by johnt
10. May 2010 16:09
The dream of any company's CRM strategy is to achieve one view of their customers, this is determined firstly by the quality of their data. Therefore before going to the expense of buying or developing a CRM package, companies need to clean their existing data and then ensure all further data captured is consistent.
Initially the company can use a data cleaning provider to clean the current data. This will ensure all the data complies with Royal Mail address rules (PAF), removes duplicates and flags any records for suppression viz. deceased or gone aways. Many companies will have the same person under different names at the same address as a customer e.g. Jenny Thomas and a Jennifer Thomas at the same address. Customers may become annoyed as they receive unwanted mail and the company is wasting money sending out mail to the same person.
Secondly companies may have their data captured at many different sites, using an integrated cloud based data capture and validation service the company can insure consistency of data capture. This type of service can be used on websites or call centres. Not only do they improve consistency they will speed up data input by using postcode lookup, they will also verify telephone numbers, email addresses and credit card details.
With these basics completed the introduction of a propriety CRM system should be easy and the dream of a single customer view a reality.