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Dynamics 365 Community / Forums / Customer experience | Sales, Customer Insights,... / Keeping Prospect vs Cu...
Customer experience | Sales, Customer Insights,...
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Keeping Prospect vs Customer Lists Separate

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Posted on by Jordan D 25

Hi All, 

I am new here and was hoping someone could point me in the right direction for this. My company is implementing D365 Customer Engagement and I am looking for advice on how to keep prospect files separate from customer files on the contact form.

We have customer files that pull over from a integrated solution on a daily and weekly timeline and are loaded/updated in CRM as Contacts as we sell to individuals not companies generally speaking. We are also looking to have leads come into CRM from multiple points that we will qualify as Opportunities and thus create a contact for. My question is as both these are contacts what are the best practices to keep them separate in the CRM for marketing, outreach, reporting etc. and what is the best practice to reconcile the to contacts when a CRM on Contact is also added into our integrated solution and becomes a customer. 

Hope that makes sense and thank you for any help you can offer. 

Kindly,

Jordan 

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  • Verified answer
    Wahaj Rashid Profile Picture
    Wahaj Rashid 11,321 on at
    RE: Keeping Prospect vs Customer Lists Separate

    Hi,

    Thank you for your query.

    I would use the same way as Debbie explained.

    You can use the existing option-set field name Relationship Type (customertypecode).

    Add the following options as per your need (out-of-the-box these options are not added):

    • Prospect
    • Customer

    Few more points to help segregate the two contact types:

    • When you are importing the Contacts (integration), mark them as Prospect or Customer (based on your requirements).
    • Create a process/flow, to mark the contact as Customer when Opportunity is Won. You can add a simple workflow, that would trigger from the Business Process Flow. This way, your contact dataset will be organized without human intervention.
    • Similarly, identify other actions/data points, where you can automate the process of marking the Contact as Prospect or Customer.
    • it's a good idea to set a Price List (default) for the contacts where the Relationship type is Customer. This another pointer to segregate a customer from a prospect.
  • Community Member Profile Picture
    Community Member on at
    RE: Keeping Prospect vs Customer Lists Separate

    Hi Jordan,  I had the same issue for a customer I was working with except that we needed this for accounts.  For contacts I would use the oob field called "relationship type" with the options of prospect and customer and make it a required field.  That way you could create a new view showing all contacts that have the relationship type = prospect and another view all contacts with relationship type = customer.   Or just filter the all contacts by adding this column to a view.  

    You could also create separate contact forms for prospect or customer.

    I also created a business rule that when a lead is converted into a contact to set the relationship type as prospect.

    I also locked the "customer"  on relationship type with field level security, since they were populated by a back end system.  Not sure if this would be your requirement?

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