Merging Duplicate Leads in Salesforce for Accurate ROI - 2

Situation: In Salesforce, there are often cases where in spite of working on the lead that was originally received from a certain source, there is a tendency for a user to (re)create an exact duplicate of the same lead. This is influenced by various factors such as

1. Not knowing the right location of the original lead and therefore creating a new/duplicate lead to work from
2. Not pre-checking the existence of the original lead which may have come through in the past (especially if the lead has come into Salesforce more than once)
3. Not pre-checking the existence of the original lead using various combinations of inputs such as contact’s Full/First/Last Name, Mobile/Phone Number, Email ID etc.
4. Not being able to properly convert the original lead (due to not knowing the process completely) and therefore (re)creating a new/duplicate lead to work off
5. Any other influencing factor that is not listed above

Creating duplicates of leads (and not working from the original leads) may eventually still result in lead conversions/sales, however the ROI of the program/campaign cannot be truly determined as a result of which there could be a negative perception of the program/campaign not performing (and could potentially lead to the ceasing of the program/campaign).

Objective: To ensure best practice handling of leads through various scenarios depicted in this guide which will eradicate (or at-least mitigate) the duplication of leads. This guide is divided into 2 sections

1. Scenarios depicting best practice handling of leads in order to avoid duplication of future leads
2. Walkthrough of de-duping of existing leads using the Data Import Wizard on Salesforce

Covering both the sections above will de-dupe existing leads (using the Data Import Wizard) and mitigate the duplication of future leads through the best practice handling of leads.

Outcome: Delacon leads (that were once orphaned due to the creation of duplicate leads) are then worked on, converted and attributed towards the conversions/eventual sales therefore resulting in an accurate ROI.

Section 1 - Best Practice Handling of Leads

Scenario 1 – Call made to 1300 Delacon tracking number/Web Leads sent through web form/page

1. In such a scenario, when a call is made to the 1300 Delacon number, the corresponding lead will populate in the inbound leads list view/queue
2. In such cases, the corresponding lead from the queue needs to be worked on. There is a tendency to click on ‘New Lead’ when conversating with the customer over phone and this should be avoided as this will create a duplicate
3. These steps also apply to a web inquiry sent through a web form/page
4. Refer to screenshot below for further clarification
5. In cases where the lead does not populate in the leads list view/queue despite a call being made to the 1300 Delacon number, please contact your support team for further assistance

Scenario 2 – Successive/back-to-back Calls/Web Leads of the same Contact/Person in the queue

1. At times, it can be noticed that a person/contact would have made several calls/sent through several web forms successively (sometimes even minutes apart). In such cases, duplicate leads would be created by the system
2. In such cases, when a contact has resulted in two/more leads, the former lead(s) is closed off as a duplicate and the most recent lead is worked on/converted. However, if the former lead/one of the former leads has already been converted to an opportunity, then the recent/other lead(s) is closed off as a duplicate
3. Refer to screenshot below for further clarification

Section 2 – Using the Data Import Wizard from Salesforce

This section consists of four main parts

1. Creating the leads report on Salesforce i.e. this Salesforce report will consist of all of the leads that are to be de-duped based on the report/filter criteria
2. Extracting the CSV excel file from the leads report i.e. this CSV file will consist of the original lead attributes and mappings
3. Preparing the CSV leads file from Salesforce i.e. changing the lead attributes and mappings in the downloaded CSV file. This updated file will now consist of the new lead attributes and mappings and the duplicate leads will be quarantined using unique identifier(s)
4. Importing the Salesforce Extract onto the Data Import Wizard i.e. importing the updated CSV file onto Salesforce in order to reflect the changes in the CRM

Creating the leads report on Salesforce

• Hit the ‘Reports’ tab on Salesforce and then hit ‘New Report’
  • Refer to screenshot below for further clarification
• Collapse the ‘Leads’ folder so that it shows all of the options underneath. Select the ‘Leads’ report type from the options and hit ‘Create’
  • Refer to screenshot below for further clarification
• In the search bar under ‘Fields’ (refer to screenshot below under point no. iv), ensure the following lead attributes are searched for and included in the report by dragging and dropping the attributes into the report. Ones in yellow are mandatory.
  • Lead ID, First Name, Last Name, Title, Company/Account, Phone, Lead Source, Lead Source Details OR Lead Source Other, Street, Email and finally any and all attributes starting with PLA (as these are the Delacon lead attributes)
  • The ones starting with PLA are

• Also, where it states  and 
  • please check with your Salesforce administrator/point of contact on what filters and date range to use in order to retrieve the desired report out (as each Salesforce implementation/ecosystem varies across clients)
  • Refer to screenshot below for further clarification

• After the report has been run, hit and choose a name for the report
  • Refer to screenshot below for further clarification

• The leads report has now been successfully created that will be used to extract the leads from. Please take note of the report name that has been used and the report URL for the next section

Extracting the CSV leads file from Salesforce

1. Go to the leads report that has just been created and that consists of the leads that are to be updated/de-duped:
   • In order to demonstrate the update/de-dupe concept, a sample report with dummy leads has been used (refer to screenshot below)
   • The screenshot below houses 2 leads on which the update/de-dupe concept will be demonstrated
   • There are two leads – one with Lead Source “Delacon” and one with Lead Source “Cold Call (Outbound)”
   • What has happened here is that the “Delacon” lead is the original lead that came through an inbound marketing source. However, a user has created another lead “Cold Call (Outbound)” rather than working on the “Delacon” lead. As a result, the “Cold Call (Outbound)” lead has the personal information of the customer and the “Delacon” lead has the analytics information of the customer
   • Refer to screenshot below for further clarification

• In this example, the intention is to map the personal information of the customer (i.e. First Name, Last Name and Company/Account) from the “Cold Call (Outbound)” lead to the “Delacon” lead and render the “Cold Call (Outbound)” lead as a quarantined lead
• The intention is to retain the Delacon lead as this is the original lead that came through and this is the lead from which all activity and conversion should take place
• In order to proceed to with updating/re-mapping the leads, extract the CSV from the report above and go to the next section i.e. Preparing/Cleansing the CSV file from Salesforce
  • In order to extract the report, hit the  option and save the report in CSV format (mandatory to save in this format)

Preparing/Cleansing the CSV leads file from Salesforce 

1. From the previous section, the CSV file would have already been downloaded as per the instructions. Make sure that the original file is NOT worked on. Create a copy of this file and work on the copy instead as the original file will act as a backup file for restoring the original values in case there has been an error in importing the updated file.
2. For e.g., if CSV file name is report1472948584939 then create a copy of this (for e.g. report1472948584939_v2 and work off this version)
3. Open the file to view the leads
4. What is to be done is that the First Name, Last Name, Company/Account and Email information from the “Cold Call (Outbound)” lead are to be copied to the First Name, Last Name, Company/Account and Email fields of the “Delacon” lead
5. Also, from the “Cold Call (Outbound)” lead, input Lead Source Details as Quarantined. This will ensure that this lead is classified as a quarantined lead which can be filtered out of reports
6. Refer to screenshot below for further clarification which consists of the ‘Before’ scenario (i.e. before making the changes to the attributes) and the ‘After’ scenario (i.e. after making the changes to the attributes)
7. If the CSV file that is being worked on has exact duplicates of rows for some reason, follow the instructions listed in the ‘Index’ section on page 9 of this document
8. After changing the values in the CSV file, save the file (in CSV format)
   • The data is now ready for import using the Data Import Wizard tool

Using the Data Import Wizard from Salesforce

1. From Setup, enter Data Import Wizard in the Quick Find Box, then select the Data Import Wizard option
2. Click on Launch Wizard
3. Select Leads, then select Update existing records
4. Set Match Lead by to Salesforce.com ID
5. Select the CSV file that contains the import data and click Next
6. Refer to the screenshot below for further clarification
7. Map the Lead ID field to the Lead ID column field in the CSV file, and map the other fields
8. Refer to the screenshot below for further clarification
9. Click Next
10. Review the import settings, and click on Start Import
11. Once the import is completed, the Bulk Data Load Job screen will appear indicating completion of task

Index

Additional Topic – Removing exact row duplicates in a table/range of cells

In order to remove exact row duplicates in a table/range of cells, a demonstration has been provided below on a sample dataset. Refer to screenshot below for further clarification