Your goal is not to find the greatest app, but where the app is great at. That way you can leverage its strength to your specific need. In some instances, you may need two or more great CRM apps to engage and convert your customers. Here are five “great” CRM solutions in their respective fields.
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1. Zoho CRM Mobile
Zoho is one of the “elders” of the industry that had serviced large enterprises with full-blown CRM features during the PC era, long before iPhone was a byword. The software covers the gamut of relationship management processes from marketing to sales and inventory management to customer service. It’s got salesforce automation, marketing automation, account settings, customization, security management, bills and payments, and data administration, among others.
Why it’s great for mobile
The power of a fully featured desktop CRM is placed right in your hand: your smartphone or tablet. Zoho has native apps for iPad, iPhone, and Android phone, plus, it’s browser-based app can be accessed by any device with Internet connection. Moreover, you can work with the app even when offline; once connected your updated data is synchronized with your online account. Where many mobile CRM apps focus on one niche–for example, task list or help desk–the mobile Zoho CRM covers the whole ground.
Notable features
Its suite of various processes gives you an overall CRM experience. Modules such as Leads, Accounts, Contacts, Potentials, Tasks, and Events provide a 360-view of customers and clients. The software is a robust CRM for companies with a large market consisting of more sub-markets.
2. Nimble
Why is Nimble included in our CRM software comparison? It is a newcomer in the CRM industry, but instead of going head-to-head with robust CRM solutions, it focuses on building relationships in social media. It positions itself as re-imagining contact management into contact insights, where each record is linked to his or her social profiles and activities to help you dig deeper and unearth prospects.
Why it’s great for social
Some businesses don’t need all the sales, marketing, and service features that robust CRM solutions offer; they just need to be where their customers are, and that means social. Nimble specializes in social relationship management using a universal inbox and social stream as your gateway to disparate customer posts across social networks. You can engage them based on their activity that involves your brand, a rant, query, or praise, for instance.
Most notable feature
Deep integration with Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Its Contact Record lets you pull contact details, email messages, and social signals into one place so you can listen closely to opportunities in social media.
3. Base CRM
It’s a web and mobile CRM app that focuses on managing the sales cycle. Base CRM specializes on two custom features to improve conversion: adding as many stages required by your sales cycle; and setting the winnability rate based on your sales team’s experience. This focus makes the software more of a favorite by sales agents and less by customer service reps.
Why it’s great for sales cycle
Not all sales cycles follow the same pattern. For instance, B2B businesses have complex cycles like longer lead time and more follow-up activities, while a company selling flip flops may not need a follow-up at all. Base CRM lets you customize your sales cycle, then you can track your deals according to your business’ pace and experience and predict lead times and estimate targets with more accuracy. Likewise, sales reps can access customer data or create reports from a smartphone with a native app feel, cutting down the need to report back to the office for administrative tasks.
Most notable feature
Its clear and visual interface that shows the exact stage of the deal based on your settings; who is managing or has managed it prior to a turnover; and the likelihood of closing the deal. You can add as many stages required by your sales cycle and set the winnability rate based on your experience.
4. Insightly
Used by over 650,000 people worldwide, Insightly is easily one of the most popular CRM solutions for small businesses. It has flexible calendaring and events, quick search, custom fields and filters, tag options, automatic address book, and a powerful integration with Google Apps and popular mailers and productivity apps. It also incorporates project management tools, such as: milestones, pipelines, reminders, user roles, and view and monitor tasks.
Why it’s great as a freemium
Not all freemiums are barebone. The free Insightly allows up to 2,500 records, where others freemium’s cap on number of contacts is just about 200. Even if a “record” means a contact, note, or any other file, you can easily have 500 contacts with five attached files each or 1,000 contacts with 2 attached files each. You also get 200 MB storage, plus ten custom fields, which are above-industry standards. Likewise, the freemium includes full product support. For companies with small or niche customer bases, the free Insightly may be the only CRM they will ever need.
Most notable feature
Google App integration such as Google Calendar, Gmail, and Google Docs. You can leverage the power and popularity of working in the cloud with Google, except that these free apps are disparate and too broad for CRM. That’s where Insightly comes in to keep all your contacts, conversations, and their history and relevant files in one place, while you dig up insights from them.
5. CapsuleCRM
Capsule CRM is an easy-to-use relationship management tool and has the more important CRM features that a small company needs. It focuses on tracking relationships and sales pipelines. What it lacks for campaigns and reporting features it makes up for being intuitive and simple compared to other popular CRM. Likewise, the software has been around since 2008, making it one of the steady and reliable CRM solutions.
Why it’s great for Mac
Even as CRM solutions for Mac are few and far in between, this app runs smoothly in the Safari browser. In fact, the experience between PC and Mac is indistinguishable, which gives the Mac user in a PC-dominated company the leeway to keep the Apple on the desk. Okay, there’s one slight difference and it’s a plus for the Mac: you can export contacts to vCard files instead of csv. That means you don’t need to go through each contact to map the fields, the Mac Address Book does the rest.
Most notable feature
People & Organizations lets you tag contacts to add or sort them in a list or create sub-lists; view contacts’ history including conversations, emails, and social feeds; and associate notes, notes, opportunities, cases, tasks, and other files and items to each contact for a full customer profile.
CONCLUSION
This CRM software comparison shows that there’s no one-size-fits-all CRM software as with other B2B solutions. All products have their pros and cons, which can vary, too, based on the user’s purpose. The apps above are great at delivering results in five areas that a business usually needs in a CRM, not necessarily all at once, but on separate occasions.
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