What's the best way to handle contacts with no name?

Question

We want to record some contact details of accounts where we don't have contact names, but we will want to be able to contact them via an email template from SF.

The account might be a small shop for example, where we may want to email them about something but will be sending it to the generic shop address. How is it best to get round the required last name rule?

We will have an account set up for each shop.

I can only really think of always making the first name and last name the same, for example Book Shop and then add the remaining contact address. This would mean we end up with a batch of contacts at different accounts all called Book Shop but would at least allow us to run a report for all the generic book shop contacts. What would be the pitfalls of this?

Is this my only option or are there other ways to get round this issue?

Many thanks!

Steve Molis · Accepted Answer

I would just adopt a policy that works for you and your organization and stick with it.  That's the single most important thing with data (consistancy).  If you decide to use "Unknown", or "N/A" in lieu of an actual First/Last Name that's fine, but whatever you do, make sure that it is communicated to anyone doing data entry, and followed through.

Jackie Doan · Answer

+1 Steve. I'm assuming that you will be using the name as a merge field in your email template, so it seems to make sense to make the name the account name.  You could even go as far as as telling the users to leave the first name blank, then creating a workflow rule that fires whenever the contact first name is blank, which overrides whatever the user input for the last name, with the text value of the account name.    You will also want to make sure that you have some reports to manage the contact data as well, to ensure users are following the given convention.

What's the best way to handle contacts with no name?

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