The Data You Think Is Clean - Finding Margaret in Your CRM

Every lettings agency we walk into has at least one.

A contact record that looks fine on the surface. A name. A note or two. Some activity logged against it. Nothing that immediately raises a flag.

Until you look closer.

No surname. No company. No verifiable contact details. A viewing request attached to a property that was sold three years ago. And a note, that was added in 2018 and was never updated that says she is "very particular about parking."

Let's call her Margaret.

Margaret isn't a data entry error in the traditional sense. She is something more common and more instructive than that.

Margaret is what happens when someone enters a record under pressure, fully intending to come back and complete it properly, and then doesn't come back. The record stays. The intention doesn't.

Over time, Margaret becomes part of the system's furniture. She appears in every export. She sits in every report. She travels, unchallenged, from one system to the next when the migration happens.

And the problem is never really Margaret herself. The problem is what Margaret represents.

She is every incomplete record in a lettings agency's CRM, she is evidence of a gap, between the data standard that was intended and the data standard that was followed.

One Margaret is a data entry oversight. Fifty Margarets is a process problem.

What to do about Margaret

The answer isn't to delete her, at least not without understanding her first. Before any record is removed, it's worth asking what she represents.

Was there a real person here who was never properly followed up?

Is there a real opportunity that got lost?

At Russou, finding the Margarets is always one of the first things we do when we start working with a lettings agency.

Not to judge the data, but rather to understand what it's telling us about the business.

Because clean data isn't just accurate data. It's data that reflects how the business actually works.

Book a 20-minute data audit at russou.co.uk