How to Clean Dynamics 365 Customer Service Duplicate Records – CRM Software Blog

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September 24, 2024

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service is a powerful tool, but it can suffer from duplicate records, which can cause numerous issues. In this article, we’ll explore how to clean Dynamics 365 Customer Service duplicate records, focusing on effective strategies and tools like Connect Bridge.

Why Is It Important to Clean Duplicate Records in Dynamics 365?

Duplicate records in Dynamics 365 systems can lead to:

Fragmented customer data – the customer information is scattered across multiple accounts.
Misaligned support cases – the support case ends up linked to a mostly empty account, while the customer information is in another account
Inefficient customer service operations – not having all the information in one account causes service operations to ask for information that is already known and to not be as efficient as it could be in solving issues

Ensuring a clean database is crucial for maintaining accurate customer information, providing better service, and making informed business decisions.

What Causes Duplicate Records in Dynamics 365?

Duplicate records can occur in Dynamics 365 for multiple reasons, such as bulk data imports, manual entries by different users, or integration with other platforms like websites or social media channels.

Strangely enough, even adding another Dynamics 365 solution can cause duplicates to appear. This happens specifically when adding Dynamics 365 Customer Service to an existing Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement, as we will see below.

Consequences of not Managing Duplicate Data in CRM Systems

Failure to manage duplicate data can lead to:

Poor customer service and customer engagement due to fragmented customer information
Inaccurate reporting and analytics, negatively affecting decision-making at different levels
Increased operational costs due to inefficiencies and extra manual work

The Challenge of Duplicate Records

To illustrate this challenge, we will focus on our own experience with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service.

When we built our Support Portal, we based it on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service. We thought that having customer service information linked to our CRM, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement, would be beneficial.

But when we launched our Support Portal, our pre-existing customer base revealed a troubling challenge. Each time a customer registered on our Portal, a duplicate contact was created in Microsoft Dynamics 365 CE. This resulted in the misalignment of support cases with the real customer accounts and contacts. A lot of manual effort had to be put in so that this would not impact our service quality and operational efficiency.

Initial Approaches and Their Shortcomings

Automatic Email Invitations: One potential solution we considered was sending automatic email invitations to the Support Portal to link duplicate contacts with the correct customer contacts. However, the low email open rates, averaging 35.63% according to Mailchimp Email Marketing Benchmarks and Metrics 2024, made this approach impractical.

Default Record Merger: We also considered a default record merger. Unfortunately, merging records straightforwardly would result in customers’ loss of access to our Support Portal. This made it impossible to go down this path. After all, we were launching the Support Portal and wanted as much user adoption as possible.

The Chosen Solution – A Dynamics 365 Plugin

To effectively address this issue, we decided to create a custom Microsoft Dynamics 365 plugin. Here’s how it works:

Registration Scanning: During Support Portal registration, the plugin checks if the user already exists in the CRM.
Duplicate Management:

Existing Customer Match: If the user exists, the plugin merges the new record with the existing one in our CRM. This consolidation does not affect the user’s access to the Support Portal.
Bulk Delete: A Bulk Delete job is run weekly to purge empty duplicate records, ensuring our CRM remains clean and efficient.

New User Management:

Domain Check: If the user does not exist in our CRM, the plugin checks if the email domain matches any existing customer Account. If a match is found, a new Contact is created within that account.
Internal Notification: If no match is found, the system informs us internally. This allows us to handle the registration manually with no delays.

This custom plugin has significantly improved our duplicate data management in Dynamics 365, offering a mostly automated, scalable solution to keep our CRM data clean.

This link contains part of the code for our Microsoft Dynamics 365 plugin. If you want the complete version, feel free to contact us!

Additional Tools: Connect Bridge

When you have a technical background, and you are discussing duplicates, two words come to mind: database and deduplication.

Although you should resist any urges to fix problems with duplicates directly in the system’s database for data integrity reasons, there is a safe strategy to handle it this way.

You will need a commercial tool, Connect Bridge. This middleware can present most of the data in Dynamics as if it were a database, allowing you to run SQL queries. You can run all CRUD operations, and it really emulates database access. You can get a first impression of how it works and what you can achieve here.

Another important point is that you can create your Connect Bridge integration by coding in your chosen programming language, by using a Power Automate flow or by using a Linked Server in SQL Server Management Studio.

Did you know?

If you use Connect Bridge to build your integration and get data to (or from) Dynamics, then when a new version of Dynamics is launched you will NOT have to update your code or flow.

This Connect Bridge approach is very flexible, and it can help in:

Bulk Clean Database: Streamline the process of cleaning the Dynamics 365 database, removing the headache of manual oversight.
Prevent and Merge Duplicates: Automate the detection and merging of duplicate records in Dynamics 365 CRM, preserving data integrity and coherence.

Dynamics 365 Customer Service Duplicate Records in Short

Organizations can keep their CRM systems efficient and reliable by implementing these strategies, whether through fully custom plugins or simpler solutions based on commercial tools like Connect Bridge. And remember, avoiding duplicates and having a clean Dynamics 365 Customer Service database is not an end in itself! This is all about enhancing customer interactions, maintaining trust, and ensuring streamlined operations.

For more details about this approach, Connect Bridge, or if you need the complete code version, please reach out to us directly using the form or email!

By Ana Neto

Software engineer since 1997, she is now a technical advisor for Connecting Software.

Connecting Software is a producer of integration and synchronization software solutions since 2004. We operate globally and we are also a proud “Top Member” and “Top Blogger” at CRMSoftwareBlog.