French companies use CRM on a massive scale, but they are still struggling to exploit its full potential. Too many companies still use CRM simply as a contact book, or feed it with (very) poor-quality data, with all the consequences this has on business (see our article here). Let’s look into it!
CRM in France: widely adopted but largely under-exploited
The French CRM market is booming, driven by the relatively recent enthusiasm of SMEs and SMIs. Today, 88% of French companies have a CRM, and of the remaining 12%, 17% are planning to acquire one in the near future, according to a Nomination study. Salesforce dominates the market, closely followed by Microsoft Dynamics and HubSpot.
There’s a downside, however, and it’s a major one: only 40% of companies with CRM systems report an adoption rate of over 90% with their teams (CSO Insights). Worse still, 25% of SMEs only use their CRM as a simple contact book, missing out on the benefits of a properly managed CRM (customer knowledge, interest signal detection, upselling and cross-selling, purchase history exploitation, finer segmentation, real-time sales performance monitoring, etc.).
CRM is definitely part of the corporate technology stack, but it is largely under-exploited. Our observations in the field confirm this: CRMs often run on poor-quality data.
CRM and Data Quality: 3 problems that need your attention
#1 Duplicate entries
Duplicate entries are probably one of the top 3 CRM data problems. There are several reasons why duplicate entries may appear for the same contact:
- The same contact is entered manually by different employees, for example two sales reps who interacted with the same potential customer at two different events;
- CRM imports and merges data from different sources without checking it. Double entries are inevitably created if these lists have contacts in common;
- The CRM is not configured to use unique identification criteria such as an e-mail address or a phone number. As a result, the same contact can be recorded several times, with slight variations;
- An employee awkwardly updates an existing contact, which triggers the creation of a new record (rather than modifying the existing one).
There are many consequences for marketing (multiple campaigns sent to the same contact, spam, biased reporting, domain name reputation) and sales (fragmented customer history, overestimation of the number of prospects or active customers, sales representatives unwilling to use the CRM because it is unreliable…).
#2 Incomplete data
Customers don’t “prefer” customized interactions. They demand it! According to McKinsey, 76% of them are “frustrated” when this expectation is not met by the company. But in order to customize, you need to know. And to know, you need complete data, which is far from the case with databases for several reasons:
- When the data is first entered, not all the required fields are filled in, either because they have been forgotten, or because the information is not immediately available;
- The import process from other systems may miss some fields if they are not perfectly mapped, or if there are gaps in the original source itself;
- Over time, information needs evolve, but old customer records are not always updated to reflect these new information fields;
- If customer interactions are spread out over time, the information gathered during the first interaction may never be completed during subsequent interactions.
On the marketing side, missing contact information restricts campaigns, whether for prospecting, nurturing or loyalty. The absence of an email address prevents the team from adding the contact to email campaigns. Without a phone number, any text message strategy becomes meaningless. The absence of a postal address prevents the sending of free samples, catalogs or other forms of direct marketing.
In sales, an incomplete customer file is a waste of time. Sales resources are scarce and expensive, especially in France (see here). Asking sales reps to update and/or correct customer files is a recipe for frustration. Second, a sales rep who doesn’t know what products the customer bought previously could miss out on a cross-selling or upselling opportunity.
Another problem is that the absence of information on the customer’s line of work or company size may lead to additional research, or even trial and error in the sales pitch if the interaction was not anticipated (e.g., a call received).
#3 Obsolete data
A surprising figure to start: between 25% and 33% of data becomes obsolete every year, depending on the sector (change of employer, retirement, internal evolution, relocation, merger – acquisition, etc.).
For marketing professionals, working with obsolete data results in talking to the wrong audience, wasting resources on ineffective campaigns and low return rates. Even more problematic: sending communications to obsolete or incorrect addresses can affect deliverability and the company’s reputation with email service providers, with a direct impact on the ROI of campaigns.
For sales reps, basing interactions on obsolete data leads to missed appointments, unsuccessful calls and poorly targeted proposals. When sales teams realize that they don’t have the most up-to-date information during a conversation, their credibility is damaged, as is their customer’s trust. Finally, every hour spent searching for the right information is an hour less spent on the actual sale.
Data Enso turns your CRM into a business driver
Do you identify with these issues? Is your CRM not performing as a sales catalyst? Are you piling up data without using it to boost your sales performance? Data Enso can help:
- We audit your existing database to assess its quality and recommend a custom action plan to recover your Data capital;
- We clean up your existing data: deduplication, verification, formatting, etc. ;
- We complete your B2B databases with the information you’re missing thanks to our data enrichment solution;
- We improve the reliability of the data collected from your contact forms (automatic correction in real time, data entry assistance, etc.).
Are you interested? Test our solutions for free for 30 days with no obligation!