How To Know Which CRM To Use For Your Business

Nothing is more important to your business than having a satisfied customer base, which is why a customer relationship management process (or CRM, for short) is vital to thrive. These days, there are a lot of CRMs that are vying for your business, so it can be a bit overwhelming to try and pick from all of these platforms that allow you to consolidate your calls, emails, meetings and much more. So when your business is browsing for the perfect CRM, there are some things to consider. Let’s break down what makes a CRM the right one for your business.

What Your Company Needs

Not all CRMs are built the same, and in some cases, you don’t need many of the services that are offered. Because of this, some small businesses end up paying too much money for a CRM, paying for services that go unused. Before you use a CRM, think about what it is exactly that you’ll be using it for. Are you trying to generate sales leads? Retain customers on a monthly basis? Identify the most glaring concerns and, from there, find which CRM is the most highly rated in that particular category. 

Furthermore, will your business need additional customer support that you don’t have the staff for currently? Some CRMs will allow you to purchase a feature that routes questions to a call center. You can have the easier FAQ type calls sent this way, and CRMs such as Freshsales, Agile and Nextiva have call center capabilities to use.

Test the Features

Just like any service that knows that it’s worth your business, a good CRM will allow you to test their services through a free trial. In most cases, the top CRMs are offering a free trial that runs for 14 days, while some such as Freshsales runs for 21 days. This allows you enough time to get familiar with the user interfaces and see if the options in the service are what you need. You can adjust the subscriptions from there so that you’re only paying for what you’re going to be using.

Ease of Use

While you might consider yourself tech savvy, there may be some people within your business that aren’t going to be able to navigate quite as well on some platforms. Because of this, you want to pick a CRM that’s going to be easy for all employees of your business to use. Interfaces are much different when looking from one CRM to another, and ones like Pipedrive were rated as the easiest to navigate while also offering the ability to manage from your mobile phone. That’s another key aspect for ease of use, as some CRMs can only be accessed from a desktop.

Word of Mouth

Before even hopping into the free trials for some of the CRMs that you haven’t used yet, try asking around to see what other businesses are using. Other businesses will have their preference, so try to find someone in the same field that has a CRM. If you can’t find anyone, then online reviews will always help. Currently, the top reviews for CRMs are being given to Zoho, Monday, Zendesk and Insightly just to name a few.