This post is part of a series in which we explore problems that our customers have fixed using Insycle. Each post outlines the challenge and shows the solution step by step.
The Problem: Duplicate Deals Were Creating Bad Customer Experiences
An Insycle customer was dealing with duplicate deals that created a fractured experience for new leads and customers. Support and sales reps lacked full context because it was split up between multiple contact records in their CRM. This led to frustrating conversations and bad customer experiences that impacted the company’s brand reputation.
The company, whom we will call Ericson, operated a call center where sales reps and integrated calling systems created and updated CRM records as calls came in.
The call center was a great boon to customers who could call whenever they needed service. But at the same time, duplicate records undermined the experience sales reps could provide for those customers. People could call about very recent activity at any moment, but they couldn’t be assured of receiving good service because their information might be split up between multiple records. To fix this problem, Ericson needed data to be reliable for customer-facing sales conversations very quickly after it entered the HubSpot CRM database. Relying on manual deduplication for these deals was too slow; the damage from a poor experience had already been done.
Ericson used Insycle to ensure that deals were automatically deduplicated immediately after entering HubSpot CRM. As a result, its sales reps could engage with opportunities confidently.
How Duplicate Deals Were Harming Customer Experiences and Brand Reputation
Duplicate data created a fractured, confusing, and often annoying experience for Ericson’s new prospects and customers. The presence of duplicates in the company’s CRM meant that vital context about specific customers and accounts was split up between multiple records. As a result, sales reps risked looking at the wrong deal record during a customer call. They would miss critical context in support and sales conversations, leading to a worsened customer experience.
Additionally, duplicate deals also caused support and sales reps to step on each other’s toes, where two reps are each assigned to separate duplicated deals. This created confusing experiences for customers, who might receive different information depending on which rep they spoke with.
Customers expect companies to have a reliable log of their previous interactions with a brand. When they contact support, they expect the new rep to be able to access and build on their previous interactions with the support team. They do not want to start from scratch every time that they deal with support or sales teams.
But Ericson’s sales reps couldn’t meet this expectation because they couldn’t be confident that the record they had accessed contained all of the information about those previous interactions. Their customers often did have to start from scratch or with partial context, which hurt the company’s brand reputation. Duplicate deals also complicated deal ownership, causing sales reps to step on each other’s toes by working the same opportunity under duplicate records.
The Solution: Identify and Merge Duplicate Deals As Soon As They Enter the CRM
Duplicate deals frustrate sales reps and ultimately harm a company’s brand reputation. Using Insycle, Ericson created a process to identify and merge duplicate deals the second they entered the CRM. They created the process in three steps:
- Build a template to identify and merge duplicate deals.
- Add this template to a Recipe.
- Insert the Recipe into a HubSpot Workflow.
Step 1: Build a Template To Identify and Merge Duplicate Deals
First, Ericson built templates to identify and merge duplicate deals in HubSpot.
They started by asking themselves what it meant for a deal to be a duplicate within their system. What fields would match when a record was a duplicate?
They came up with three fields that would match when a deal was a duplicate:
- deal name
- phone number (custom field)
- source
The deal name and deal source would always match when a deal was a duplicate. Additionally, Ericson had a custom field titled “phone number” on the deal object that contained the primary contact’s phone number for the deal. This field would also match in duplicate deals.
This is what the template looked like in Step 1 of the Merge Duplicates module:
Identifying duplicates by deal name, original source, and phone number in Insycle
Note that all fields used Exact Match comparison modes, not Similar Match. Ericson also ignored symbols in the phone number field to account for dashes, parentheses, and periods in different phone number formats. This way, they were able to compare just the numerical data.
In their Filter for this operation, they set two additional parameters that a deal must meet to be identified as a duplicate and then merged:
- Deals must be active in Ericson’s sales pipeline.
- Deals must have been created in the last seven days.
Filtering by pipeline position and records created in the last seven days
In this way, the company ensured that they were only merging newly created records that were active in their sales pipeline. They also avoided merging historical records by accident.
Step 2: Add the Deal Duplication Template to a Recipe
Next, Ericson added the template to an Insycle Recipe.
Often, you might use four or five different templates to identify and merge duplicates in different ways. Using Recipes, you can bundle them into a collection and run them together. In this case, Ericson only had one template to add to the Recipe because its duplicate deals were straightforward.
An Insycle recipe with a single template added to it
Step 3: Inserting the Deal-Deduping Recipe Into a HubSpot Workflow
Then, Ericson added that Recipe directly to a HubSpot Workflow. There, the duplicate deals would be identified and merged immediately after the record was created.
Adding deal deduplication to workflow
This Workflow runs a new record through the Insycle deduplication Recipe when the create date of a deal becomes known, which happens when the record is created. Here, duplicate deals are identified and merged based on the matching settings in their template from Step 1. Then, the deal is assigned to a new owner in the sales team.
Result: Duplicate Deals Are Automatically Merged After Entering HubSpot and Before Sales Reps Engage
Using Insycle’s HubSpot Workflow integration, Ericson ensured that duplicate deals would be identified and merged immediately after a deal was created and before support or sales reps began to engage with it.
As a result, their sales reps no longer miss context or step on each other’s toes due to duplicate deal records. Support reps can help leads and customers without chasing down additional context split among duplicate records.
Now, they can confidently engage with deals in their pipeline and provide their customers with a stellar experience.
