Through my years of running a small business, I have discovered that having proper customer management software is paramount to managing your customer relationships. It’s nice to have with any sort of business whether you’re online or in a physical store. This is because you not only have a place to enter all of your information for both current and future customers, but it also allows you to track previous interactions and message them based on those previous notes which can save you time in the long run.
When you start a business with no software, you think it’s easy at first and that things will get really busy. Then, when they do get busy, you realize how important it is to have an organization and management strategy in place. That’s pretty much the way I felt when I started my first business. These days you can use software to make your life easier. I’ve been looking at customer management software for small business this month on behalf of a client to see how we can improve their system.
HubSpot CRM
HubSpot CRM is one of the most popular CRMs for small businesses and is completely free to use.
This CRM software provides you with real-time details on your sales pipeline, giving you the ability to coach your sales team more effectively. Functions like live chat and email templates save staff time, while prospect tracking and pipeline management help you monitor and close leads.
Zoho CRM
Zoho CRM, an all-in-one solution for customer management, is free for up to three users, making it an ideal option for a small business just getting started with CRM software.
It offers gamification modules to incentivize your sales team with rewards, and it boasts an extensive list of integrations that includes Google Ads, Mailchimp, Google Drive, DocuSign, and more.
Workflow automation options help streamline your lead nurturing process and eliminate repetitive tasks, and real-time reports and analytics help you measure performance indicators.
Salesforce
Salesforce is a versatile platform suitable for all businesses, no matter their size. With tools for lead management, marketing automation, and analytics, this software can help a business track e-commerce leads, provide top-notch customer service, oversee marketing campaigns, and more.
With a whole suite of client management tools at their fingertips, your team can see client information at a glance for increased efficiency. And the Salesforce mobile app for iOS and Android makes your business more mobile, increasing your productivity from any location.
Bigin by Zoho CRM
$7 Per User Per Month, Billed Annually at Zoho CRM See It Bigin by Zoho CRM is a solid pipeline-based CRM solution for small business that is equally effective on PCs and on mobile devices.
Pros
- CRM rebuilt for mobile
- Integrates advanced CRM features into an affordable plan
- Built-in telephony options
- Rich integration options
- Customizable dashboards
- Helpful contextual data is easily available
Cons
- Some mobile integrations limited to iOS devices
- Interface might confuse traditional CRM users
Capsule CRM
Available at Capsule Check Price Capsule CRM tries to differentiate itself from a growing SMB market by adding innovation around analytics and collaboration, which combine to help ensure team members are on the same page.
Pros
- Reminds businesses to reach out to contacts they haven’t talked to in a while
- Outstanding note-taking and sharing functions
- A plethora of integrations with most-used SMB tools
Cons
- Could use more analytics options
- You need to dig deep to find some of the functionality
- Feature set might be limited for larger businesses
Salesmate CRM
With Salesmate CRM you can speed up the sales processes and offer customers a personalised experience. Manage your contacts effectively and keep track of all related sales activities. This tool is also perfect for sending out email campaigns and you’ll know what happens to your emails once you hit send. As a Small Business you appreciate flexibility and scalability and Salesmate understands these needs. Some unique features within this CRM software include: Prospect & Lead Engagement, Sales Pipeline & Activity Tracking, Sales Automation & Sequences and more.
Pricing: Starts at $12/user/month.
Agile CRM
Agile CRM is a CRM software offers a lot of those big business features like custom appointments, drag-and-drop marketing automation and reports via email. This software also supports widgets, a large library of plugins, API-powered integrations and more. The free version, however, is quite limited in terms of features offered.
Pricing: Free for up to 10 users, or choose the Starter package ($14.99/user/month).
Freshworks CRM
Freshworks CRM (previously Freshsales) enables you to automatically capture your website visitors as sales leads and group them based on their engagement with your website. Assign them to the right salespeople on your team. Reach out to each lead with complete context and track deals by the personalized pipelines.
Pricing: Package for Growing Teams ($25/user/month).
Jotform
With Jotform, you can streamline client lead generation and automatically pull lead data into a comprehensive database. It all starts with Jotform’s sales lead generation form template. Customize the template to your business needs, post it on your site, and let it gather the essential information you need for each lead.
From there, your new leads will auto populate your client database. The client database template is also fully customizable, and you can download it as a PDF, CSV, or Excel file to share with others.
Jotform’s client onboarding template is another helpful tool that lets you efficiently add new clients to your business. This customizable form ensures your team captures all of the new client information you need. You can then download, print, assign, and share this table with others, keeping your entire team up to date and working as one cohesive unit.
Insightly
Insightly unites your marketing, sales, and project teams by keeping all your customer data in one central database.
Advanced analytics, customizable marketing campaigns, performance metrics, and ROI reporting are just some of the ways Insightly supports your teams and keeps them functioning at their best. Insightly also gives you the ability to create custom apps and landing pages for more effective lead generation.
monday.com
monday.com is an online collaboration platform that can keep all of your teams up to date, allowing staff to work seamlessly together.
Designed similarly to collaborative spreadsheets and boards, monday.com lets your team members view and compare tasks, ensuring no one misses a step. Teams can update sheets collaboratively, helping them stay on top of essential tasks — like invoicing and making phone calls — throughout the sales pipeline.
The automation features let your sales and customer service teams focus on using their skills in the most valuable ways, rather than spending their time on basic, repetitive tasks. This app is easy to set up and learn, so you can quickly integrate it into your business.
Capsule CRM
Capsule CRM is a very easy-to-use CRM software that allows its users to track both relationships and sales pipelines. Not to mention it can be used on both desktops and mobile. The user interface is broken down into five groups: dashboard, people and organisations, sales pipeline, calendars and tasks and lastly, cases. One pitfall, however, is that it offers less functionality in terms of campaigns and reporting.
Pricing: They have both a free package (up to 2 users) and a Professional package (£12/user/month).
Less Annoying CRM
Benefits:
Less Annoying CRM (aka LACRM) is designed specifically for small businesses. They offer an all-inclusive, single price package for task management, keeping tabs on contacts, tracking leads, making sure follow-ups are sent out.
LACRM’s lean but nimble toolkit has got you covered when it comes to managing all your customers and other contacts, tracking your leads through pipelines and staying on top of events and tasks (in easy-to-use calendar and agenda forms).
Emails written and received outside a CRM platform can be logged inside LACRM, which provides every user with a unique email logging address (for which you create a contact with whatever email provider you use).
Drawbacks:
There aren’t any app integrations, which might be a significant limitation, depending on your needs. The app sends out notifications by SMS or email, but not in-app.
Pricing:
- $15 per user/per month, billed monthly.
LACRM offers a risk-free, 30-day free trial for its only pricing plan.
Salesmate.io
Benefits:
Salesmate is a CRM system for salespeople who want to spend more time selling and less time learning to use new apps. It’s great for startups and small businesses, but it can also be used for real estate and construction industries.
This platform is always improving itself. It’s given its analytics and reporting a significant upgrade, with a more customizable and interactive dashboard. Salesmate has also added new tools for phone calling and deal management, as well as new mobile app improvements. New features on the horizon include live chat and DocuSign integrations.
Drawbacks:
Some of the customization features can be a bit lacking, especially when trying to create custom data fields. Also, you’ll need the pricier version for essential tools like email analytics.
Pricing:
- Starter version is $12 per user/per month, billed annually
- Growth version is $24 per user/per month, billed annually
- Boost version is $40 per user/per month, billed annually
Salesmate.io offers a 15-day free trial on all of their plans.
Keap
Benefits:
Keap is a contact management and sales pipeline platform seriously geared towards helping small, self-employed, and even home-run businesses and e-commerce operations.
It all begins with populating a great leads database and keeping it organized. Gathering contact info is done by importing contact lists from other CRMs, scanning business cards, converting messy spreadsheets, simple manual entry, or setting up a custom form on your page. You can also add your own custom fields to the contact info.
For Keap, after getting the job done, and getting paid, it all stops—and restarts—with “staying connected.” This is their commitment to converting leads into satisfied customers who will not only come back, but spread the love through referrals.
Drawbacks:
There’s a lot of features, which can make Keap appear daunting at first (and you may not end up using a lot of them). Integrations are limited. The price-point can be a stumbling block for individuals on a small budget.
Pricing:
- Lite plan is $56 per user/per month, billed monthly.
- Pro plan is $105 per user/per month, billed monthly.
- Max plan is $140 per user/per month, billed monthly.
A free trial is available for the Lite and Pro plans.
Conclusion:
If you’re a business owner, chances are you want to know more about software for your business. Or perhaps you’re considering what customer management software options might be available so you can streamline the management of your small business customer service department.