Define customers we have not contacted before building the report

“Show me the customers we haven't contacted” sounds like a simple dashboard request. It can hide several different reports.

Sales may mean accounts with no completed conversation. The office may count an unanswered call. Marketing may count a reminder email. A manager may want to see a property that nobody has discussed, even though someone spoke to the parent account yesterday.

If those differences remain unresolved, the integration will produce a precise-looking answer to an unsettled question.

Write the rule people can challenge

For a working example, suppose the team agrees to this requirement:

Each account manager sees active accounts with no completed two-way conversation in the past 30 days. Accounts with an assigned follow-up already due appear separately, so the screen does not create another task for the same work.

The 30-day window is a choice for this example. A different sales cycle needs its own rule. What matters is that the definition can be tested against an actual account.

Now inspect a recent week. A call went to voicemail on Monday. An automated reminder went out on Tuesday. The property manager replied to a text on Thursday. Under the agreed rule, Thursday is the qualifying interaction. A field labeled last_activity might select Tuesday or a later internal note instead.

Decide which facts the report needs

• Active account. Working definition: An account the business currently services or pursues. Owner in this example: CRM owner
• Meaningful contact. Working definition: Completed two-way conversation, with date and participants. Owner in this example: Sales operations
• Account assignment. Working definition: Employee responsible for the next customer conversation. Owner in this example: Sales manager
• Existing follow-up. Working definition: An open assigned task for the same account and purpose. Owner in this example: Task owner
• Property contact. Working definition: A conversation tied to a particular service location. Owner in this example: Operations

One conversation with the corporate buyer should not automatically mark every property as contacted. The account view and location view can both be useful, but they answer different questions.

This is where a strategy earns its place. It records the choices that determine the data model and the report. It also exposes a missing input early: the phone system may record call duration without recording whether a useful conversation took place. The team then needs a disposition or another dependable signal.

Accept the report against known accounts

Before delivery, select accounts whose histories employees can verify. Include an unanswered call, a completed conversation, a shared phone number, and an existing task.

The review should establish that the right accounts appear, each recommendation explains its reason, and the manager can inspect the interaction supporting it. Confirm that staff can disagree with a result and correct the underlying fact. A report that requires a developer to explain every row will struggle in daily use.

Only then choose the update method and interface. A morning worklist and a live call-preparation screen have different timing needs. Both can use the same agreed contact definition.

The first deliverable from discovery should be this kind of written requirement: the decision, the facts behind it, the responsible owners, and the acceptance checks. It gives a customer data integration project something more substantial to build toward than “all our information in one place.”