CRM data is in such a terrible state that practitioners sometimes falsify it to get what they want. And many would leave their jobs over it, judging by The State of CRM Data Health in 2022, a study
released Thursday by Validity.
Of the marketers polled, 75% say employees have faked data to tell the story they wanted decision makers to hear, with 33% saying they have faked it often
and 42% saying they have done so sometimes. And 82% have been asked to find data to support a scenario even if it is not accurate.
But 87% say leaders rely on CRM data to make key
decisions for their departments. Ninety-one percent contend that the data to support these decisions is inaccurate, with 51% saying it is often inaccurate and 40% sometimes.
There is a
real cost to all this: 44% say their firm has lost 10% in revenue due to poor-quality CRM data, and 64% are so dismayed that they would consider quitting if additional resources were not allocated to
support data quality.
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And while 76% claim their CRM data is good or very good, this confidence may not reflect reality.
For instance, 75% acknowledge that their firm has
lost customers due to duplicate and/or inadequate outreach caused by bad data. And 50% have lost new sales for the same reason.
Also, 69% say their firms fail to pursue or complete
potentially valuable initiatives.
Moreover, bad data quality has prompted firms to delay or halt email campaigns and other efforts:
- Marketing
campaigns — 47%
- Sales pipeline processes — 37%
- Brand awareness initiatives — 37%
- Customer
service initiatives — 35%
- Marketing automation strategies — 33%
- Re-engagement email campaigns — 33%
- Customer retention initiatives — 20%
- Other — 1%
Specifically, companies suffer from these problems:
- Missing or
incomplete data — 56%
- Incorrect data — 46%
- Duplicate data — 44%
- Expired data —
35%
- We have no data quality issues with our CRM — 5%
- Other — 0%
What’s driving this storm of
bad data?
For one thing, 79% say data decay has increased due to COVID-19. But the study identifies these three syndromes:
1. Leadership doesn’t prioritize data
quality
Only 19% say CRM data quality is a high priority for their leadership
While 25% of leaders are aware of data-quality issues, they do not support initiatives to improve the
situation.
Another 14% say leadership is oblivious to data quality, and 24% say management does what it wants regardless of what the data says.
2. Management
responsibilities are murky
The respondents say:
- it is the full-time responsibility of a cross-functional team — 21%
- it is the
full-time responsibility of a single person or department — 17%
- it is the full-time responsibility of someone in IT — 13%
- the
owning department is debated internally within my organization — 12%
- it is a part-time responsibility for a cross-functional team — 12%
- it is a part-time responsibility of a single department, such as IT or sales operations — 9%
- it is the full-time responsibility of someone in marketing
— 6%
- it is the full-time responsibility of someone in sales — 3%
- it is the full-time responsibility of a different department
— 3%
- it is no one's responsibility — 2%
- don't know — 2%
- other — 0%
3. Organizations think they are taking steps to improve data quality — but take the wrong ones
Here is what they are doing:
- We use manual processes to
identify and correct data quality issues: 51%
- We supplement what's in our CRM with third-party data: 38%
- Third-party data management
solutions: 35%
- We clean data before it is imported into our CRM: 33%
- We hire temp workers and/or paid interns to improve database quality:
23%
- We don't take any steps to achieve optimal data quality: 6%
- Other: 0%
Validity surveyed 1,241 customer
relationship management administration workers in the technology, retail, e-commerce, professional services, healthcare, travel, distribution, or manufacturing sectors.Of these, 606 were in the U.S.,
318 in the U.K. and 317 in Australia.