Capturing Current Contacts Using Business Card Scanner

[MCallies]

Looking for a way to capture current contacts in our database with the business card scanner. We want to know who attended certain shows and sometimes our leads are already in our database. But the business card scanner only works with new to your database contacts. Looked at the Latest Source Drill Down options, but that only applies to website stuff. Need some sort of trigger for the business card scanner. 

[GLovering]

I also have this issue. I have a sales team who scan cards from events and meetings and some of which may be exisiting contacts in our database but the content... like job title or phone number may change... so I would expect the data to be added and then either managed like a duplicate or just autoupdate the records. 

I set up a report/list to view the LATEST SOURCE for the contacts where then I can edit on mass all the cards scanned during a timeframe and tag them with an event. 

BUT the latest source is only picking up new contacts created not any updated ones. 

Why would the card scanner not add contacts that exisit? 

[KRi23]

You can let the sales team edit the contact so they click the event, however that's not seemless.
I would also appreciate the card scan being logged somewhere, then I could do a workflow "card scanned around this date, add event X to the custom field event source".
The important point here is to capture the different touchpoints of leads in a complex/long sales cycle.

[BukunmiOdetayo]

Hi @MCallies 

I am yet to fully understand your requirements. If I got you right, do you want to be able to capture existing contacts from your database via the business card scanner? As of now, I think the business card scanner only lets you import new contacts to your CRM with the scan feature.

But do you mean you also want to be able to know if the business card you're scanning contains contact information already present in your database?

If yes, that means if you are able to import contacts with the business card scanner, and the scanner doesn't let you know if the contact you're trying to import is already present in your database, you might want to deal with something like "managing duplicate contacts".

Please confirm.

[MCallies]

Literally just want it so I know if a card was scanned at a show so I can have my sales team follow up accordingly. As of now, the card scanner only captures new contacts not existing ones. I've made a slight workaround for it, but it adds a few extra steps that could be cut out.

[MKokořová]

Hey, I am currently solving a similar issue. Could you please provide more information about the workaround? I would be really interested in seeing your solution. Thanks!

[MCallies]

Essentially just created a new property in a grouping called Events and called the property "Events Attended". Made the property multiselect so you can choose multiple choices and added the events as the choices. The hassle with it is, you have to enter all your events in as options and you have to make sure your sales team remembers the extra step of simply adding the event and saving. They can literally scroll down in the property to the new event, select the checkbox and save and you can append events so you won't overwrite anything. Then simply create a list where the property contains the event name. Works well, just have to make sure they do the extra step. 

[kvlschaefer]

Thanks for sharing this workaround, @MCallies! 

[TitiCuisset]

Hi @MCallies 

Thank you for reaching out.

I want to tag some of our experts on this - @BukunmiOdetayo @SNigam @Levi do you have any thought for @MCallies on this?

Thank you!

Best

Tiphaine

[DianaDurdeu]

Any update on this?