Yes, it’s that back-to-school feeling with a crispness in the air and a tendency to make fresh starts and create new resolutions.
Exactly! Fall is the ideal time to open up your online contact database software and take a serious look at the data contained inside. When was the last time you performed a purge of your customer contact software, spreadsheets or written details to remove redundant records, or check against updated contact info? Data hygiene is an essential part of good contact database management! Contact Boss, for example, has a very thorough search function that ensures your contact database is as pristine as possible. The robust search allows you to find anyone or a list of contacts in seconds, with just a partial name, event date, or descriptor, and includes a search of the detailed notes or the custom fields that you have created that you’ve added to the record. In fact, Contact Boss contact manager software subscribers should enjoy a very streamlined fall clean-up process since they likely avoided entering duplicate records, due to the efficient search tool that identifies similar records in your address management software at the time of data entry.
As part of the data cleanse and in keeping with good customer database management practices, it would be beneficial to ask all team members to do a quick cross-check of their current clients and contacts to ensure that the record on file matches up with their usual outreach channels. Considering the multiple means to connect these days, it is entirely possible that the contact record can be enriched with new information regarding social media handles or preferences regarding messaging tools. It’s also beneficial to note that the best customer database software for small business is cloud based at this time, ensuring that users can access the client tracking software easily from the office or home-based office.
Your contact management software review should also include an analysis of the usage data of your team members. The best online contact database tools have audit functions that will allow you to review activity and understand contact database software uptake among your sales or management group, making it easy to run detailed reports of logins, entries, and modifications, as well as audit use. Any resistance on the part of your staff to using contact database management software for small business would no doubt be picked up through such an audit, allowing you to uncover the issues and address further training or other support to improve comfort level among all staff. For instance, the Contact Boss client contact software audit trail tracks each entry and user, helping you understand usage and adoption patterns.
As part of your review of your cloud-based CRM software for the fall season, consider setting up a few training sessions to increase comfort level and adoption rates of your team – a quick screen-share demo session can also add value and greater efficiency to the best use of your web-based client management software.
Finally, Autumn is a good time to double check the security features of your contact management tool to ensure that there is no chance of your valuable data becoming compromised. The best client management software tools allow you to set up multi-factor authentication for logins verifying the user’s identity before granting access to company devices, email, etc. by requiring a password and a security question, ensuring that no data has been compromised by providing the time of login and logout, browser type, IP address. A quick review of your contact management solution will provide a comfort level that the client contact database is secure.
Another feature to check in your business contact software is protection against data loss in the case of hard-drive failure, device theft or cyber attack. With Contact Boss cloud-based client management system all data is scheduled to be backed up once per week and stored in the cloud in various secure locations. Security threats are a real concern and remaining compliant with data and security regulations can be a confusing process, so finding the best online contact manager.
So, why not take advantage of fresh temperatures and enthusiastic “back-to-school” attitudes to maximize the use of your software to keep track of contacts!
