Though the connections may not seem obvious, every department has a link to and effect on the other divisions in an organization. As Kate Leggett of Forrester Research explained in a recent blog post, that is especially true concerning customer service and data quality projects.

Leggett points to a recent survey of the Association of Business Process Management Professionals, which found that out of the 45 percent of respondents who are trying to achieve better methods of customer relationship management, just 38 percent have included poor-quality data in their review of those processes.

This "lack of attention to data quality" can cause several challenges, she says, including a lower level of client satisfaction.

Agents rely on having accurate purchase/service histories of their customers in order to give them the answers they need, Leggett adds, "but when their tool sets pull data from low-quality data sources, agents don’t have the right information to answer their customers."

List management and other information-related issues can also be detrimental to employee productivity if those workers don't think the data is reliable. They will spend longer periods validating records with the clients, which has a trickle-down effect on trust and turnaround times.

Costs can also climb higher on the back of bad data. Leggett gives the example of one healthcare company whose agents were working with multiple systems but were not updating client details in every one, resulting in an annual expense of $9 million.