Businesses have become complex, and so have their operations; and the world today is a hub that supports technology, innovations, and data, & the supreme today is the customer, hence CRM.
Customer Relation Management (CRM) has become essential for all businesses. It can be defined as a planned approach for developing, managing and maintaining a lucrative and profitable relationship with customers.
CRM is an organized approach towards tracking and examining each point of interaction and communication a business has with its customers and clients.
CRM essentially provides organizations with a central pool, which promises simplicity, security, and scaling of any interactions with customers.
How it works is that each customer should be registered in the database of the CRM tool with certain fields that help in identifying their uniqueness so that the organization can interact with them as and when required. Thus, CRM increases business profits, customer lists and interactions.
Several different types of CRM can be chosen based on customer requirements – Operational CRM, Analytical CRM, and Collaborative CRM.
Features of CRM System:
The correct CRM used by a business helps it to achieve easy access with employees via contact management, Lead Management, Sales forecasting, instant messaging, email tracking and integration with Outlook and Gmail, file and content sharing and dashboard-based analytics.
There are several famous CRM tools available in the market today, and one can choose the right fit in accordance with one’s business goals and needs. Some of the examples of CRM tools available in the market today are – Salesforce CRM, SAP CRM, ZOHO CRM, Oracle CRM, Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Nimble CRM, Sugar CRM, Hub spot CRM, PIPEDRIVE CRM, CRM Creatio etc.
CRM Tools Advantages:
· It provides an enhanced and improved client/customer relationship.
· It supports efficient cross-functionality and hence increases teamwork.
· CRM provides excellent efficiency in serving clients and enhances staff satisfaction.
· It reduces cost and manual efforts.
Drawbacks of NOT using a CRM Tool:
· Without a CRM tool, managing customer contacts in an excel file becomes difficult.
· There is little efficiency as it is difficult to toggle between multiple tools.
· Increases the manual efforts put into a great extent.
· It supports Small Scale and once can easily lose track of business deals.
· Lesser accessibility of data hence and lesser customer satisfaction.
List of top 10 best CRM tools -2023
1. Monday.com – monday.com CRM software allows businesses to manage customer data, interactions, and processes per business needs. It helps by keeping all data protected. It also allows businesses to capture the leads online enabled through an integrated contact form. It provides an option to automatically insert leads that may have been captured on other forms. monday.com also allows importing leads from various tools.
Price: monday.com has four pricing plans – Basic ($17 per month), Standard ($26 per month), Pro ($39 per month), and Enterprise. The prices are for two users, and if billed annually, it gives a free trial for its product.
Prime Features:
· Session Management
· Advanced Account Permissions
· It allows the automation of 100000 actions per month
· It furnishes an Audit log.
· HIPAA Compliance
Other Features:
· This CRM software allows one to build and customize the dashboard as per requirements for gaining insights.
· It gives a clear overview of sales, processes, performance, etc.
· It allows the automation of repetitious tasks.
· It offers features for setting automatic reminders and due date notifications and also assigning new tasks to teammates automatically.
Advantages:
· monday.com is an all-in-one solution and convenient.
· It is customizable to fit sales workflow.
· It offers advanced search capabilities.
· It can also offer time tracking, chart view, and private board features.
Disadvantages:
· monday.com doesn’t offer a free plan.
· Toggling between multiple views on the project may be difficult.
2. Zendesk CRM
Zendesk is a sales CRM software which is designed to make the jobs of sales personnel in any organization much easier. It looks into the primary goal, which is the closure of a deal and customer satisfaction.
This integrated tool hence streamlines daily sales tasks, tracks conversions, facilitates performance visibility, and improves sales pipeline management.
With Zendesk, a sales team can perform multiple functions from a single platform in just a few clicks. Sales execs may schedule meetings, make calls, and monitor deal history without any difficulties. In addition, the platform’s mobile application helps to get all its features on the go, thus making sure the sales department gets the required attention even when you are on the move.
Price: Zendesk has three pricing plans. The “Sell Team” plan costs $19 per user pm. The Sell Professional plan costs $49 per user pm, and the Sell Enterprise plan costs $99 per user pm. A 14-day free trial is also available.
Top Features
· It offers Sales Reporting & Analytics
· It offers Sales Prospecting
· It offers Seamless Integrations & API
· It offers Sales Email Intelligence
· It offers a Native Dialer
Other Features
· It offers an immediate log & records all contact-related emails into Sell. Gives real-time push notifications every time a prospect reads and/or clicks on an email.
· Make a call with just a click and Immediately log & record all outgoing as well as incoming calls.
· Connect Zendesk with all present tools and applications presently being used by the business.
· Builds a target list of prospects across multiple channels.
· Visually impressive customizable reports & analytical dashboards.
Advantages
· It offers numerous email templates to assist create & save sales emails.
· A Centralized dashboard that performs and monitors all sales-related movement.
· Helps Engage leads automatically by sequencing emails and tasks.
· Mobile Sales CRM Application.
· Robust customer support.
Disadvantages
· No free plan
3. Pipedrive CRM
Pipedrive is a popular Customer Relation Management tool that was created for minimum input and maximum output.
It helps to manage businesses such that it gives all data pertaining to sales, hence increasing productivity.
Price:
· Essential: $11.90/user/month,
· Advanced: $24.90/user/month,
· Professional: $49.90/user/month,
· Enterprise: $74.90/user/month,
Features of PIPEDRIVE:
· It offers sales pipeline and email integration.
· It offers the setting of goals, contact history, API and mobile App.
· It offers customized, supports multi-environment with 24*7 support.
· It offers good reporting, map integration, email tracking, data import, and export.
Advantages:
· It provides an uncomplicated UI and is thus Client friendly.
· It offers multiple pipelines, customization, and email integration of all apps.
· It is flexible when it comes to modification and graphics.
Disadvantages:
· From within PIPEDRIVE, there is no option to send an email.
· PIPEDRIVE does not have an inbuilt phone system, and there is also no feature to track the customer response on apps.
· The automation department is not so efficient and lacks the ability to create customized reports.
· Additional features like email, phones, etc., come with additional charges.
4)Salesforce CRM
Salesforce CRM is one of the world’s foremost cloud-based CRM tools/software.
It provides creative CRM solutions that can be effectively used for all business requirement companies, from high-scale enterprises to small start-ups.
Salesforce CRM is extremely easy to use, is based on the cloud, and is scalable. It also is customizable and provides a good platform for growth and upgrades. It also supports mobile and integration.
Salesforce CRM enables us to understand customer requirements; it shows new ways to help, solves issues faster and also provides a quick and clean deployment. With just a single view, one can do the selling, serving and marketing.
Advantages:
· It offers communities, markets for sales as well as leads.
· It supports email integration and also helps to run applications.
· It assists in the forecasting and keeps the customer engaged all the time.
· It provides chatter, analytics, and real-time visualization.
· It provides a custom dashboard.
· Software navigation is both simple and easy.
· It has innumerable social media capabilities that help multiply its popularity.
· It is cloud-based and offers business automation with efficient management.
Disadvantages:
· It comes with expensive customization and complexity as it requires a dedicated team to handle it.
· Salesforce up-gradation creat may create issues for Clients as many functionalities go hidden.
· Poor technical support staff and a difficult process of generating reports.
5. HubSpot CRM
HubSpot CRM: has created a good impression on its Clients because of its powerful mechanism & capabilities. It is free to a large extent, and thus it attracts many of Clients.
HubSpot’s simple platform enables its Clients to start promptly without changing much. It is simple and fast and has many of the features that the other CRMs have. HubSpot provides one of the best integration CRM environments, which the other CRM tools do not provide for free. It is flexible and powerful software.
Price:
The free version comes with several features.
· Starter: US $50
· Basic: US $200
· Professional: US $800
· Enterprise: US $2400
Features:
· It offers customization, and a board, for tasks & helps to synchronize the marketing department.
· It comes with good integration of cell phone, Mail and Website.
· It helps to manage the pipeline with total visibility.
· It Logs all activity automatically, and one can see all the information about the contacts in one place.
Advantages:
· It provides excellent scope for searching for companies.
· It continues to operate in the background without disturbing the other tools.
· It comes with all google features like Gmail, Google Drive, & calendar.
· It manages the Client records in one place and also reads the feedback from Clients.
Disadvantages:
· Through HubSpot, one cannot send emails to multiple companies at the same time.
· Its free version doesn’t offer all the features.
· No auto-updating on Sidekick; one has to do it manually for the existing companies.
6. Oracle NetSuite
Oracle NetSuite provides a cloud-based CRM solution that provides a 360-degree view of customers in real-time. It contains all the functions like sales order, fulfilment, renewal, upsell, cross-sell, etc.
Price: one can get a quote for pricing details. A free product tour is available.
Prime Features:
· Quotes
· Order Management
· Commissions
· Sales Forecasting
· Integrated e-commerce capabilities
Other Features:
· SFA
· Customer Service Management
· Marketing Automation
Advantages:
· Oracle NetSuite CRM is able to streamline lead-to-cash processes.
· Sales performance gets improved due to forecasting, upsell, & commission management.
· One is able to manage global sales & services organizations.
Disadvantages:
· No such cons to mention
7. Zoho CRM
Zoho CRM is a cloud-based CRM system that has been in the market for over 15 years & caters to SMBs, enterprise customers, & varied types of businesses, irrespective of their size. It is an operational business platform that provides more than just a sales pipeline or lead management tool.
Price:
· Free: Up to 3 users
· Standard: $14
· Professional: $23
· Enterprise: $40
· Ultimate: $52 [Exclusive 30-day trial]
· Custom Quote: On request, along with enhanced security, implementation, onboarding, and training.
Features:
· Omnichannel system to connect with customers across varied channels.
· Sales automation tools that manage leads, contacts, deals, & accounts through workflows & macros.
· Customizable dashboards & reports with multiple options to compare, contrast & derive insights from data.
· AI-Powered sales assistant, Zia, that predict sales outcomes detect anomalies, enriches data, identify email sentiments & the ideal time to contact someone.
· Marketing attribution tools provide insights into the distribution of campaign budgets with related ROI data.
· Internal chat feature plus forums, notes, & groups to facilitate effective team management.
· Mobile CRM app that records data, schedules tasks, connects with customers & updates information even when offline.
· REST API, deluge functions, widgets, web & mobile SDKs, sandbox & developer edition allows extending CRM’s potential with a mix of low code and pro code.
Advantages:
· Quick and easy onboarding. Our migration system, Switch, helps bring all existing sales data into Zoho CRM in just a few clicks.
· Advanced security features such as encryption, and audit logs, IP restrictions, & two-factor authentication, along with customizable access to users.
· Mobile CRM app & get in touch with your customers anytime and anywhere.
· Flexible contracts & pricing help pay monthly/annually.
· 24-hour support for premium users.
Disadvantages
· Free edition is limited to 3 users.
· Does not offer on-premise solutions.
· Free support limited to 24/5.
8. Act! CRM
ACT! is a CRM, sales, & marketing automation platform. It has a customizable dashboard. It can be integrated with Outlook, Zoom, DocuSign, etc. one can prioritize the task list here.
It offers tools for capturing prospects, marketing tools, & tools to build stronger relationships. Marketing automation functionalities can perform repetitive & manual tasks. Set up communications once & the tool will process further.
Top Features:
· Act! CRM provides instant sales pipeline insights.
· It has email marketing features & more than 170 responsive templates.
· It has capabilities – email tracking and metrics, drip marketing, surveys, campaign calendars, and more.
· It has features for lead management, scoring, and event marketing, & asset tracking, etc.
Other Features:
· Act! CRM comes with an interactive template editor.
· It offers functionalities for automating & managing entire workflows from start – to finish.
· Its advanced lead capture capabilities are excellent.
Advantages:
· Act! CRM offers a solution with transparent fees & no hidden fees.
· It keeps communications, calendar, & important documents in sync
· It supports unlimited contacts.
Disadvantages:
· Customer service needs improvement.
· It is a bit pricey compared to its competitors.
9. Freshsales
Freshsales is a fully-featured sales CRM platform providing all the tools needed to simplify sales operations. The platform allows tracking customers’ whole lifecycle, from when they visit the website to actual conversions.
Freshsales comes equipped with an intelligent AI that helps get a bird’s eye view of all existing deals, especially highlighting deals that need attention the most. One can get measurable metrics that accurately inform you about your company’s sales performance.
Top Features
· Event Tracking
· Create custom reports
· Automated & Personalized Emails.
· Respond to leads, analyze dashboards, and more on the go via the Mobile app.
· Built-in phone, chat, and email features.
10. noCRM.io
noCRM.io is a lead management tool – for small & medium-sized sales teams. It has features that differentiate cold prospects from hot leads, team collaboration, tracking lead communications and interactions, visual & personalized sales pipelines to monitor progress, and much more.
Prime Features:
· Advanced email management along with email tracking, customizable signatures, & templates.
· Advanced security and privacy settings.
· Priority support
· Team management features
· API and Advanced native integrations.
Other Features:
· Customizable Sales Pipeline
· Statistics and reporting
· Built-in Prospecting
· Sales Script Generator
· Email Integration
Advantages:
· noCRM.io offers an easy way to create leads as well as grow the pipeline.
· It has functionalities – differentiating cold prospects from hot leads.
· It increases team collaboration.
· It provides high-level security, GDPR & CCPA compliance.
Disadvantages:
· No cons to mention.
