Technobabble

CRM Software?

Posted by on Jan 4, 2007 | 8 Comments

I need some suggestions. What’s the best customer relationship management (CRM) program out there these days? A friend of mine is buried in customer email and feverishly combing the market for a solid CRM program for his ecommerce company…

I’m looking for a good CRM solution that I can use to handle all of our customer service emails. Specifically, I’m looking for something that we can have all the incoming mail go through that will keep track of the entire thread for each occurrence as well as categorize things by status (open, resolve, etc.). That way anyone in the office (or out of the office) can log in and handle issues and be able to see the history of each inquiry. Right now we’ve got all the mail going to one computer.

Simple and cheap is better than fancy and expensive for me. Any suggestions? I’m clueless.

My friend’s need for an effective CRM solution is considerable, although his budget is not. Are there any entry-level CRM solutions that would fit the bill?

[tags]CRM software, Customer Relationship Management, customer service[/tags]

  • http://www.strategyst.com Strategyst

    Aside from the big two — Salesforce and Microsoft — he might want to check out Rightnow. The have a strong heritage in service and support and it is hosted. He might also want to look at SageCRM; it is really easy to use and they have a hosted option at a reasonable price (disclosure: I worked for SageCRM). NetSuite also targets SMBs, so he should check them out as well. There are some free (Zoho) and open source (Sugar CRM) options as well, but I am less familiar with those. On my site there is a good link (from Line 56) to other free options: http://www.strategyst.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=104&Itemid=51

    best of luck

  • Paul Sklar

    Try GoldMine. Like Outlook, but much better. Keeps all your email threads automatically sorted under each contact record (amongst many other things). Its a complete CRM. I have used it for all my personal & business stuff for about 6 years, and won’t swap it!

  • Jason

    Dan,

    I think your friend might really like Visitar’s hosted CRM software (www.visitar.com). It costs $55 a month and has all the funtionality of other well-known hosted CRM companies with rich telephony to boot! It’s cheap and powerful.

    In all fairness, I represent PR for this company but I know what’s out there and Visitar’s solution is solid.

    good luck!

  • http://crm.brainuse.com Online CRM Guide

    If you are looking for an ondemand solution, your choices are Salesforce.com, Netsuite, Salesboom.com, and RightNow.

    If you are looking for traditional CRM (installed) your best bet if you have a big budget is SAP. If your budget is small, you are better off with an on-demand version.

  • Bill

    Request Tracker does exactly what he is asking for. We’ve been using it for years for exactly the same purpose he describes. It’s a free open source application. You can find Request Tracker (commonly known as “RT”) at http://bestpractical.com/rt

  • http://www.superwasp.net/weblog oVan

    Perhaps a simpler solution might be to use a good ticketing application. You can download a fully working (non-crippled both in time and features) version of SmarterTicket at the website of SmarterTools Inc. (www.smartertools.com) and see if that works out for you.

  • byron

    as a self-employed sales rep i’ve used Maximizer (www.maximizer.com) since the days of DOS. it has a Company/Contact heirarchy that works for me and allows full customization of the database descriptors for each. it also has stand-alone or enterprise editions depending on the scale you need. best of all, it has mobile apps for Palm & Windows that keep your phone & database synched.

    no, i don’t work for them and i’ve always paid for my copies…

  • http://www.blagodir.com Petro Blagodir

    Hi!

    I do recommend to use SugarCRM Open Source edition.
    SugarCRM OS if free also you can customize it.

    We have already installed demo installation so you can try it here

    http://www.blagodir.com/sugar/index.php

    Also if you need any help with customization or SugarCRM development feel free to conact us.

    Petro Blagodir,
    pblag@blagodir.com
    Blagodir Software
    http://www.blagodir.com/