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| Start New | Message Index | Flat View |
| Best Practices: Keeping Customer Databases Clean |
| Author: | JB |
| Date: | Saturday, 2nd Mar 2002 14:37 |
| Views: | 2,373 (excluding Digests and RSS feeds) |
| Category: | Computers and Software | | URL: | http://www.freepint.com/go/b16265 |
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I work for a mid-sized B2B organization with a large number (100,000+) of customer contacts. Like most businesses our size and our age (~100 years), we have had our customer data spead across several databases. Some of these databases have been tightly controlled, others have been very uncontrolled. Unfortunately, the one database that has had the most activity from the most customer service groups has been uncontrolled. That is, CSRs have been able to freely create and modify records. Needless to say there are a lot of errors and a lot of duplications.
We have worked hard to consolidate these customer databases and are nearly there. We have a solid ERP foundation and are close to being able to kill all our customer masters but one. Everything else will be fed by this one. It will feel good to get to that point.
I would like input from you Free Pinters as to how to keep the data clean and not get back into the oven we're coming out of. Thorough Best Practice documents, articles that won't waste my limited time, and personal anecdotes are all welcome.
Here's what we are facing:
- We have several service/support, marketing, and sales groups. The service/support groups particularly may well be contacted by individuals who are not in our database.
- Our paying customers can (mostly) be controlled by account numbers, login IDs, etc.
- However, contacts who are NOT paying customers (they may themselves be supporting paying customers or may be beneficiaries of paying customers) may well contact support groups and not be in the database.
- Because every interaction needs to be recorded/logged for a contact -- and the logging needs to be done one the spot -- the CSR may need to log under a name that is not currently in the database.
In our old system the CSR simply created a new contact. Over time that resulted in all the duplication and errors ("Bill Boughman" got a new record created under "William Bowman," etc.).
How do other companies handle this conundrum? How do we keep it clean from here on out?
I'd also welcome things that you have done that we should *avoid.*
Thanks! |
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| Start New | |
| Topic |
Author |
Date |
ID |
 | Best Practices: Keeping Customer Databases Clean | | I work for a mid-sized B2B organization with a large number (100,000+) of customer contacts. Like most businesses our size ... |
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JB |
02/03/02 14:37 |
16265 |
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Stuart Cliffe |
04/03/02 15:41 |
16282 |
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Andrew Denny |
04/03/02 14:02 |
16281 |
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