

Ensure your staff know what information they need to enter and how to format it.

For example: