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CRM tools are pivotal for businesses to improve the development and management of a fruitful relationship with their customers. Be it maintaining a healthy customer relationship, or monitoring the communication with your customers, CRM tools simplify everything. If you want to reduce the overhead of creating and maintaining a good customer relationship or streamline the activities relevant to system monitoring, scaling up customer interactions and staying ahead in this competitive market, then you must choose from the top-notch CRM tools.
For a startup, the requirement for a quality CRM tool is even more obvious. A strong customer relationship builds the foundation of a profitable business. And even while scaling your business up, you will need to scale up the communications with your customers and streamline the relevant workflows.
For that, you need to choose from the best CRM software for small businesses from day one. So, what’s a CRM system? Or, who uses CRM software? We will find these answers while walking you through the top CRM tools for startups and small businesses in 2022. So, let’s get started!
What’s a CRM System?
A CRM or Customer Relationship Management system is defined as a system or software or tool that helps a business monitor and track the communication with the customers, keep the customer information and contact details up-to-date, and manage various customer accounts.
Being focused to improve and manage customer relationships and streamline the relevant processes, a CRM tool can help you optimize your customer relationship as well as customer lifecycle value. It is well-known that a strong customer relationship and efficient customer relationship management help any business in multiple ways - driving word-of-mouth promotion, minimizing customer attrition rate, and improving recurring revenue, to name a few. And a quality CRM tool lets you achieve that easily.
See More: How Much Does it Cost to Build a Custom CRM Software
Who Uses CRM Software
CRM software is used widely by enterprises in various sectors to automate and streamline customer relationship management activities. Based on the CRM tools type, they are used in various areas.
1. Operational CRM Tools
Operational CRM tools, as the name suggests, are focused on handling various operational activities related to customer relationship management. An operational CRM tool handles various customer service functions, sales, leads, and marketing-related activities. It also offers a compact solution to store the information related to customers, new prospects, leads, and others.
2. Analytical CRM Tools
Analytical CRM tools take charge of monitoring, tracking, and analyzing the customer behavioral and purchase patterns, past sales trends and patterns, present prospects, leads, and opportunities, to name a few. In this way, analytical CRM tools help you come up with the proper sales forecasting, assess the upcoming opportunities, or drive lead conversion easily.
3. Collaborative CRM Tools
Collaborative CRM tools, which are also known as strategic CRM tools help businesses collect, segregate, store or share customer information across various teams as per the requirements. Such CRM tools cater to the collaborative tasks related to customer relationship management for any business as well as streamline the required interaction among teams.
See More: How To Build A CRM System from Scratch: A Complete Guide
Best CRM Software for Small Business
As discussed above, CRM tools are no more just options but necessities for small as well as growing businesses. Based on our research and expertise, here we are listing out the top CRM tools for small businesses or startups in 2022.
1. Salesforce CRM
Salesforce CRM is one of the most popular CRMs used by small to medium businesses. This cloud-based CRM tool offers a competitive solution to analyze customer requirements, find effective ways to solve customer queries and simplify customer relationship management activities including sales, marketing, and serving to the customers, to name a few.
Top Features
👉 Offers robust solutions for communities and markets
👉 Dedicated solutions that drive sales and lead generation
👉 Compatible for diverse email integrations
👉 Comes with real-time analytics & insights on various KPIs (Key Performance Metrics)
👉 Helps generate the right forecasting reports
Advantages
✅ Simple and fast system/tool navigation
✅ Compatible with diverse social media
✅ Ensures a high level of automation
✅ Offers an all-in-one custom dashboard
2. Pipedrive
If you are looking for a CRM tool that generates the maximum outputs without needing a lot of inputs and effort, then Pipedrive can be your choice. Though it is focused on improving customer relationship management, it is more suitable if your target is optimizing sales-related activities. Pipedrive not only helps improve the customers’ sales-related activities but offers a 360-degree view of the same.
Top Features
👉 Suitable for diverse emails integration
👉 Highly customizable as per your business requirements
👉 Comes with a competitive sales pipeline
👉 Offers a compact maps integration and email tracking solution
👉 Provides a suitable data import and export solution
Advantages
✅ User-friendly and catchy UI (User Interface)
✅ Highly flexible for graphics and modification
✅ Comes with multiple pipelines to ensure high efficiency
3. Zoho CRM
Zoho CRM is one of the top CRM tools that is suitable for startups, small businesses, enterprises as well as growing entities. Trusted and used by over 250 million businesses around the globe, Zoho CRM streamlines your customer support, marketing, and sales activities and brings them together for better management.
Top Features
👉 An all-in-one solution for leads, contacts, accounts, and deals management
👉 Highly customizable dashboard
👉 AI-based sales assistant
👉 Internal chats, forums, notes, and groups options
👉 Omnichannel platform for easier communication with customers from multiple channels
Advantages
✅ Easy onboarding and migration
✅ Highly flexible pricing and contracts
✅ Round-the-clock support
✅ Offers a competitive mobile CRM app
4. Hubspot CRM
Hubspot CRM is another well-known name among CRM tools. It is free to use and is equipped with a lot of top-notch features that make it one of the best CRM software for small businesses.
Top Features
👉 Email integration for one-on-one communication
👉 Efficient emails status tracking such as opened, read, and others
👉 Contact management
👉 Email marketing capabilities
Advantages
✅ Offers lifetime free plan
✅ Easily integrable with a range of apps
✅ Provides unlimited data storage
5. Insightly
Insightly is definitely one of the highly sought-after CRM tools in 2022. Not only does it provide a complete solution for customer relationship management, but its BI (Business Intelligence) capability caters to your business’s changing requirements and helps you optimize your business’s productivity. No matter whether your business is at the startup phase or you are planning to scale it up, this can be considered one of the best CRM software for small businesses.
Top Features
👉 Equipped with business insights and analytics
👉 Comes with sales data analytics
👉 Provides performance tracking, monitoring, and analysis solutions
👉 Offers a sidebar Chrome extension
Advantages
✅ Easy project management
✅ Simple milestone tracking
✅ Easy lead routing and management
✅ Complete workflow automation
6.EngageBay
EngageBay is one of the top-notch and budget-friendly CRM tools that is widely adopted by diverse businesses - small to medium or growing. Its broad range of marketing tools caters to your dynamic business and marketing requirements. Its compact sales and marketing solutions often make it the best CRM software for small businesses.
Top Features
👉 Competitive built-in communication hub
👉 24/7 fast customer service and support
👉 All-in-one platform to accommodate various sales, marketing, and business requirements
Advantages
✅ High automation level to streamline the CRM-related workflows
✅ Offers a free plan
✅ Helps pace up with the changing market trends
7. Freshsales
Freshsales is a fully featured competitive CRM tool that helps you streamline the sales-related activities, optimize the customer lifecycles and handle the relevant tasks and processes. If your focus is on customer relationship management as well as conversion tracking and optimization, then Freshsales is the right choice for you.
Top Features
👉 Custom reports creation, tracking, and management
👉 All-in-one dashboard analysis
👉 Built-in chat, call, and email features
👉 Event monitoring and tracking
Advantages
✅ Offers an easy lead-nurturing solution
✅ Simple learning curve
✅ Provides a compact solution for accessing, modifying, and maintaining customer records
See More: Why Use Angular 12 For Web Development in 2022: Top Features & Benefits
Takeaway
With the growing competition in the diverse present markets, businesses are getting inclined to opt for a suitable CRM tool from the very early stage. Just managing the customer relationship is no more the only target but, to get competitive advantages, you should look for more.
The above list of the top CRM tools will help you have a clear idea of exactly what to look for in a quality CRM tool. Once you have a transparent idea about what’s a CRM system or who uses CRM software and for what purposes, it will be easier for you to pick up the best CRM software for small businesses.
No matter whether you are looking for a quality CRM tool or any other product, we, at Third Rock Techkno, can offer you exactly what you are looking for. Equipped with teams of professional experts with years-long domain experiences, we offer a range of product development services and solutions. Check out our extensive portfolio and drop us a line to get started.