Good customer relationship management is at the heart of every successful business. Without ensuring that your current customers are happy and loyal to your business, you can’t hope to achieve long-term business success.
That’s where good CRM software programs can help you. By using a good CRM you can manage your contacts, track customer history with your business, and improve your customer satisfaction.
This helps retain existing customers, get more repeat business, and improve customer lifetime value.
But given the number and variety of CRM software in the market it’s difficult to choose one. That’s where this guide on how to evaluate a CRM will help you.
Read on to find out the most important CRM evaluation criteria and the process for evaluating a CRM and choosing the best option for your business.
Here is the complete list of all important CRM evaluation criteria you should consider when choosing a CRM software solution for your business.
While the add-on and advanced features may differ from one tool to the other, there are some essential features that all CRMs should have. You must compare these features thoroughly when you evaluate CRMs.
Here are the essential features you should look for when you evaluate a CRM:
Please note that any additional features other than these are great to have, but not essential. We recommend that you make a list of any features that are a must for your business when you evaluate a CRM.
Check out this image to see a comprehensive list of essential CRM features.
When you evaluate a CRM, the user interface should be one of the most important things you need to consider.
Why?
Because a user-friendly intuitive interface will help you and your team adopt the CRM and efficiently use it to your advantage. A clunky and outdated interface can make the CRM implementation a hassle and cause resistance to change in employees.
Moreover, there’s no point in investing in a feature-rich software solution if you can’t use it to its full potential and reap the benefits of CRM. A poor user interface can make even a feature-rich CRM useless by making it difficult to use.
Here are some things to check for when you evaluate the user interface of a CRM:
We’ve briefly touched on the importance of customization in evaluating a CRM in the previous section. In this section, we will go into detail on why it matters and how you can evaluate the customization options of a CRM system.
The gist is this:
The more customization options a CRM provides, the better you’ll be able to use it to meet your business goals.
Standard configurations and settings won’t work as well for every business. A good CRM solution should be able to adapt to the unique needs of every business.
The ability to customize helps businesses use a CRM to its full potential and get the best results.
But how can you evaluate a CRM on its customization options?
Here are a few aspects you can evaluate:
Here’s an illustration showing things you should focus on when customizing your CRM.
Another important criterion when you evaluate a CRM is how easy it is to scale it to meet the needs of a growing business. This is essential for the long-term success of a business.
Implementing a new CRM is a costly and tedious affair. As your business grows, your current CRM should be able to adapt, instead of you needing to upgrade to another CRM.
So, even if your current needs are basic, you should invest in a CRM that can grow with your business and offer advanced features if needed.
Here are some things to evaluate:
One of the biggest CRM mistakes businesses make is considering only the subscription or purchase costs of a CRM when making a buying decision.
What’s wrong with that?
Well, it fails to incorporate the cost of implementing and ongoing maintenance costs of using a CRM solution. If a CRM offers affordable pricing plans but costs a bomb to implement, your overall cost of ownership will increase.
When you evaluate a CRM, one of the best practices you should follow is to consider all costs associated with using a CRM.
If you need help implementing a CRM, here’s a quick illustration showing the essential steps to implement and use a CRM.
When you evaluate a CRM, one of the things you should look at is the level and quality of support offered by a CRM vendor.
Some CRM vendors offer dedicated support, including phone support, while others offer only email and chat support. Some offer 24/7 support to all customers while others offer support on weekdays during business hours.
Check and compare the customer support options available for each customer relationship management tool before you make the final decision.
Also, check the responsiveness of the support team and the time it typically takes to resolve a customer query. For that, you’ll need to check user reviews and feedback, which we’ll discuss in the next section.
Here’s a quick illustration showing how you can assess the quality of customer support offered by a CRM vendor.
So, when you evaluate a CRM, make sure you check whether it offers useful tutorials, articles, videos, and other learning resources on its website.
Lastly, you should check customer feedback and reviews on trusted review sites to learn what people are saying about their experience with a tool.
Especially look for bad user experiences related to user interface, technical issues, and usability. You should also carefully review what current users have to say about the responsiveness of the support team.
This is the final check in the CRM evaluation process before you make a decision.
Check out the reviews and ratings of Bigin by Zoho CRM on Trustpilot, for example.
Image via Trustpilot
Though it’s a fairly new platform, the positive reviews are enough to make you trust the CRM.
The first step in the CRM evaluation process is to identify your business’s unique requirements and goals.
Ask yourself:
Once you have an understanding of what you need, you can start your research and make a list of all relevant options.
From the available options, filter out the ones that don’t fit your budget or meet your needs. Then, compare the vendor reputation, features offered, pricing, integration, and customer support options to shortlist a few options.
You can use a simple table to compare various options and even assign scores. Here’s a basic template you can use or create a more detailed one listing the specific features you need.
Now, it’s time to do a final round of comparison and see which of the three shortlisted tools have the best user interface and are user-friendly.
Most CRM tools offer a trial or demo option that you can use to evaluate the user interface and navigability. Use the tips listed in the first section of this post to evaluate the user-friendliness of each tool.
Filter out any tool that seems clunky, has an outdated interface, or is difficult to use.
The last step in this guide on how to evaluate a CRM is to do a final comparison and finalize the best CRM for your needs.
If two tools are almost identical in all other aspects, but one is cheaper then you can choose that. Or if two CRM systems have the same features and similar pricing, but one is more user-friendly then that should be your final choice.
Unless a tool emerges as a clear winner based on all the parameters listed above, you will need to make a judgment call at this stage based on your preferences.
By now you should be clear on how to evaluate a CRM and choose the best one for your business. Here’s a quick checklist you can use to ensure you don’t miss anything important.
Q1. How do you measure CRM effectiveness?
A. You can use a variety of metrics to evaluate your CRM’s performance. Some of these include:
These are just a few of the many metrics you can track to evaluate whether your CRM is effective.
Q2. How do I review a CRM system?
A. There are many factors to consider when evaluating a CRM. Here are our top recommendations for factors to consider:
Q3. Who should be involved in the CRM evaluation process?
A. Ideally, you should form a cross-functional team involving members from various departments that will use the CRM. This will ensure that you’ll get inputs from various teams on their CRM requirements when you evaluate a CRM.
Q4. What are the questions you should ask a CRM vendor?
A. Here are some important questions you should ask a CRM vendor when you evaluate a CRM:
Q5. What are the essential features to look for in a CRM?
A. Depending on the type of CRM, you may get a wide variety of features that will differ from one CRM to another. However, there are certain core CRM features that almost all tools offer. These include:
There you have it—a complete guide on how to evaluate a CRM and choose one that helps your business succeed.
Make sure you are clear on which parameters are most important to your business and use those as the final deciding factors.
Also, consider the total cost of ownership of a CRM solution when comparing prices.
Need help finding the right tool for your business? Check our list of top CRM software to get started.
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