Keeping your Customer Data Clean -- Tips for

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Maintaining data integrity requires a process where all people within the organization consistently and regularly enter updated information on customers. This can be an automated process or a manual process. The important point is that it needs to be well communicated that data integrity is important and that everyone is working towards the goal of maintaining accurate customer information.

Here are some ideas for checking and verifying your customer data:

1. At the point of purchase, verify the person's contact information and enter it into the computer as a part of the transaction.
2. If the customer makes an appointment, verify the contact information during the appointment setting process.
3. Invest in a card scanner, maybe even one for each person with a customer facing role. Everyone has stacks of business cards. Get that information into a common electronic format. It makes it easier for the individual salesperson, but it also enables you as a company to collect that information and aggregate it into a centralized contact source for the company.
4. Train customer service people to be your data integrity checkpoint. If they are working with someone to place an order, to ship a product, or to make an appointment have them verify the contact information every time.
5. Use your customer database to generate mailing lists for both email marketing and for direct mail regularly. Monitor these campaigns for which addresses bounce or generate a return from the post office. Then work to update and correct the addresses which generate bounces.
6. If you have a sales team, develop a process where you synchronize the customer information in their personal contact list back with the company database. Often times the best contact information is sitting within individual salespeople's computers instead of in a centralized repository.
7. Create a map of all the places within your organization which touch a customer or which generate information specific to a customer. Evaluate how you can connect these information sources so that you have a complete view. Most large companies have complex data warehouses. However, there are inexpensive tools and software which can enable the centralization of data with the same outcome on a smaller scale.