Taking Care of Your Customer Data
You ask the questions, and our resident CRM guru shares her wisdom.
Q: “Who should have access to my customer data?”
A: The answer to this question may seem simple – that anyone inside or outside your organization who is responsible for acquiring, servicing, or supporting customers will need to have access to your customer data in order to complete their jobs as effectively as possible.
However, not everyone in a customer-facing capacity needs to see all of your customer data, all the time. And, given the very sensitive nature of customer information, particularly tax ID or social security numbers and credit card data, you’ll need to be very, very careful about granting access. For example, while help desk staff will need detailed information about purchase, service, and support histories, they probably don’t require an in-depth look at customer financial records. And while, in some cases, marketing teams may need to understand the preferred payment methods of clients, chances are they don’t need a complete run-down of all recent accounting transactions.
One of the best ways to balance the need for availability and accessibility with the need for security is through the use of role-based log in authentication. This will allow your administrators to set permissions for each user, preventing unauthorized access to sensitive client data. So your employees, resellers, partners, and other businesses associates will see only those portions of your customer data that pertain to their roles and responsibilities.
Submit your question to the CRM Advisor.
[Photo courtesy of cloudblogs.]
