Everyone has customers. Even if you work in a large corporation and your work is encompassed in some large internal process, you still have customers — your coworkers around you whose work is dependent on yours.
And when you have customers, you will have needs related to each of them. Whether tracking communication and interactions, remembering tasks related to each customer, making sales, or arranging meetings, you’ll be more effective at what you do if you have good tools and solid processes in place.
From personal experience with starting a business, I know this is one area that I need to improve on.
And with more focus on web tools today, many people are looking for alternatives to Microsoft’s pairing of Outlook and Exchange. Here are some of the better tools available to help you keep track of your customer relations. These applications may have a different approach, but they are all focused on tracking and improving interactions with customers.
SalesForce CRM
A product that has been around for a while, Salesforce has focused on a more traditional approach to CRM. They offer different CRM solutions, with the ability to customize your CRM tool to fit your needs. There is a strong lean towards planning and thinking through your processes regarding your customers. That’s a good thing.
As the name suggest, this product is based on sales so it may not be the best fit for all teams.
CureCRM
And in a slightly different direction, CureCRM is an email-based CRM tool. It also provides Twitter tracking, but the main focus is on tracking conversations via email. This product also has strong integration with your calendar (Microsoft Outlook and Google Calendar).
Another interesting offering from CureCRM is their automated sales scheduling assistant. Similar to the former iWantSandy application, CureCRM’s assistant feature is intended to mimic a real person and will automatically sends email reminders and update your calendars on its own.
Highrise
The newest product from 37signals, Highrise is like all of their other applications — created with a focus on simplicity. The intention of this app is to include all tasks and relevant information for each contact or client all in one place. It also is based largely on working with email via its dropbox addresses.
Another nice feature that a lot of web applications are adding is integration with other web applications. The apps from 37signals certainly lead in this area. Highrise currently interfaces nicely with support tools (HelpSpot and Zendesk), email marketing tools (MailChimp and sendloop), and invoicing and time tracking tools (Less Accounting and Harvest), just to name a few.
With reasonable pricing plans, Highrise is aimed more at small businesses than overly large corporations. It can scale to meet your needs, but has a limited feature set compared to more traditional CRM products.
Tactile CRM
Another solid option is Tactile CRM. It’s a more traditional tool aimed to help you track conversations and sales with your contacts. The feature set is very similar to Highrise, as is the look and feel.
The reason this app is included here is to list the other application that it integrates with. As Highrise does, Tactile CRM interfaces with support tools (Zendesk), invoicing tools (FreshBooks), and email marketing tools (Campaign Monitor).
Choosing between Highrise or Tactile CRM could come down to another tool your team currently uses that could integrate with the CRM application you choose.
Relenta
And in the opposite approach to Highrise is Relenta. This product is an ambitious one — it aims to be an all-in-one tool, including email, contacts, calendar, files and email marketing features.
Do you hate copy and pasting the same data between multiple software programs? Relenta puts an end to repetitive data entry. In fact, when someone sends you an email inquiry or fills out a form on your website, Relenta can automatically add them to your contact database. You won’t have to lift a finger!
Does that sound like a bit too much? It will be for some people. But there are many people who prefer to have all their tools in one place. Just look no further than Microsoft Outlook for proof of that fact. If you want a web-based tool that operates on the same level as Outlook, Relenta looks like a good option.
CoTweet
The new wave of CRM tools?
One of the newer kids on the block, CoTweet is based on the idea that many companies are moving to use Twitter to interact with their customers (or potential customers). There’s no doubt — this is an interesting approach to monitor and manage client interactions.
Designed for multiple accounts, multiple users, integrated Twitter search, and the assignment of tweets to certain individuals, CoTweet appears to be set up to lead the way when managing contacts and tasks via Twitter.
Note of caution: this app is still in beta.
It’s a Small Business Explosion
We need to recognize that we live in good times — there has never been more well designed and affordable tools available to business owners. Gone are the days of having to pay for one-size-fits-all applications because there are no other choices.
As always, analyze your needs and your processes before picking a tool. A little thought and planning ahead of time can ensure you choose the application that meets the needs of your business and fits in with the way your team works. And interacts with your customers.
We use Highrise quite a bit. It’s an excellent program and IMHO good value as well. Being able to know exactly what the last interaction was with a given customer or contact is a godsend.
Thanks for the write-up Chris! Any readers who email me, alex.schliker @ our site will get a discount for Cure if you mention this blog post :>
We use Ion Objects. Ion is by far the fastest, leanest, and easiest to implement of all CRM frameworks.
It is interesting to see that many of these CRMs have similar layouts and interfaces. Who was the first to innovate this popular look?
thanks for the post, it helped guide me into something related I was looking for.
Have considered online CRM several times however so much of my work email is via outlook, integrating it all is the difficulty. Running a manual sync is also likely to get too hard, so I try and run a free tool called MX that sits alongside Outlook. It will do for now.
Recently I tested the application http://www.helpdesk-crm.com/ (CRM and Helpdesk all in one).
I will not be judged negatively or positively the product, because everyone has to evaluate it yourself. Simply write, which has recently tested.
SalesOutlook works in Outlook and can store/archive data on a Sharepoint server. This is a combination of best of class for people that live in Outlook.
Thanks for your insight. I’ve been using open source SugarCRM for about two years. Works really well for my small biz.
You did not mention SalesOutlook. http://www.salesoutlook.com
This app is the perfect Beyond Outlook application – CRM on the Web. You can track your contact information in Outlook and use Sharepoint as the database. This is the best of both worlds.
Which of these tools can best combine CRM and Marketing (specifically email marketing). I work in the theater, and it is essential that I find something that can track who is buying tickets, for what shows, and then let me email people to make targeted offers for future productions based on their purchase decisions. It’d be even better if I could include other data about them, such as their other interests and generas of plays they like.
Funny… for all I see, lots of these CRM applications doesn’t provide something that can be done rapidly… To host a site, and catch the user interactions with the available content… for instance to see that customer A bought a piece of software, and knowing that he was having trouble to choose A from B…this can lead to a whole new world of opportunities and costumer happiness… you can drop him a line and offer some kind of help to assure him that he made the right choice…
Is this done somehow?Is this legal?
We’ve been using Zoho for a couple years. It’s not the prettiest interface, and there are times (even after two years) that I find it confusing, but overall it does work well. The free version is available for up to 3 users.
I love Intervals: has a pretty interface, complete with invoice and receipt, cheap, beautiful, many applications inside with lots of configurations, but I’m also beteween Clarizen and Bantam, this one is for free.
An awesome article.. im an avid reader of this blog.. its simply one of the best there is. You teach so much on it!