3 Tips to Spring Clean Your Salesforce Data

Spring is here! At this time of year, most businesses take this time to do some cleaning in preparation for the new season. This spring, why not focus on a clean and organized customer database in order to prioritize customer issues? Not only will it improve the quality of customer service, but also result in greater profits for your business. Salesforce administrators know all too well that their CRM database can be cluttered with missing fields or incorrect information resulting in a lot of inefficiency. Often, data is pouring in from a lot of different sources and information can be reached from number of access points, only confusing matters more. Don’t leave your CRM in a mess- follow these tips in order to get your Salesforce database ready for the spring season. #1 Enter Only What You Need It is often very tempting to simply dump entire excel files, leads, and contact data into Salesforce without a second thought. But, if you make sure you enter only the data you need right at the start you can prevent your database from getting cluttered with junk and unnecessary information. Similarly, it is important to make sure critical fields are not left empty so that users can get what they need. #2 Create a System for Retrieving and Adding Missing Data Save time by looking for missing data elements like phone numbers or address information before uploading the data and take care while filling in an individual record. Adding missing data at an earlier stage and focusing on a few records at a time is a lot easier than going through an entire database to find what is missing. You can save time and money by linking online customer self-service features to your Salesforce database. When customers maintain their contact information for you, you will have more accurate and complete information with less cost. As well, make sure users update the status of a contact or lead every time an activity is performed. If data is not updated regularly, it will quickly lead to inaccurate results. #3 Standardize Data Entry Formats When you label all campaigns and implement a standardized, company-wide naming system it will help prevent bad data at the source. This will simplify the system for all users and ensures every record is entered accurately. Implement a standard procedure for entering data such as account names; addresses and job titles so that retrieving information for reports or mail campaigns can be carried out in a simple and efficient way. As well, running your data through a normalization process and formatting it while it is still in the csv file or excel sheet before you upload it to Salesforce will save time and avoid confusion. It is a lot quicker and will prevent you from having to access different accounts to re-check the data online once it has already been uploaded and assigned to different users. Conclusions Databases that are not properly maintained and updated can lead to a decline in performance, which will greatly affect the quality of service offered to your clients. Whether it is a CRM administrator or marketing manager, having someone take the responsibility of regularly maintaining your database, and is evaluated based on the completeness and accuracy of the database will result in a more streamlined and efficient system. As well, a regularly scheduled third party data validation and augmentation service in order to keep your database up to date is crucial for best results. Databases that are not properly maintained and updated can lead to a decline in performance, which will greatly affect the quality of service offered to your clients. Removing CRM clutter this spring- cleaning season will ensure better communication with your customers and will guarantee a higher quality of service.