A new post-pandemic normality
The past two years have been incredibly uncertain, with many of us having to adapt to a new working style. Now, the volatility feels like it’s settled into a new normal and workforce trends have started to emerge. But how do the new workforce trends of 2022 affect you and your CRM system?
Trend 1 – Hybrid work styles
One of the biggest trends that has affected CRM data quality is the rise of remote and hybrid work. During the pandemic remote working rose significantly, with 46.6% of the workforce working from home. During 2022, fully-remote work has decreased slightly, however, hybrid roles have become increasingly popular. The state of consumer trends reported this year that 32% of the workforce are now fully remote and 28% work in hybrid working roles.
With employees working from home, it can be difficult to keep track of contact information and other details that are crucial for effective CRM use. Additionally, there is the operational challenge of remote access to the IT tools and resources staff require to carry out their jobs effectively. Access issues and poor internet connections can prevent CRM data being updated in a timely manner and lead to inconsistent customer data entry.
Trend 2 – The great resignation
Spoken about in one of our previous blogs, the great resignation shows no signs of stopping, with record numbers of employees leaving their jobs since the start of the pandemic. The process of transitioning between job roles can lead to gaps in CRM databases and inaccurate data, as well as inconsistency and duplication.
The detrimental impact of missing and incomplete data can be seen on customer service levels. Often leading to a decline in customer satisfaction and engagement.
Trend 3 – Layoffs and new business formations
It’s no surprise that the impact of global events and the state of the economy has seen businesses facing difficult circumstances, with redundancy rates reaching record highs. Just last month tech giants like Meta and Twitter announced mass-layoffs. In the tech space alone 20,300 workers were made redundant last month.
Despite this, the number of new business formations rose by 18% in the first half of this year, with London seeing the highest business creation rate. Over 402,000 businesses were registered with Companies House between January and June 2022.
With many employees leaving their positions because of redundancy or to create a start-up, the rate of CRM data decay in 2022 has significantly increased. The changes result in crucial data going missing or becoming outdated due to the transition of workers. It is important to ensure that businesses have adequate systems in place to keep their CRM data up to date and accurate.
Overall
Fortunately, regardless of these unavoidable workforce trends there are steps that you can take to ensure that your CRM data remains accurate, consistent and up-to-date:
Regularly review and update your CRM data: To ensure that your CRM data is accurate, it’s important to regularly review and cleanse it. This means checking the validity of contact information to ensure it’s not out-of-date, verifying that all required information is included, and making sure that your data is properly organised.
Educate employees to increase adoption: It’s crucial that your employees understand the importance of maintaining accurate customer data to ensure CRM data quality in the face of emerging workforce trends. Provide regular training in the best practices for data entry and management.
Use data validation tools: Maintaining CRM quality with large volumes of customer data can be incredibly time consuming. However, tools and software solutions that validate your CRM data upon entry, such as our DQ for Dynamics ™ Capture tools, can vastly improve speed and accuracy. DQ Capture’s data verification tools automatically check for errors and authenticate your data at the point of entry to prevent the risk of inaccuracies entering he CRM.
By taking these steps, you can mitigate the impact of workforce trends on your CRM data quality and ensure that your CRM system remains a valuable asset to your business.
