Do you belong to a service industry? Consider yourself a solopreneur? Or are you part of a small business? If you answered yes to these questions, you need to take advantage of a CRM.
When you are running a service-based business, it is important to note the different characteristics of your business. This will guide you in choosing the right CRM for your service industry. Let’s explore these characteristics to find out what will work for you.
The best CRM for the service industry is a pretty tall order to fill — but we’re going to help you out here. That’s why we’ve put this list together. Just about all of these service-based CRM’s have free plans which means you can get started for free within just a few minutes. Let’s first start with what makes a good Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool.
Best CRM For Service Industry
There are many kinds of customer relationship management platforms. In the past, CRM software was targeted at enterprise-level companies. That’s no longer the case.
Small businesses are now able to implement a CRM platform without breaking their brains or budgets. That’s great news because implementing a CRM solution can increase sales by double-digit percentage points.
The ability to streamline workflow within a single app makes everyday work lighter, freeing up resources for growth. CRM provides a clearly defined set of processes to close more deals, get tasks done on time, and reduce miscommunications.
Lead management and sales funnel features help you build a better sales process. Building a sales pipeline lets you streamline your workflow. Opportunity management tools identify possible future sales, while customer support tools make your customer experience better, helping you understand your public and reduce churn so your company can scale.
Pipedrive
Benefits:
Pipedrive, in keeping with its name, is highly focused on driving the sales process and tracking contacts. The CRM has a simple, highly visual and straightforward user interface, designed to help move the customer down the sales pipeline and clinch that almighty closed deal.
The platform is useful for picking up leads, pipeline management, managing contacts, and keeping you on top of deals. It helps you prioritize key sales activities, sync information across channels, and consolidate your workflow in one place. That chops down the amount of time spent on admin tasks, letting you concentrate on relationship-building and fine-tuning the sales process.
You can construct multiple sales pipelines with customizable, unique stages appropriate to a specific product/service’s context. Reminders, notifications, and follow-up alerts automatically keep your head at where it needs to be. A mobile app for both Android and iOS gives you further mileage.
Full email sync ensures you can view messages from whatever email service you use in-app.
Gmail integration, in the form of a handy sidebar app, lets you add contacts from your fave email platform, make notes, and schedule sales activities.
Drawbacks:
There’s no internal emailing platform, so you’ll have to use Mailchimp integration for that. Then there’s the Pipedrive Dealbot integration with Slack; it gives you a heads up in Slack when a deal is identified, won, or lost, but the notification can sometimes get lost in the flood of chat. If you want more attention-getting, explicit deal notifications you’ll have to use Pipedrive’s Zapier integration, which has been described by users as somewhat complicated to set up.
These quibbles aside, the main drawback users cite is that the platform is a little bit pricey.
Pricing:
Pipedrive is available at four feature levels.
- The Essential plan is $14.90 per user/per month billed annually, and $15 billed monthly.
- The Advanced plan is $24.90 per user/per month billed annually, and $29 billed monthly.
- The Professional plan is $49.90 per user/per month billed annually and $59 billed monthly.
- The Enterprise plan is $99 per user/per month, billed annually.
A 14-day free trial is available for the Essential, Advanced, and Professional plans.
Freshsales
Benefits:
Freshsales is a full-fledged sales force automation solution for sales teams. It provides everything a salesperson needs to— attract quality leads, engage in contextual conversations, drive deals with AI-powered insights, and nurture customer relationships.
With built-in email, phone, chat, and telephony, Freshsales empowers sales teams with more time for selling by automating the sales process and increases efficiency and productivity in their daily activities. With Freddy AI, salespeople can get insights into the best deals to go after and what actions to take and predict revenue with sales forecasting. Businesses can take the next step forward towards powerful pipeline management with Freshsales. Also, the option to use native CPQ makes generating and sharing quotes and other vital sales assets hassle-free.
Drawbacks:
Like many vendors, some of the better features are reserved for premium packages. Among these for Freshworks CRM are time-based workflows, some chatbot tools and advanced metric reporting. But overall, the free and basic plans are a decent place to start, and you can always upgrade.
Pricing:
- There is a Free Forever Startup plan
- Growth plan is $15 per user/month billed annually
- Pro plan is $39 per user/month billed annually
- Enterprise plan is $69 per user/month billed annually
Bigin by Zoho CRM
Benefits:
Bigin is a pipeline-centric CRM from Zoho that is built specifically for small and micro businesses. At $7/user/month, Bigin is the most affordable CRM system in the market.
Bigin’s makers consciously cut down on features that most small businesses will never actually use. Owing to which, Bigin stays minimal and intuitive throughout. Having said that, Bigin does offer all the essential features such as built-in telephony and email, multiple pipelines, workflow automation, activity management, and a fully-customizable dashboard to track key business metrics.
The multiple pipelines in Bigin let you customize each stage in your pipeline for different business operations. With a clear pipeline view, you can always keep track of open deals by stage and easily filter contact and company information. Bigin also carries the same pipeline view to their mobile apps, something the competition heavily lacks.
Bigin integrates with Google Workspace (Formerly G Suite), Microsoft Office 365, Mailchimp, Zapier and a host of other popular Zoho apps including Zoho Desk, Zoho Campaigns, and Zoho Forms. The mobile apps for iOS and Android are rated well and their macOS app was recently featured by Apple on the AppStore.
Drawbacks:
As businesses grow, their requirements become more complex, which might force them to look at higher editions of Zoho CRM (Starting at $12/user/month), which offers a fully-featured CRM that is customizable for businesses of all sizes and types.
Pricing:
Express edition:
- $7/user/month, when billed annually
- $9/user/month, when billed monthly.
Free edition: If you work just by yourself, Bigin has a free edition that should help you satisfy your basic CRM needs.
Bigin offers a 15-day free trial for new users. You can sign up without entering your credit card information.
Salesmate.io
Benefits:
Salesmate is a CRM system for salespeople who want to spend more time selling and less time learning to use new apps. It’s great for startups and small businesses, but it can also be used for real estate and construction industries.
This platform is always improving itself. It’s given its analytics and reporting a significant upgrade, with a more customizable and interactive dashboard. Salesmate has also added new tools for phone calling and deal management, as well as new mobile app improvements. New features on the horizon include live chat and DocuSign integrations.
Drawbacks:
Some of the customization features can be a bit lacking, especially when trying to create custom data fields. Also, you’ll need the pricier version for essential tools like email analytics.
Pricing:
- Starter version is $12 per user/per month, billed annually
- Growth version is $24 per user/per month, billed annually
- Boost version is $40 per user/per month, billed annually
Salesmate.io offers a 15-day free trial on all of their plans.