Poor Salesforce Data Quality Can Cost More Than You Think

How Data Impacts Customer Experience

Just because you have access to tons of data, doesn’t always mean it’s being put to good use. Poor quality data can lead to significant losses.

What is leading to bad quality data? First, the rapid pace of digital transformation has accelerated machine learning (ML), artificial intelligence (AI), and Internet of Things (IoT), resulting in overwhelming amounts of data. The Forbes article shares a prediction from the market research firm IDC, which says that the amount of data over the next three years will increase dramatically, estimating that it will amount to more than all the data created over the past 30 years.

“The reason bad data costs so much is that decision makers, managers, knowledge workers, data scientists, and others must accommodate it in their everyday work. And doing so is both time-consuming and expensive,” explains the article, Bad Data Costs the U.S. $3 Trillion Per Year in the Harvard Business Review.

Meanwhile, digital transformation has also put the focus on improving customer experience for organizations. According to a survey of approximately 1,100 executives conducted by Harvard Business Review Analytic Services, 58% of respondents ranked improving CX as a top business priority. However, just 17% rated themselves as CX leaders. 

Why is there a disconnect? Overcoming organizational silos can be a huge barrier. The transition to becoming a customer-centric organization requires a commitment to understanding and serving customers; improving it involves changes across the organization. 

Michael Krigsman, who hosts the executive discussion platform CXOTalk discusses this in the Salesforce article Making Customer Experience the Heart of the Enterprise. He writes, “Customer experience is about understanding the customer and being willing and having the capability to adapt your processes, your products, your services, so that they meet those customer expectations, goals, and desires.”

Extending Salesforce to Overcome Data Challenges and Improve CX

When organizations overcome these barriers and manage their data better, the positive rewards of an effective CX strategy can be huge. The Hidden Cost of Poor Customer Experiences explains, “Companies who successfully implement a CX strategy achieve higher customer satisfaction rates, reduce customer churn, increase revenues and employee satisfaction.” 

Passage Technology helps clients overcome challenges with Salesforce® data, so they can deliver more connected customer experiences. For example, we helped Prosper Healthcare Lending improve customer engagement and their sales process by giving them access to data in real-time.

As a patient financing marketplace company headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah, Prosper Healthcare Lending* uses technology to bring innovative financial services solutions to healthcare. Providers fill out forms on Prosper's website to refer their patients and complete loan requests. When these referrals come in, account data and loan request data is automatically entered into Salesforce. 

They implemented the Experience Cloud, Salesforce’s Digital Experience Platform to provide access to loan request status details. Initially, Prosper was using Salesforce reports to get this information, which was time consuming. Multiple steps needed to be carried out by users to update information before the reports could reflect accurate data. Having a real-time process was needed so that account managers and their customers didn't have to wait to analyze this information.

To fill this gap in Salesforce and provide real-time loan request status and summary information to the account management team and customers, they created rollups in Rollup Helper for each of their loan metrics. Rollup Helper from Passage Technology was the only solution that allowed them to do this in real-time.

Prosper has experienced positive results. Rollup Helper dramatically improved customer engagement and has positively impacted their sales process. Now Prosper Healthcare Lending can acquire and communicate more information in real-time than ever before. Account manager users and customer portal (Experience Cloud) users can easily login and see in real-time what's going on with funding and what pending loan requests exist. What used to take each account manager 30 minutes to 45 minutes to generate, now takes only seconds. 

To learn more about how you can extend Salesforce to overcome your data challenges and improve customer experience, contact us.

*Note: Prosper is a subsidiary of Prosper Marketplace, America’s first peer-to-peer lending marketplace, with more than two million members and over six billion dollars in funded loans.