The Massive Benefits of (Manually) Housekeeping Your Contacts Database

Sometimes the tech just doesn't want to work with you! It says "does not compute" and you just have to fix it!

And so it was, after more and more things going wrong with my faithful old car, I decided to upgrade it last week. In the end, rather than splashing out on a Tesla or another type of electric car, I decided to exchange it for a newer VW Tiguan Diesel (so it is Euro6 compliant and I can drive into outer London for "free").

The new car is great, but when I served up my iPhone address book to be loaded into the onboard computer, it turned out that my address book contained far too many contacts and it didn't even manage to load my wife's number!

So, yesterday evening, I started the long and arduous process of slimming down more than 3,000 entries to a manageable amount. And it got me thinking about how so important data cleansing is - both in personal and business terms. Even though I faced the project with an initial dread of a tidal wave of boredom deleting so many entries!

The situation was not helped by a very badly executed exercise trying to bring my contacts together about seven years ago which I hand never properly tidied up. So I decided, at the outset, to delete anyone I couldn't remember the face of - as well as purge any obvious candidates of duplicates and other strange entries.

Eight hours (or so) of work later, across my Google and iCloud contacts, I have managed to get the list down below 1,000 - 917 to be precise!

I thought it would be a very tedious exercise. But it wasn't. It was well worth the investment!

Here are a few of the key benefits:

1. Perhaps the most surprising part, continuing on with some serendipitous moments at the Platinum Jubilee Weekend, I came across folks (and their remembered faces) whom I have lost touch with and am really keen to see again. So they'll get special treatment!
2. A few folks have passed away. I took the time to remember the good times we had together before deleting their entries. A bot couldn't do that.
3. I remembered the projects I had done with others - which, in turn, triggered good (and a few not-so-good) memories. Quite nostalgic. A data cleansing routine can't do that.
4. I remembered companies I have worked with in the past - some of which may well still want some of my newer services - so it was an easy marketing exercise. Much more intelligent, I am, than some AI engine I have to train!
5. Finally, I have a list of contacts I can load into the car, so I can call my wife! The original objective was achieved!

There is so much talk of "big data" - but having worked on such a project recently, I would suggest that "small data" where there is a memorable relationship is much more important. It also showed me how vital it is to have your family, community and business circles organised so you can connect and grow relationships, not just treat everyone as "contacts".

I'm always surprised that mobile telecom companies have never tried to help their customers conduct such exercises and let them remember and nurture the subtle relationships in their contacts/address books. It would surely be beneficial to both parties. Maybe it's not techy enough and won't scale. I'm not sure. But there's definitely a business model in there somewhere.

Maybe it exists somewhere already? If so, I don't know about it. And even if someone thinks they have cracked it, if anyone wants to collaborate with me to bring the idea to life, please let me know! I've already had one such suggestion! Keep 'em coming!