CRM 101: How to pick the CRM that fits your business
Sometimes we get questions from customers who are considering migrating their office over to a business telephony system and a CRM solution. They like the idea of one-stop for information capture, maintaining detailed contact records and contact activity history, appointment scheduling, and integrated telephony. But choosing a CRM from the dozens of options now on the market proves to be a source of confusion.
If you’re new to CRMs, how do you know which one is right for you? I find there are really two basic questions to get started:
- What I am using this for?
- How much do I want to spend?
First, why do you want a CRM?
Traditional CRMs are designed for the sales environment. They use sales terminology, they are set up to drive contacts through the opportunity pipeline, and they do a great job of tracking actual and potential dollar values of each record. Salesforce.com, Microsoft Dynamic CRM and Tigerpaw are all sales oriented CRMs that are very popular, user friendly and full of great features.
Not everyone is using their CRM in a sales environment. Some businesses are more interested in different information. For example, how many walk in clients does the office receive each day? What are the most common topics that people email in about? Can you have your sales team, your support team and your development team working out of the same platform?
Think about the primary information you want your CRM to capture and go from there to see if there are specific solutions. Salesforce.com is one of the most popular, most robust and feature-laden sales and marketing oriented CRMs. But there are others on the market that cater to different niches. For example, Vanilla Soft focuses specifically on helping agents boost sales calls. MaxHire is a great option for recruiting firms looking to track their opportunities. Blackbaud markets itself as a CRM for fundraisers and non-profits. Chances are, there is a tailored solution out there for your need.
Second, what is the cost?
The pre-packaged, tailored solution might be out there but be too pricey for you. CRMs vary widely in cost and some of them will seem quite expensive to small businesses. Subscription costs are usually per user, per year, although monthly subscriptions exist too.
Most CRMs have a free trial option, if not an entirely free basic version. Always take advantage of free trials and check out free versions. If you need more features than your basic version offers, check with the support team and see if they’ll let you pay by feature rather than forcing you to switch to a whole new version.
Zoho CRM offers paid add-ons to their free version so that users don’t have to upgrade to more expensive professional versions. If you’re a non-profit, ask about non-profit pricing.
In addition, if you’re even a little bit tech-savy, you can do a lot with the open source CRMs like SugarCRM, OpenCRX and V-Tiger. If that thought terrifies you – hire an intern to do some customization!
If you’re still struggling, we’re happy to answer questions about the CRM options on the market, although we can’t promise to know them all. Good luck with your CRM search!
Creating workflow rules in Salesforce
Happy Valentine’s Day everyone!
A client recently asked about how to automate task creation based on the result of a call in the call center. This is what we recommended. In order to make these changes and set up a workflow task, you’ll have to be a Salesforce Administrator on your company’s Salesforce.com account.
First, navigate to the Setup under your name in the top right hand corner of Salesforce, and then to Create -> Workflows and Approvals -> Workflow Rules under App Setup on the left. If a splash page appears, just scroll down and click continue. You should wind up here:
Now you’ll create a new rule – this rule is the task creation trigger.
Not all of the objects will give you the option to select “Call Result,” so choose accordingly! Click next to move on to the next page:
In the example above, the call result “Need to follow up” will follow a rule called “Reconnect,” that we’ve just created. Hit Save and Next to move on to the task creation.
In the page above, you will define what action is going to be taken. In this case, I’ve chosen to create a new task. This will take me to the next screen, which lets me define the task.
Here I can select who the task will be assigned the task, when the task becomes due, and other task descriptions.
You can also indicate whether the workflow rule is triggered immediately, or if there are time dependent workflow rules. You can add different actions to the same workflow rule too – this can really ensure that nothing gets missed!
The last step is to head back to the Workflow Rules page and Activate your rule:
So that’s how you make workflow rules and automatic tasks based on the Call Center call result in Salesforce.com. We’re still experimenting with the best setup here to keep our developers, support, sales and marketing teams connected. If there are specific tasks or workflow rules that work well for your company, let us know.
Salesforce Call Centers
This post is going to give you some information about the Salesforce call center: what does it do and why might your business want it?
First and foremost though, what is a call center? The Salesforce call center is basically a softphone within Salesforce. It typically appears in the upper left hand side of the Salesforce window, like this:
“No big deal,” you might say, “Softphones are old news, I already have Skype and Google Talk!”.
Ok, but the cool part about integrating a softphone into the Salesforce Call Center is all of the options for information tracking and capturing.
For example, you can quickly see what records are associated with a call. Incoming calls will pop a screen that shows the caller ID, call history, and opportunities linked to the caller:
Phone numbers in Salesforce will become clickable so that you can click-to-call rather than manually dialing. Whew, because that was getting pretty physically strenuous:
Salesforce keeps track of calls made, along with any of the information entered by salespeople. So you can start tracking the number of calls you make or your team makes, the call duration, and call result, without manually creating new records:
That’s all pretty great for sales teams who are trying to share information and records with each other. Each team member can immediately see the activity history, including calls, for all leads, opportunities and contacts. If a team member is off sick or otherwise busy, her team mates can make sure nothing is missed.
“I’m sold! Now, how do I set up a call center in Salesforce? “
You need a CTI adapter. A CTI is a Computer-Telephony Integration. It the piece of the puzzle that allows Salesforce to interact with incoming and outgoing calls. Not all CTIs have all the features mentioned above, and some CTI adapters have other features like power-dialing.
There are a few CTI adapters out there which can be found on the Salesforce AppExchange. You’ll have to do some research to figure out what works for your phone system and offers the features you’re interested in. This can be daunting if you aren’t familiar with telephony, but it doesn’t need to be.
To get started, check out this post on Basic Telephony Terms, and have a look at the phone systems you are using. Then spend a bit of time on the Salesforce AppExchange looking at the CTI Adapters. At InGenius, we’re very proud of all our positive reviews and we are always happy to answer questions about our products or your system.
Check back soon for more information on softphones vs. hardphones, business telephone systems, customizing Salesforce reports, and more!
Starting with the basics: terms for newbies
Integrated CRM and telephony programs can be intimidating for the uninitiated. Programs are often full of acronyms and may feel overly technical. The customizable options are exciting for seasoned professionals, but potentially overwhelming to first time users. So what does someone fresh to the field really need to know about CRMs and telephony to get started and to make the programs work well for their business?
The Basics
CRMs: Customer Relationship Management programs
These help document, monitor, and track a company’s interactions, primarily with its customers. The most popular CRMs right now seem to be the web-based programs. There are lots of great CRM programs out there, and we’ll get to those in a later post.
Telephony
A word for a phone system or a bunch of phones networked together. If your office has a phone system with extensions, or if you need to do something like “press 9 for an outside line” then you something about telephony.
A few important terms and features:
VoIP: Voice over Internet Protocol
This means speaking through the internet rather than through phone lines. The most well known VoIP provider is probably Skype, which allows users to download it’s software for free, make calls between web-based Skype users for free, and make calls from web-based Skype users to landlines for reduced prices.
SIP: Session Initiation Protocol
This is a standard internet language for calling via voice and video. I don’t really think it is important for the lay person to understand. It might be important to know whether you are connected to a SIP based service provider.
IP: Internet Protocal
Internet language – or – how information is sent and received over the internet. You may need to know something called your IP Address, which is a string of numbers separated by dots. This is the location of your machine on the internet, just like your home address is the location of your house in the world.
T1
This is a kind of phone line.
Call waiting
The ability of the phone to signal that another call is trying to access your line while you are on a call.
Conference call
A call involving more than two parties.
Screen Pops
This is like caller ID for computers, except that instead of just the number showing up on your phone’s screen, the contact information for the incoming caller “pops” up onto your computer screen. InGenius Connector Plugins can help your CRM “pop” screen identify additional information such as your history of calls with that phone number and notes made about that phone number, in addition to the number itself
Toast Pops
Ha! No really, this is a thing. Actually, it’s the same thing as above, except maybe the ‘pop’ isn’t the whole screen but rather a smaller window that appears from another application. Like toast. Coming out of a toaster. Get it?
CLID or CID: Caller ID
Why don’t we just call this ‘Caller ID,’ which everyone understands? I don’t know. Caller ID means that you can see who is ringing your phone before picking up.
Call Logs
These are records of inbound and outbound calls, or, all of the calls made from your phone. InGenius Connector Plugins will help your CRM log calls and attach records or notes to those calls. This is helpful for remembering each step of the sale or interaction and making sure that tasks do not fall through the cracks.
Cloud Based
When a program is based in the ‘cloud’ it means that there is nothing stored on your hard drive or local server. People appreciate that they do not need to download or install anything onto their computers, and that their data can be accessed from anywhere. Salesforce is known for being a cloud based CRM.
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Things are evolving fast and different stuff is appearing all the time. Are there any other terms that you think are important for beginners? Are there other important features that you use currently, or would like to see in the future?
Happy 2012!
Wow!
It’s been a few months since we’ve updated the InGenius blog. That’s because we’ve been busy developing and perfecting some really great, easy to use telephony-CRM integrations.
What are telephony-CRM integrations you say? So glad you asked! It’s a way to make hard and soft phones connect to contact managers, (like Microsoft Outlook), and CRMs, (like Sugar and Salesforce). Your contact managers and CRMs are programs and software pieces you already know and use everyday. We just want to make it easier to put all these pieces together, saving you time and keeping you from losing track of important calls.
Our InGenius integrations are really smart applications. Over the next few posts, I’m going to show you the smartest ways to use these smart applications. If there is anything in particular you’d like to see, let me know.
What a great way to start 2012!
