Set up a database for customer information
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Knowledge is power! Capturing data on customers is essential to capitalise on your knowledge of their purchasing habits, and may lead to further business. But a database is only as effective as the last time the information was checked and updated, and good database management is essential. Everyone knows how irritating it is to receive a wrongly addressed letter. This can imply that if your business cannot get an address right, how good can it be at providing a service or selling a product? Choosing software
Selecting the right database software is important, ideally it will give you a flexible system which allows for growth and expansion, and will produce reports and relevant data on a range of queries. The wrong software will tie you up in database management for far longer than necessary and you could end up inputting only information which your database can handle, defeating the objective of flexible data management.
Information selection
Deciding what you want your database to do will generally dictate the information it should hold. Essential information will include:
- Name and address
- Salutation
- Use or otherwise of first name
- Job title/company name
- Contact details (home/work/mobile numbers, fax, e-mail)
- Date information was last updated
- Consumer demographic
- Industry/commercial sector
- Details of last purchase
- Other relevant details to your business
- Last contact made with customer (and marketing material sent)
The more you break down the information, the more flexible your database will be. For instance, put the first and last name into two fields, with the salutation in the third. Another field should be created for 'use or otherwise of first name', which can be selected when you are sending a letter to all those on your database. Some contacts will be unfamiliar to you and should be addressed formally, while others will be offended if you didn't use their first name. Using held information
Whether you are using the database as a marketing tool, mail merging with sales letters and producing labels, or gathering information on the purchasing trends of your customers, you should be able to sort and view the information in an easy format. This will enable you to produce printed reports for your staff and sales force to work from.
Database security
It is likely that you will want the majority of your staff to view the database and run simple reports, however it is important to have only one or two people managing and inputting information. This will help to maintain the integrity of the information held within the database.
It is good practice to set up password access to the database, this way you will prevent unwanted users from looking at your customer information - this is particularly crucial if your staff use laptops. Backing up your database
Back up the database frequently and keep the backups in a safe place. Recreating an up-to-date database is impossible and lost or damaged data could prove a serious setback to your business.
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