Engage with your customers using one of these great tools.
Collecting, analysing, and using data garnered from customer interactions is important for businesses of all sizes. Performing all these tasks can be very labor-intensive, something that many small businesses don’t have time or the budget for. Fortunately, there are Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software platforms on the market that can make efficient use of customer data. These are our picks for the six best CRM software platforms of 2020 and beyond.
Hubspot
Biggest benefit: Scalable
The ultimate in scalable solutions, Hubspot offers a real-time view of the company’s sales funnel through a customisable visual dashboard. Hubspot automatically logs all interactions with customers including phone calls, emails, social media, website visits, downloads, and more. The software works with many third-party services such as G-Suite and Office 365 and includes a great marketing hub full of useful tools to create email templates, measure SEO, and optimise landing pages.
Zoho CRM
Biggest benefit: Cloud-based
Forget the hassle and expense of self-hosted CRM solutions, Zoho’s cloud-based CRM platform is the easy solution. Zoho is able to corral email, live chat, calls, and social media customer interaction into real-time analytics and create notifications for every customer. Each team member can be assigned individual targets and monitoring the progress is simple from a central dashboard. Zoho even offers the ability to customise and automate the sales process, allowing for distinct customer profiles.
Streak CRM for Gmail
Biggest benefit: Easy to use
There’s no denying that most CRM systems are comprised of intertwined services and modules, making the learning curve to actually get started quite steep. For ease of use, Streak CRM for Gmail is unbeatable. Just about everyone at one time or another has used Gmail, and Streak builds on the familiarity most users have with the system to create a CRM platform. Transforming mere Gmail into a CRM superpower is as easy as installing a single extension. From there, Streak allows deal management, collaboration, task reminders, mail merge, tracking, shared pipelines, and more. Since it’s built for Gmail, Streak works perfectly with Google’s other web apps as well.
Insightly
Biggest benefit: Value for money
Insightly offers great features and doesn’t cost a fortune. In fact, the base price for Insightly was (at the time of this article) only $29 per user per month on an annual billing cycle. Insightly offers task management, API access, custom reports, detailed charts, and connection with Microsoft’s Power BI business analytics software. Full email features, pipelines, activity sets, and the list goes on. That’s a lot of power for a low price.
Pipedrive
Biggest benefit: Sales management power
Companies whose sales department are the sole handler of customer interactions should look no further than Pipedrive when it comes to a CRM platform. Built for minimum input and maximum output, the primary interface for the system is the pipeline where all deals are categorised by sales stages. Pipedrive features full email integration, customised templates, and tracking along with data syncing between web apps through an add-on programme.
SalesForce
Biggest Benefit: Popularity
If money is no object, SalesForce is the best CRM platform for you, hands-down. The most popular name in sales circles, SalesForce can do just about any CRM task you throw its way. The Lightning Professional edition includes features such as rules-based lead scoring, B2B market automation, and campaign management as well as account and contact management and sales process management, to account for every CRM eventuality possible. And, of course, there is a mobile app so that the itinerant salesperson can keep track of customer interactions.
