Account & Contact 360

A unified customer record is the single most valuable asset in your CRM. When Sales, Service, Marketing, Revenue, and HR all read and write to the same account and contact records, every team operates from one source of truth — no conflicting spreadsheets, no stale data, no surprises on customer calls.

The Customer 360 View

Traditional CRMs scatter customer data across disconnected modules. HotCRM's Foundation layer solves this by making account and contact the shared nucleus of every cloud. When a sales rep logs a call, the service agent sees it. When marketing launches a campaign, the revenue team sees engagement. This unified approach means:

• Consistent Data: Every department references the same record — no duplicate company profiles or conflicting contact details.
• Full Context: Any team member can open an account and instantly understand the complete relationship history.
• Smarter AI: Predictive models perform best when they can see interactions across Sales, Service, and Marketing in one place.

Account Records

Key Fields

• Name & Website: The legal company name and primary web address.
• Industry: Classify accounts (e.g., Technology, Healthcare, Manufacturing) to tailor playbooks and reporting.
• Annual Revenue & Employee Count: Size the opportunity and prioritize outreach.
• Type: Categorize every account to drive the right workflow.

Account Types

• Prospect: A qualified company that has not yet purchased.
• Customer: An active, paying account.
• Partner: A channel, referral, or technology partner.
• Competitor: Track competitor accounts for market intelligence.

Account Hierarchy

Model real-world corporate structures with parent-child relationships. Link subsidiaries to a global headquarters (e.g., Acme Corp → Acme EMEA → Acme Germany) and roll up revenue, open opportunities, and case counts across the entire tree.

Ownership & Territory

• Account Owner: The primary rep responsible for the relationship.
• Account Teams: Assign an Account Executive, Solution Engineer, and Customer Success Manager with defined roles.
• Territory Rules: Automatically assign accounts based on geography, industry, or revenue band.

Contact Records

Key Fields

• Name & Title: First name, last name, and job title.
• Email & Phone: Primary email, direct phone, and mobile number.
• Department & Level: Classify contacts by department (e.g., IT, Finance, Operations) and seniority — C-Level, VP, Director, Manager, or Individual Contributor.

Decision-Maker Mapping

Tag each contact on an opportunity as Champion, Influencer, Decision Maker, or Blocker to visualize the buying committee.

Influence & Relationship Strength

• Influence Level: Rate each contact as High, Medium, or Low influence to focus your engagement.
• Relationship Strength: Track relationship health over time based on interaction frequency, sentiment, and responsiveness.

Linking Contacts to Accounts

Every contact belongs to an account. Cascade rules ensure that when an account is updated or merged, all related contacts stay linked and intact.

Cross-Cloud Visibility

From a single Account page, your team can see data from every HotCRM cloud without switching apps:

• Sales Cloud: Open opportunities, pipeline stage, forecasted revenue, and recent activities.
• Service Cloud: Active and resolved cases, SLA status, and customer satisfaction scores.
• Marketing Cloud: Campaign memberships, email engagement, event attendance, and ad interactions.
• Revenue Cloud: Active contracts, renewal dates, outstanding invoices, and payment history.

This cross-cloud view enables better customer conversations — a sales rep can check for open support tickets before a renewal call, and a service agent can see an upcoming deal before escalating an issue.

Data Quality

Clean data is the foundation of a trustworthy CRM.

• Duplicate Detection: AI-powered matching identifies potential duplicate accounts and contacts based on name, email, domain, and phone number.
• Data Completeness Scoring: Each record receives a completeness score highlighting missing fields so your team knows where to fill gaps.
• Record Merge: Merge duplicate records with full control over which field values to keep, preserving all related activities, cases, and opportunities.
• Data Enrichment: Automatically enrich account and contact records with firmographic and demographic data from third-party sources.

Best Practices

1. Deduplicate Early and Often: Run duplicate detection weekly. Merge records rather than creating new ones to keep your database lean.
2. Map the Buying Committee Before Discovery: Identify at least three contacts — including a Champion and a Decision Maker — before advancing past the Qualification stage.
3. Use Account Hierarchy: Always link subsidiaries to their parent so leadership sees consolidated metrics in Quarterly Business Reviews.
4. Log Every Interaction: If it isn't in the CRM, it didn't happen. Encourage your team to log calls and meetings the same day.
5. Monitor Completeness Scores: Set up a dashboard for records below 80% completeness and assign data cleanup tasks to account owners.