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Customer relationship management (CRM), the best software for customer service, helps you deliver better services and provides valuable insights about your clients' needs.
This simplifies the day for employees. It allows them to identify the customer they are talking to and store all data in one account. All the information your team requires is available at their fingertips. No more searching for it.
A good CRM software can do much more than that. The idea is simple. You are preparing your employees to provide a 5-star experience every time.
There are many CRM software options available. Each one has strengths that work better for different types companies. Which one is going to help you and your team?
To help you make informed decisions, I reviewed CRM software and created a buyer's guide.
#1 — Zoho CRM Review – The Best “All in One” Solution
Zoho CRM offers a complete solution for customer relationship management.
You won't need to install additional modules or add-ons for each department, unlike other CRMs. It is ready to use right out of the box and is a great solution for small- to medium-sized organizations.
This CRM is accessible to all your employees, which allows you to make the most of it. The learning curve is minimal, so staff can immediately start using the powerful features and functionality.
Zoho CRM is flexible and can accommodate different needs. You can easily create custom dashboards or multiple pipelines to support unique customer journeys.
Do you want actionable, insightful reporting information? Just a few clicks away.
Other great features of Zoho CRM are:
- Real-time sales insights
- Scoring prospects
- Mass email capabilities
- Inventory management
- Assistance via Artificial Intelligence
- Advanced customizations
- Management of blueprint businesses online and offline
Zoho CRM is an extremely powerful tool that's also very affordable. Plans start at just $14 per user per month. Upgrade to a higher-tier plan for more functions and features, starting at $23, $40 and $52, respectively.
Zoho CRM offers a free lifetime edition for small businesses that have up to three users.
Get a free 15-day trial of Zoho CRM to find out if it is right for you.
Bigin-Zoho CRM has just launched a sales-centric platform specifically for small businesses. Bigin costs just $7 per month.
#2 — EngageBay Review – The Best CRM for Client Support
Many CRMs perform the same functions. CRMs organize and store your contact information, provide automation tools to send emails and post to social media, and make the lives of your sales team easier.
Not all tools are created equal. EngageBay may be the best tool for you if you are looking for a comprehensive way to increase all three.
It provides many of the essential features that you need to manage customer relationships. You can assign tasks, create a pipeline, and set up automations to send SMS messages, email, or hand off reps.
All of this is done in an intuitive interface that allows you to view your entire funnel, social media messages and interactions, email campaigns and all other information in one place.
EngageBay also syncs with Gmail, Outlook and Office without any hassle or stress.
What I love most about it is the suitability of its use for organizations that value post sale relationships as much as gathering and warming leads.
EngageBay has a complete service bay module that includes tools and features that will make your job as a support representative easy.
EngageBay's lowest-tier plan allows you to connect with customers and manage tickets together. This carries all the information that you have gathered throughout each customer's journey. This ensures that no one is going in blind, and that your support team can turn customers into loyal customers.
EngageBay's Free Plan upgrade allows you to unlock macros as well as canned responses.
Their Growth plan is my favorite. You can use the same powerful automation capabilities–setting triggers, events that streamline workflows- as the sales and marketing teams to provide customer service–for $29.99 per user.
This is a great feature because email sequences can be brought back into play after a service interaction.
This could be a huge boon for SaaS as well as many B2B businesses. You can not only provide ongoing support in these areas to build long-term customers, but you also have the option to use a drip campaign to warm up an existing client for an upgrade or an add-on.
EngageBay is a powerful tool that unlocks the potential of all three departments.
Start with the free plan to get familiarized with the platform. Then, when you feel ready, upgrade to the Growth plan to make sure your sales, marketing and service are firing on all cylinders.
#3 — HubSpot Review – The Best Free CRM Software
HubSpot is a blog that's popular among those in the marketing or sales industry. You've likely also taken one of their certification courses. They also provide a free CRM software that can help you streamline customer relations management.
HubSpot gives you unprecedented insight into your audience's behavior.
Do you need to track who opens your email so that you can optimize your open rate? That's no problem. Perhaps you'd like to see the behavior of a contact on your website. It's simple with HubSpot.
They offer many solutions depending on the role you play within your company.
These solutions are tailored to the position and include marketing, sales, customer service, operations and owners.
The free plan comes with a solid set of features. The free plan includes all the basic features of a CRM, including deal tracking and reporting.
This combination gives you incredible insight into your sales pipeline. HubSpot makes it easy to organize that information and use it to create your next great campaign or strategy.
This is just the tip. HubSpot's CRM is free and includes:
- Emails scheduled
- Live chat 1-1
- Meeting scheduler
- Tracking website activity
- Task management
- Document sharing
These features are unbeatable on other free plans. HubSpot's paid services are also well worth the price.
The Starter Plan is $40 per month and can be paid annually. If you sign up for a 12-month contract, you will get $50 per month starter access to all four HubSpot CRM software products.
Software that is specialized in marketing, sales and customer service can be purchased for an additional $10 per month.
These prices are based upon 1,000 contacts. For every 1,000 additional contacts, the price will go up.
Register today for a HubSpot free plan.
#4 – Salesflare Review: Best Lead Management Tools For Small Businesses
Every CRM that is worth its salt must answer the following question: How does it help teams sell better?
This list shows that different platforms have provided different answers. Salesflare is known for its ability to bring lead management tools up to the forefront, without getting bogged down by unnecessary features.
Salesflare might be the right fit for your team if you need help leading opportunities from win to lead.
The software's intelligent information gathering is the first step. Salesflare automatically pulls company information, contact information, and more details from email, social profiles and other sources. The information is stored in both a section that corresponds to the account you are selling to, and in a general contact book accessible by all members of your team.
Salesflare logs all actions taken by your team, such as calls, meetings, and other touch points, and by prospects and customers, including whether they open an email that you have sent, click on a link, visit a landing page, or open an email.
Salesflare allows you to customize how your team approaches the buyer's journey. You can choose to have one person in your team guide opportunities from beginning to end or you can have multiple hand-offs. All the information you need is right there.
Anyone can get the most recent information and the current lead status based on the actions taken recently.
Add the platform's notifications to notify prospects when they take an action or other trigger event and your team will be able to move quickly on warm leads or prospects that have indicated their willingness to buy.
Salesflare's simplicity and power make it an excellent tool for small B2B sales teams.
You get automation that is useful and tools to nail follow-ups (and thus encourage leads on the path to purchase), but you also get key features such as:
- Tracking opportunities from lead to winner – Team-wide timeline view
- Email campaigns that can be personalized, tracked, and scheduled
- The Insights Dashboard can be segmented according to team member, pipeline or date range
All this is included in the base Growth plan at $29/user per monthly
The Pro plan is a step up, and costs $49/user/month. You'll also receive:
- Email workflow creator for multiple campaigns at once
- Permissions for users, including view-only access
- Custom dashboards
An Enterprise plan is available for $99 per user per month. These plans offer additional support, including a dedicated account representative as well as custom-made training modules to your team.
Salesflare is a great choice for small B2B companies. The lower pricing tiers make it very affordable. Salesflare offers a free trial and you can request a demo to give it a shot.
#5 — Freshworks CRM Review – The Best CRM for Sales Team
Freshworks CRM was specifically designed for sales teams and lead managers. Freshworks CRM helps you build better relationships with customers and cold leads.
This CRM also helps you to find the best leads and get in touch via their preferred method. Finally, it closes the sale.
Freshworks also includes an integrated email and phone system that will simplify the process.
They serve over 40,000 customers, including big-names like Dyson or Best Western. They aren't new to the industry but they are very experienced.
This platform gives you:
- Contact, lead, account and deal management
- Management of appointments and tasks
- Tracking website visitors
- Mobile apps for iOS and Android
Freshworks CRM can be used by organizations of all sizes to provide detailed lead scoring and sales pipelines. This will allow for greater clarity and efficiency in your workflows.
It is especially useful as a single dashboard to manage all sales conversations. Email forwarding and team inboxes ensure that messages get to the right people. Teams can track each interaction and keep it all organized without getting lost in an endless stream of irrelevant emails.
Freshworks also allows you to set up alerts, schedule emails, use many templates, and create email calendars. This allows you to quickly create new messages and be able respond or modify as needed.
They offer industry-specific solutions that are tailored to 15 industries. These include retail, manufacturing, logistics and healthcare.
The forever free plan allows unlimited access with very limited features. It's a great way for you to test it before you invest.
Freshworks' premium plans are more robust and affordable for all businesses. The premium plans include:
- Blossom — $12/user/month (for small teams).
- Garden — $25 per user per month (for growing groups)
- Estate — $45/user/month (for large teams).
- Forest — $79/user per month (for enterprises)
Register for a 21-day free trial of Freshworks CRM to find out if it is right for your team and you.
#6 — Creatio Review – The Best Enterprise-Grade CRM Software
Although some of the CRM software listed here include an enterprise plan, they may be too restrictive if you manage a large business. Creatio, however, is an enterprise-grade CRM program that was designed with small businesses in mind.
They provide CRM solutions that are tailored to the needs of sales, marketing, or customer service teams.
Marketing Creatio provides enterprise businesses with everything they need for multichannel marketing campaigns that are efficient and can manage incoming leads. It features:
- Visual campaign designer
- Segmentation and tracking of website behavior
- Advanced trigger campaigns
- Personalized email marketing
- Event management and tracking
Pricing is determined by the number and number of email addresses per contact.
Sales Creatio is ideal for large sales teams that need to take over marketing. It is an end-to-end platform for sales management that simplifies the process and saves you time.
There are many features included in this model, including:
- Management of opportunities
- Profiling customers and insight into buying behaviour
- Field sales management
- Performance and operations
Prices start at $30 per user per calendar month
Service Creatio, a tool for customer service departments interested in streamlining processes and creating exceptional customer experiences from beginning to end, is the final option. It features:
- Contact and account management
- Management of knowledge and cases
- Omnichannel communications
- Service catalogue
- Contact us
Prices start at $45 per user/month
If you wish, you can combine all three CRM products. You can also use their online pricing calculator for an estimate of the total cost.
Start Creatio by requesting a free trial.
#7 — Salesforce Review — The Best CRM Software to Support Versatility
Salesforce CRM is the ideal CRM for small businesses, sales, marketing, IT and customer support teams. Salesforce is a versatile software company that can adapt to your specific needs.
Salesforce is used by more than 150,000 businesses including T Mobile, Adidas and Yeti to build strong relationships with customers.
They offer solutions tailored to 14 industries, including:
- Financial services
- Healthcare
- Manufacturing
- Consumer goods
- Energie
- Communications
- Non-Profits
You can choose from a variety of apps to create a customized CRM solution that suits your business.
Salesforce provides everything you need to build lasting customer relationships.
The following are their business plans:
- Essentials — $25/user monthly (basic sales, support)
- Sales Professional — $75/month (complete sales solution).
- Support Professional — $75/user/month (complete service solution).
- Pardot Growth – $1,250 per Month for up to 10,000 contacts (marketing Automation)
You can also add more features or applications to your plan depending on your needs. You can also choose from different plans that include customer service, sales, and marketing CRM packages.
Get started today with a free Salesforce trial.
What I Did to Look for the Best CRM Software
There are so many choices and types of CRM software to choose from that it can be difficult to find the right one for you.
This is the best place to start. These products were created to solve the problems businesses face every day.
CRM software has many parts, but each one serves a purpose.
The problems you are facing are well-known. You can learn a lot about their day by talking to customer service representatives, sales reps, IT staff, and everyone who uses CRM software.
CRM software can help your company get the most from every customer relationship.
It is about understanding your company's current situation and its future goals.
Business Size
Your business size plays an important role in choosing the right CRM software. You will need more functions if you have different departments for sales, marketing, IT and customer service than a company with five employees.
You should also consider who will be managing the software. It's not the same thing as using software to its full potential.
To make your investment worthwhile, you will need to set it up and use its features.
It may take a small group to make it a team effort. Larger teams might have dedicated employees who will set up everything and keep the software updated.
How much software will cost depends on how big your business is. Software will be more expensive if you have more users.
Your Challenges
What isn't working? What could work better?
Think about the systems that you would like to improve and streamline. You might think about your current inefficiencies and how CRM can help.
CRM software is used to help with customer service, marketing, and sales. What are you looking to improve on? Do you have the ability to manage and set up everything?
For certain industries, there are CRM solutions that can be tailored.
They are more costly, but they can be a good fit for your particular situation. These CRM softwares are more efficient and will save time for teams.
Basic CRM Features
A majority of CRMs have a set of basic features. These features should be included in the CRM you select.
Although the details of each feature may vary from one software to another, you should have a system to handle them all.
- Contact and lead management
- Document storage and sharing
- Automation of workflow
- Interaction tracking
- Mobile access
Before making any final decisions, make sure you are looking for these core CRM features. You might also want to see how users use these features.
Contact management, for example, is handled differently on each platform. Which one is most compatible with your team's work style?
Advanced CRM Features
Advanced CRM features can also have a significant impact on your business.
Automating routine workflows, processing payments and sending invoices can help employees save hours.
High-tier plans only have the ability to access extremely rich automation capabilities. While there is no doubt that there will be an additional cost, what about the benefits?
Advanced features for lead scoring and marketing automation can help drive revenue. Is it worth the effort?
These advanced features may not be distributed in the same manner by different vendors. You may find the high-end tools that you require in a mid-level plan.
Third-Party Integrations
Your CRM tool must be compatible with your existing tools to streamline and automate business processes.
You should make a list of all the tools that you use, and then double-check that your CRM is compatible with them. This is what I am referring to:
- Email platforms
- Social media tools
- Software for internal communication
- Customer service tools
- Video chat/calling software
- Shopping cart (for Ecommerce)
- Software for contract/proposal management
- Connectors (i.e., Zapier)
- Analytics tools
- Calendar
Once you have a list, you can use that to narrow down your options for the best CRM software. It can be used to talk with sales people to ensure they have everything you need.
Summary
The right CRM software can make all the difference. It helps customers stay organized and makes it easier to keep them happy. Here are my top picks.
- Zoho CRM – Best for small and midsize businesses
- EngageBay is the best CRM for client support
- HubSpot – The best free CRM software
- Salesflare – The best lead management tool for small businesses
- Freshworks CRM – Best CRM for Sales Teams
- Creatio CRM – Best enterprise-grade CRM solution
- Salesforce – The best CRM software to increase versatility
My top choices for businesses are Zoho CRM and HubSpot. Each offers a variety of features that are suitable for all departments, including customer service and sales.
They are also affordable and simple to set up.
The best CRM software depends on the size of your company and the features that you require. As you make your final decision, remember the criteria that we discussed.
What CRM software do YOU use?
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By: Neil Patel
Title: The Best CRM Software You Should Consider Using in 2022
Sourced From: neilpatel.com/blog/best-crm-software/
Published Date: Tue, 12 Jul 2022 14:00:00 +0000