CRM

CRM’s Identity Crisis: Duplicate Contacts, Part 2

(COMPUTER WORLD) - At the core of customer relationship management is “who am I talking with?” In a simple SFA or CRM system, it’s obvious: you called them, or they called you. But in Enterprise CRM, it’s tricky to identify exactly whom the interaction is with, and every new data source seems to make it harder. Last week, we dealt with the blurring of contact information from multiple contact lists. This week, we’re dealing with avatar confusion from multiple entry points into your company’s web and social networking sites.

Your prospects and customers will typically have multiple avatars. Most executives have several e-mail accounts, a Twitter persona, a LinkedIn ID, and a Facebook page. Even if they allow cookies into their browser, they typically use more than one PC and contact your company from several IP addresses. So you don’t really know who is coming to your web site or sending you mail unless they explicitly let you know.

Sure, the fancier web tracking software vendors claim to identify (or at least categorize) these avatars, but you don’t get much information that’s worth storing in your CRM system until the person registers, calls, or e-mails you.

CRM Definition and Solutions

It’s all too common, though, for your registration system to not be properly configured to support clean identity management.

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