Recommendations on when to delete or archive contacts
Hi
We use QuickBase for our CRM with many contacts who are related to companies, who have notes. (Three related tables.) We have a long term relationship with our customers that spans years and doesn't end at the sale close. If I have notes on a project with "Bob Smith" and he leaves Company ABC, what should I do? What makes the best sense to do with his contact record?
Option 1. Delete Bob from the contact table:
Pros: this is what my sales people say they want. Since he's gone, they don't want to see his name in the system. We may have many contacts, and we don't want to be confused about who is there and who is not. We may be working with a large account that has 20 contacts for 5 different projects over the course of several years. They have a hard time figuring out who is currently relevant.
Cons: any notes related to Bob will show up with no contact since he no longer exists. Is there a way to keep his name associated without him being in the contact table?
Option 2. Set Bob to a type "archive"
Pros: as a separate type I can easily filter him out of the main contact list on the account; his name will still show on notes so the sales team can tell who old notes are related to, even though he's not there.
Cons: in the global search, if I search for Bob, he will still show up (is there a way to filter the global search?) This is a problem with people with common names. I could have a different Bob Smith at another company. Also, it often happens that contacts who job hop, end up contacting us from their new company, and then we now have Bob Smith at Company XYZ. I already have 16000+ contacts in the database; keeping people extra people seems silly.
Is anyone else using QB in a similar way? How do you do it? What do you recommend? I'm leaning on the "archive" method, but it's my sales team that has to be happy.
I appreciate any suggestions on how to structure this.
Kim
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Kim Gardner
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We use QuickBase for our CRM with many contacts who are related to companies, who have notes. (Three related tables.) We have a long term relationship with our customers that spans years and doesn't end at the sale close. If I have notes on a project with "Bob Smith" and he leaves Company ABC, what should I do? What makes the best sense to do with his contact record?
Option 1. Delete Bob from the contact table:
Pros: this is what my sales people say they want. Since he's gone, they don't want to see his name in the system. We may have many contacts, and we don't want to be confused about who is there and who is not. We may be working with a large account that has 20 contacts for 5 different projects over the course of several years. They have a hard time figuring out who is currently relevant.
Cons: any notes related to Bob will show up with no contact since he no longer exists. Is there a way to keep his name associated without him being in the contact table?
Option 2. Set Bob to a type "archive"
Pros: as a separate type I can easily filter him out of the main contact list on the account; his name will still show on notes so the sales team can tell who old notes are related to, even though he's not there.
Cons: in the global search, if I search for Bob, he will still show up (is there a way to filter the global search?) This is a problem with people with common names. I could have a different Bob Smith at another company. Also, it often happens that contacts who job hop, end up contacting us from their new company, and then we now have Bob Smith at Company XYZ. I already have 16000+ contacts in the database; keeping people extra people seems silly.
Is anyone else using QB in a similar way? How do you do it? What do you recommend? I'm leaning on the "archive" method, but it's my sales team that has to be happy.
I appreciate any suggestions on how to structure this.
Kim
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Kim Gardner
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