Overview
When an external activity is initially processed by Backstory, it automatically undergoes a process called activity matching, which attempts to attribute the activity to the most relevant Account, Opportunity, or Lead in Salesforce. Activity matching enables Sales and Marketing teams to better understand where activity is taking place across their customer base and prospects.
It’s fairly common, however, for an activity to not match as expected. Most of the time this simply means an activity matched to the incorrect Account/Opportunity, but occasionally you may find activities that weren’t able to match at all.
Using the Match Details tab can provide valuable information on why an activity did not match as expected so you can make an informed decision on editing a match if necessary.
Below is a list of reasons that could result in an activity being unable to match. These factors are listed in order of most to least common.
Factors that might cause an activity to not match
Domain mismatch and no existing contact
The most common reason for an activity to not match is also the simplest: If the Matching algorithm is unable to locate a “who” (contact/Lead) and/or a “what” (Account/Opportunity), the activity will not match. Typically, this is because the email domain of the external participant does not match closely enough with any existing Accounts.
Ex: james@acmepartners.co.uk =/= Acme Inc (acme.com).
In the event there is no domain match, there must be a contact on the activity that exists on an Account in the customer’s Salesforce.
Please note that the external participants must exist at the time the activity was processed.
Seller Strategies
The second most common reason an activity would not be able to match is that the rep’s Configuration Profile has Seller Strategies (Account and/or Opportunity ownership restrictions) in place, or at least did at the time the activity took place.
You can usually verify this in the app by simply clicking Match Details.
You can also verify if Seller Strategies is enabled by looking at the settings for the relevant Configuration Profile:
Account/Opportunity ownership changed too soon before, or after activity took place
Backstory pulls CRM data every hour (on average). When troubleshooting matching issues, it’s absolutely critical to verify the matching conditions at the time the activity was processed.
If an activity shows that it was unable to match because of seller strategies, but you are sure of the Account/Opportunity owners, you will need to verify exactly when they became the owner.
It’s possible that the Account/Opportunity owner changes before the activity takes place, Backstory detects that change and pulls the new owner information into the database for matching.
It’s helpful to verify ownership changes in your CRM by looking at the Account History in Salesforce.
If the ownership change happens within an hour of the activity taking place, it’s possible that we had not yet pulled and updated the ownership information in the matching database.
Account/Opportunity is inactive, deleted, or closed
When matching to an Account or Opportunity, the Account/Opportunity must be open and active.
Activities cannot be matched to Opportunities that are Closed Won or Closed Lost.
Configuration Profile exclusion
When an activity is initially ingested, matching chooses an activity owner based on the list of internal participants (Backstory users) and uses that user’s Configuration Profile settings to understand how the activity should match and sync.
Typically, each Configuration Profile will have what are called Matching Exclusions, which tell the Matching engine which Accounts and/or Opportunities to exclude, or NOT match to.
For example, many customers have Backstory users all over the world. In such cases, it’s common for European users to have an exclusion that prevents matching to Accounts in different geographical segments.
Please reach out to your Backstory point of contact if you suspect matching exclusions might be responsible for activities not matching.
Conclusion
If you follow the investigation steps outlined above, it should be clear why an activity did not match.
It’s important to keep in mind what your Salesforce & Matching settings looked like at the time the activity took place!
Was a Backstory user on the activity assigned as the Account/Opp owner before the activity took place?
Are there any exclusions that prevented the match?
Is the desired Account/Opportunity open and active?
Is there a domain mismatch?
Do any external participants exist as contacts in the customer's Salesforce?
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Still need help understanding why an activity didn't match as expected? Drop us a line at support@backstory.ai.