Our CRM migration went sideways and now I'm sorting 14,000 duplicate contacts manually

We switched from an old ACT database to Salesforce last month. The data import tool they pushed us to use created a mess of duplicates because the matching rules were way too loose. I spent Tuesday morning combing through records and found 14,000 duplicate contacts, some with three or four versions. Had to build a custom dedupe script in Excel just to make sense of the mess. Has anyone else dealt with a botched CRM migration like this?

2 comments

2 Comments

rodriguez.jordan27d ago

Oh man, that's brutal. Have you looked at whether those duplicates are actually different people or just the same person with slightly different spellings? I've seen migrations where "Bob Smith" and "Robert Smith" end up as separate records, but they're the same guy who just goes by a nickname. Also check if your old ACT database had any hidden fields or notes that got duplicated into new fields, creating false matches. The matching rules being "loose" is one thing, but sometimes the import tool grabs junk data from random columns and treats them like contact info. You might have fewer than 14,000 real duplicates if some of those are just data ghosts from the old system.

ramirez.sage27d ago

WHOA. 14,000 duplicates? That's a nightmare. I just read an article from some data guy who said that about 30% of CRM migrations have this exact problem because the matching rules are too loose and it grabs EVERYTHING. He said it's way better to be strict at first and then manually add in matches later. Your Excel script idea is smart though, I heard someone say you can use conditional formatting to highlight cells where names or emails are off by just one letter, and that catches a ton of the "Bob vs Robert" type stuff real fast. But man, even with that, you're gonna be staring at spreadsheets for a solid week. Hope your coffee is strong and your patience is stronger.