Handling Contacts associated with multiple orgs...

ortizmyers

Our customers often are multi-tenant customers. They have users and decision makers that have one email and be engaged with multiple companies inside their umbrella.

How can contacts be setup so they can be associated with multiple orgs so they can be attached to multiple deals?

Sophie

Hi @ortizmyers

Although this is a bit of a limitation with contacts in Pipedrive, there are a few different workarounds that may help, I added some suggestions below-

1. Using a person custom field (organization type) to note that multiple organizations are related to one contact. This would serve as more of a visual reminder that there are additional organizations linked to this contact person, it would not show as the main organization connected to this person like this. However, you are able to create a deal and link it to a contact person and an organization that is not officially linked to that contact. You can see here that I created a deal with a contact person and an organization that is not directly linked to each other.
2. Creating Multiple contact people with the same name, linked to different organizations. This is what I would recommend in order to officially have the person and correct organization linked to each item. Although it may result in duplicate contact person names, you can always use title pre-fixes, labels, or additional custom fields to add data that differentiates one contact from another.
3. Switch the way you use contact people and organizations- Although this isn't recommended, you can link multiple contact people to one organization so if you switch the way you add organizations and people, you will be able to make the organization the contact person and make the contact person each an organization. However, this may become confusing when it comes to default fields in Pipedrive and organizations don't have a default phone number or email fields etc

I hope this helps!

kristig

@Sophie Is this "limitation with contacts in Pipedrive" going to be upgraded any time soon? Our company also needs a better way to link one person with multiple organizations and sometimes multiple deals. The workarounds cause issues when there's duplicate people because there's no way to easily know which "person" you want to leave notes in or email. Too confusing. Notes are often left in the "wrong" profile and since you cannot link people in a way that allows you to see all activity for multiple people (even if the same person with multiple profiles), you have to do a lot of research to see the last time that person was even emailed.

Frank E Abate

Several Suggestions have been made in regards to work arounds for connecting people to Multiple Organizations, such as creating Organization 2 etc. In attempting to use some of these suggestions I discovered the problem is when you click on Organization you are not going to see in a List form except for those with the primary organization Field. For the designers, who don't understand the importance of this Let's understand most of us are in the business of managing and building relationships with People. When I am dealing with People I find they are not just within an Employer GROUP but may serve on various Boards Committees or belong to clubs. Which are all " Organizations" Some of the work arounds involve making Multiple People" and then associating them within 2 or more organizations. Yes that could work But is INSANE Data management with so many duplicate People created. I see it as a usable workaround for a few but it's really not worth the confusion. especially when it comes to synching to my Google Contacts- What a mess that will turn into.

Next was an idea to create A People Connection field within a New Organization. The problem with this idea is that if you look at an Organization and pull up a List of the People "connected" . That workaround idea will NOT Show the Person you put into Organization 2 Field. Yes you will see it within the person perhaps that they are connected to more than one organization. However this workaround would require MULTIPLE Additional Organizations and would only be useful in looking at a person. As I see it and the value from the proper way for this to work is when I click on an Organization I can quickly scan to see who I have a relationship with already and initiate various campaigns geared to build more relationships within that Organization.

I just still am dumbfounded that Pipe drive does not allow us to associate a person with more than 1 organization. Until they do if anyone has a better work around which will allow me to click on a person and see what Organizations I have them in and click on an Organization and see the people Linked to it in my database. I would love to hear it. Keep in mind absent of Pipedrive setting it up correctly I would like to avoid having to add 10+ fields onto a contact Record , because the real world is that people are not limited to just 1 or 2 organizations when you consider all the different spheres they can be a part of. I appreciate that they allow for people to connect to people but even that one is not set up ideally because I have 10+ People connection Fields Instead of them having added a "Label" field.

So Disappointed in this huge fundamental Flaw with this platform .