Understanding your CRM system: What should you expect from all-in-one CRM software?

They say that who you know is key to success in any business. So if you meet hundreds of new contacts every day, it can be challenging to keep up with each interaction. Let alone remember where you met someone.  But being able to recall these details after you meet someone can make a difference in the business relationship you're building with them.

Which makes choosing the right customer relationship management platform a pretty big deal.

In this blog post, we look at the different types of CRM platforms available, and look at what you should expect from a single platform packaged as all-in-one CRM software.  

What is a CRM?

A CRM, also known as customer relationship management, is a platform that helps businesses manage and nurture customer relationships. It is a database you can use to store key information such as contact information, your last interactions with someone, notes on where you met.

CRM usage isn't limited to large corporations. Anyone can benefit from it including Solopreneurs, small businesse and startups. You can also use it for personal use if you do a lot of networking and need somewhere to store all your new contact information.

Types of CRM

If you're on the market, you'll know that there are a few CRM solutions to choose from. This can be overwhelming. Some CRMs have a specialized focus which makes them very good at one thing. That one thing could be anything from:

• Email marketing
• Integrations
• Sales pipeline management
• Analytics
  

An example is Pipedrive's speciality as a sales CRM. But CRMs such as folk, HubSpot CRM and Zoho CRM are what we call all-in-one platforms.

What about an all-in-one CRM?

Instead of helping just sales, or just marketing. All-in-one CRM systems have tools and features that can support sales, marketing and customer management. If you've been struggling with information sharing across your business, an all-in-one CRM is a great solution. A good example is, of course, folk.

Expect to see some of these features in an all-in-one CRM:

• Marketing automation
• Email marketing campaigns
• Pipeline management (for sales team, recruitment, marketing platform and more)
• AI support
• Custom fields
• Landing page builder
• Project management
• Message templates

Benefits of an all-in-one CRM

There are a lot of benefits you can gain from choosing to go with an all-in-one CRM. Below are a few.

1. Increased internal collaboration

If you're often sharing contact lists, an all-in-one CRM can help you create a single source of truth across your business. The contact sync feature can help you consolidate all your contacts into your CRM so that you have all the customer information in one place. The platform it is able to get contact information from depends on the CRM you choose. In folk, this means you're able to have access contacts from Gmail, Outlook and social media platforms such as LinkedIn.

2. Improved customer relationships

By using the data your CRM collects to understand your customer lifecycle and monitor your customer interactions and customer engagement, your customer retention will improve. You can use it to understand how long it takes for your customer support team to respond to a query, when customer engagement drops off, and build custom reports to gauge this over time.

3. More flexibility

Unlike specialized CRMs whose features focuses on one aspect of the business, an all-in-one CRM can support multiple functions. This is especially helpful if you have a small business with limited budget. It also means your teams will be able to form cross-department collaborations easily.

How to choose the right CRM  for you

With a lot of all-in-one CRMs to choose from, it can be a bit overwhelming to figure out which one is right for you. To get you started, we suggest you pay attention to these features in particular.

User experience

The user interface of your CRM can make or break a team. Especially one that is super busy with not a lot of time to get to know a new platform. Pay attention to the learning curve and look for a simple CRM that is easy to use from day one. While usability might be subjective, most CRMs have a free trial you can make use of.

Customization

To fully make use of a CRM platform, having the right tools to fully customize it can be helpful. This means you will need to pay attention to the intergration library it offers. Look for one that can sync your contacts from across the board including Gmail and Outlook so that you are not limited to a particular email provider.

Price and plans

Most CRM plans are priced per user, per month. With many charging extra for integration support. So you'll want to look for one that can scale with you. You may find that the free plan is useful but its paid plans are too out of reach so cannot support you when you're ready to scale. Make sure you do your research.

What are the top all-in-one CRM software in the market?

folk

Best for: all-in-one software for multiple business functions including sales, marketing, recruitment, investment and more.

folk is an award-winning all-in-one CRM that is loved for their Notion-like design. It's one of the easiest CRMs to use on the market that can support multiple business functions. It's also packed with a ton of useful features including AI-support, email campaigns, and a handy Chrome extension, folk X.

Key features

• folk X Chrome extension: allows you to prospect, access message templates and add search lists from LinkedIn without leaving the page.
• Contact management: Consolidate and syncs contacts from Gmail, Outlook, LinkedIn and more so you can build contact lists with your team. Use folk's one-click enrichment to fill in missing contact information.
• Pipeline management: Choose from a Kanban-board view or a listicle that can be customized to mimic your sales process.
• AI support: 'Magic Field' allows you to create custom prompts that tell folk's AI information to fill in from your database. Saving you time personalizing multiple emails to multiple recipients.

HubSpot

Best for: free CRM software

HubSpot is known for their free forever starter plan. Ideal for small businesses on a budget, it can support your sales pipeline, marketing needs and customer service. However, once you're ready to scale its steep price plans can make it hard for it to scale with you.

Key features

• Functional free plan: covers basic CRM features including contact management, email logs and phone logs.
• HubSpot branded live-chat bot.
• Steep learning curve.

Bitrix24

Best for: automating workflows.

Bitrix 24 is an all-in-one CRM platform that can generate and mange leads. You can also use it to automate workflows, keep an eye on your sales teams' productivity, build landing pages and run marketing campaigns.

Key features

• Mobile CRM platform: lets you manage clients on the go.
• Free website template to build landing pages and collect contact information. Capture leads and convert them into customers.
• Challenging user interface and steep learning curve.

Conclusion

All-in-one CRMs are a great investment whether you're an SMB or large corporate. They promote more internal cross collaboration with different business functions and can support your sales pipe, customer service, investment and more. Its user-friendly interface make folk one of the top contenders on the market. Try folk today, free.