Getting the office, or even your personal contact list under control and keeping it that way is a daunting and sometimes apparently hopeless task. The techniques described in this article can be applied to small business and large organizations alike to help begin the complex task of developing a trusted resource, which forms the core of a Knowledge Based CRM solution, regardless of the technology solution being used.
I’ve had about 30 years experience in Business Process Improvement, Marketing, Business Development, Regional Industry Development and Client Relationship Management (CRM), it’s been my belief that CRM is the core of most knowledge based business initiatives. We haven’t always called it “CRM”, but building and maintaining worthwhile relationships should always be at the focal point of organizational activities. Managing those relationships along with outcomes and stakeholder interactions results in a knowledge based environment that engenders improved Business Intelligence and a Knowledge Sharing culture.
But it’s all too hard!
A great deal of motivation often surrounds the review of Contact Management in the office. “Let’s finally get organized” – and the world will be a better place.
My experience with many of these exercises over the years in organizations large and small, using various levels of sophistication and technology is that the project is doomed to fail for several reasons.
This “Survey the Universe” attitude or “Batch” approach typically starts with the existing list or database of contacts available. Simply make contact with each organization on the list and confirm their details; it sounds simple enough, the level of work is acknowledged, management makes commitment to the resources and the task begins. More often than not however, this involves several sources of information from printed lists with ‘marked-up’ changes, spreadsheets, databases, boxes of business cards and various bits of tacit information that come to the fore. Information is duplicated and often contradictory.
Personalities come into play; should this organization even be on our list? Is that company still in business? Didn’t they merge with so and so? Someone makes an estimate of the work involved for data entry and off they go. It usually something like this; we have 1000 contacts, it takes about 5 minutes to update each, that’s just over 80 hours, lets allow three man weeks to be sure.
In reality, the data entry takes about 10% to 20% of the effort. Researching, confirming, getting in contact with people, takes 5 to 10 times as long as the data entry itself and amazingly, this is nearly always overlooked. So a contact list of 1000 can easily blow out from an estimate of 2 weeks to 10 or even 20 weeks. Given interruptions of ‘normal’ work, you can be looking at six to 12 month commitment – is it really worth it?
Many offices consider “getting in a Temp’ or “contracting it out”, hoping to reduce the burden on the regular office staff. Given the scenario above, the Temp’ rarely has the knowledge of the organizations being updated so the research (80% of the burden) falls to the experienced staff. Temp’ data entry clerks should only be considered where the information is in a known and trusted state.
The Survey
Another apparently obvious approach to solving the problem is shifting the burden to the people on the list; your customers, constituents, members. Simply draft a survey, a few simple questions that they can answer and email or fax back confirming or correcting their details. Guess what? They don’t care about being on your database! What’s in it for me? In fact, in many cases they will ask to be taken off your database. A negligible percentage of contacts surveyed in this manner will respond with the required information, but typically these are the organizations that you already have a good relationship with and as such their information tends to be up to date. The balance will require several degrees of follow up and qualification, sometimes negotiation to get the information you need, which accounts for much of the time in the scenario above.
Let’s get to the basics. Why do you want a contact list? What contacts do you want on the list and why? Do we care that contact details are wrong if we never contact the organization?
What most offices are striving for is a central location for all information about a given contact so we can; find a contact when we need it, update it when we have to, and with a bit more sophistication, generate output in lists and other forms when required – without having to compile information from disparate sources. This single source of information, is nothing more than a sophisticated Telephone Book but it becomes the trusted resource that forms the core of a Knowledge Based, Client Relationship Management system; but more on this at another time, we need to evolve.
The Touch
To get a Contact Management System ‘up to date’ – bearing in mind that it will never be truly up to date, takes quite some time, typically 3 to 6 months, but rather than taking the ‘batch’ approach described above, we need to evolve into a revised Business Process that allows us to update and maintain the system in the normal course of business. By this I mean not imposing any additional burden to the existing work-flow of the office but changing the way we do things to build and maintain Knowledge at each “touch” of the contact.
The Touch method works on the basis that you only update information about a contact each time you ‘touch’ their records. There are a couple of important caveats though; every touch should be viewed as not only the opportunity to check existing information but to also add additional information resulting from the touch.
Secondly, to ensure all contacts are updated over time, you need to find reasons to make contact that will encourage the contact to reply. Rather than simply asking them for information, give them something and encourage a response. More about this in another White Paper; Outreach Methods – Building the Database.
In the early stages, additional burden takes the form of qualifying information for every contact that you touch. But applying the 80:20 rule, this short-term pain is quickly overcome given that typically 20% of your contacts will account for about 80% of your activities.
Actions
Step 1 – Get ALL of your contacts into a single system of your choice. It doesn’t really matter what it is and the choice of technology is more about future requirements than the achievement of the initial goal; eliminating multiple sources of information.
Good Contact Management systems provide flexible tools for importing contact information regardless of what form it is in. This import stage may require some skills beyond the skills of the usual data entry personnel and it’s advisable to get some I.T. assistance. Some of the typical problems I’ve observed with novices attempting these tasks are; importing the same list into the database several times (bad duplicate detection), importing contact information but ignoring some related information (bad data mapping), importing information into the wrong fields (more bad mapping), importing multiple pieces of information into one field (not understanding or respecting the source data). Most of these problems can be overcome fairly easily if identified early but can create an absolute mess if allowed to compound. If you aren’t sure; ask!
Sometime third party tools are used for data entry such as Card Scanning, List conversion, free-form text scanning etc. With current technology there should be no need for major re-keying of information but again, seek some assistance if you don’t understand the technology.
As this step nears completion, take the bold step of physically removing all of those ‘special’ printed list with the hand-written notes – I know you have them, every office does. There are times when you need printed output for reference or communication but the goal is to change the attitude of the office to treat these as an outcome, not a source.
Business cards are a unique phenomena and are considered by some as personal property akin to gold nuggets that they will guard with their life. Treat these people kindly, build their trust and get them to part briefly with their objects of affection and enter the information into your CRM system, place a discrete mark on the card and return it to them. These people will thank you the next time they can’t locate the name they want in their bottomless pit of cards sorted in who knows what order.
Step 2 – Clean the data. This involves getting information into a consistent and retrievable state. It will involve, locating and eliminating duplicates. In the CRM vernacular; that’s De-Duping or Merge and Purge. You also need to apply consistent data rules (e.g. USA, not U.S.A. or United States or United States of America, or America) and completing data by making sure information is included in all relevant fields. Of course if you are part of an organization that shares data with others, it’s a good idea to work with them to make sure you are working off the same set of data rules or at least understand where the differences are. Where possible document these data rules and the inevitable exceptions and use lookups and selection methods in your CRM system to constrain data input without putting undue burden on users to have too much information to complete a basic data entry.
Some data in your system will be considered mandatory e.g. Company Name, Contact name, city, phone, email etc. It’s easy to dwell and not enter data until you have all the information. In general, it’s better to have some information than none. Enter what you have and address the missing information later. Most good CRM systems will allow you to create reports to identify any missing information.
Step 3 – At the earliest practical stage, start using your Contact Management system as the primary means of looking up contact information, this can get frustrating in the early stages because information will be missing, incorrect or in some cases duplicated and contradictory. Each time you need a contact (this is a ‘touch’), if information is wrong- fix it. If information is missing, you need to go to the trouble of looking it up elsewhere – enter it. Each time you encounter a list or piece of correspondence with someone that should be on your system; look them up, check and enter any relevant information.
These ‘touch’ points don’t have to (and often don’t) involve communication with the contact but they are the opportunities to save information at a point when you have it in front of you. It’s surprising how quickly you can build and improve the completeness of your database using just this method. Remember, the 80:20 rule will apply, most of your efforts will be directed to a small portion of the database.
Step 4 – Start to identify ways in which you already communicate with existing contacts and look for other reasons to make contact with them. Each point of communication provides an opportunity to confirm information you already have or to acquire additional information. Again, at each touch, observe, gather information and enter it in the system. For example, if you are looking for companies on your database that handle a particular product you might search the list and find a few, make contact with them to confirm the information because you are considering purchasing from them (if that’s the case) and you will find they are more willing to provide information. You may know by experience that there are other companies that handle the products in question, but didn’t appear as part of your search; that’s the time to enter the information. You have ‘touched’ the contact; enter all the information you have available.
If there are other office procedures that provide you with information about a contact, use these to update records. This might include accounts, reports, notices, research, and news articles etc. All sources of information that help build and maintain your Knowledge base. If your CRM system has a feature where you can ‘link’ files to a contact; use it!
The Telephone Book Stage
Following these basic rules will help you build, and more importantly trust the information in your system. Don’t try to do too much too soon; it takes commitment and persistence to change office procedures. Focus on having complete information about your clients in a single location to help you, and ultimately help them to be more efficient and effective.
This stage of CRM Evolution I have termed the Telephone Book stage. It can be distressing to have invested time and money in technology and human resources to achieve a telephone book, however; it’s an important stage to achieve, providing you with a foundation for other office improvements and to continue evolving toward a Knowledge Based CRM environment.
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