Forum Discussion

KimG's avatar
KimG
Qrew Cadet
4 years ago

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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  • Can you tell us what your existing relationships are between Companies, Notes and Contacts?

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    Mark Shnier (YQC)
    Quick Base Solution Provider
    Your Quick Base Coach
    http://QuickBaseCoach.com
    mark.shnier@gmail.com
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    • KimG's avatar
      KimG
      Qrew Cadet
      Companies to Contacts is a one-to-many relationship.  Contacts to Notes is a one-to-many relationship.

      Here's what a basic Company record looks like in our system.  You can see there are three related contacts at this company (-Test Company).  In the bottom section you see the related Notes for each contact at this company.  (This of course is just our test account so there's not a lot of contacts or notes.)


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      Kim Gardner
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      • MarkShnier__You's avatar
        MarkShnier__You
        Icon for Qrew Legend rankQrew Legend
        You could leave the Contact and un-attach them from the Company.  Then the notes will still know who the note was made by.  They could be archived with a flag and then if needed they can be reattached to the new company when they resurface elsewhere.

        But I will admit that 16,000 contacts is quite a few contacts and chances are when a user goes to make a new contact that will just make that contact over again as they may very well have a different email address associated with their new company. they are unlikely to search Archived contacts first.

        It might be simpler for you to use a snapshot fields to freeze in the name of the contact and any other important fields like maybe their title and email address and mobile.
        That way if you do decide to delete the contact then you still have the most important information about them safely on the Notes record.

        Then it really may not matter too much if you decide to delete them or to archive them. 



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        Mark Shnier (YQC)
        Quick Base Solution Provider
        Your Quick Base Coach
        http://QuickBaseCoach.com
        mark.shnier@gmail.com
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