CRM is the key for any business that wants to crush it with customers. It helps you connect, sell, satisfy, and learn from your market. But not all CRM solutions are the same. In fact, there are a few that operate in a league of their own, leaving the others in the dust.
How do you choose the best CRM software for your startup?
In this article, we’ll discuss the benefits of choosing a reputable CRM platform as well as the potential operational fiascos of choosing a less popular one.
Why Go for the Best - The Future of CRM
The best CRM solutions are the ones with tons of happy users, good reviews and industry awards. These include, but are not limited to, HubSpot, Salesforce, and Zendesk. They offer you:
Reliability: They work like a charm. No downtime, no glitches, no errors. Your data is always safe and there for you.
Support: They have your back. Companies like Salesforce have dedicated user success teams that ensure you have expert help, quick solutions, and tons of resources, 24/7. They help you learn and improve your CRM skills easily.
Integration: The best CRM platforms play nice with others. Salesforce has thousands of integrations, HubSpot has a clean 1,000 integrations flat. This helps you sync your data and automate tasks across email, social media, e-commerce- accounting and analytics. You can also add other apps into the mix that help make your CRM better and more personalized.
Innovation: The top apps on the food chain keep up with the times. They master the latest tech, trends, and best practices while offering you new features, updates and upgrades.
Why Avoid the Worst - Stay on Top of CRM Customer Retention
Once you have some customers, you want to keep them. The worst CRM solutions are the ones that risk your customer retention. They typically have few users, low ratings, or no recognition. And for good reason. While they may be cheaper or simpler, the cheapest things often prove to be the most costly. These culprits can cause you:
Risk: They are not as secure or stable as the best ones. They may cause you to encounter bugs, errors, or breaches that compromise your data or your reputation. If you encounter a data breach, it will cost you some goodwill among your customers, and is not a good practice. You may also lose your data or CRM if the provider goes bust, shuts down, or drops the service.
Lack of support: It’s likely that the standard of customer support is lower than the best providers. The worst ones typically have less resources for learning, meaning that it’s harder for you to learn how to use a worse platform. They may have long wait times for customer support, or even worse, they may offer bad solutions.
Limited integrations: This is a huge pitfall, especially if you have a complex workflow. If the CRM platform doesn’t play nice with the other apps you need for your business, it will create gaps in your workflow. Things will get lost, data can go missing, and you can miss out on the benefits of using apps and extensions that boost your CRM functionality.
Outdated: If your CRM is lagging behind in features, performance, or usability, they are failing to meet the evolving needs of both you and your customers. You need a CRM that’s on the razor's edge of innovation.
Choosing the right CRM solution is a big deal for your startup. It can make or break your business growth, customer retention, and future success. You need to weigh the pros and cons of different CRM solutions and pick the one that fits like a puzzle piece into your business jigsaw.
Your needs, goals, and budget need to be met. A top CRM solution is built to help you meet them. At the end of the day, the choice is yours. Remember, a good CRM solution is not just a tool, but also a partner for your startup. And we here at CETDIGIT pride ourselves on making beautiful partnerships last. If you need help with your CRM integration, feel free to send us a message and get a free consultation today.
Leave a Comment