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Ask YC: What CRM do you use?

12 points| jyu | 18 years ago | reply

I'm looking for a non-sucky, cheap CRM software/web app to manage several hundred contacts. Any suggestions?

21 comments

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[+] gscott|18 years ago|reply
OfficeZilla.com. It rocks... but I am biased!
[+] carpal|18 years ago|reply
Salesforce.com at the moment. It is pretty awful and kind of expensive, so we're developing our own.
[+] dshah|18 years ago|reply
Is it really worth it to develop your own CRM (no matter how awful Salesforce.com might be)?
[+] dejb|18 years ago|reply
SugarCRM. The bastards removed half of the Project Management functionality in 5.0 but now they are promising to bring it back.
[+] igexome|18 years ago|reply
Genius.com -> SalesGenius product. Can use as a straight web app or even integrate with Outlook. Also - cheap!
[+] izak30|18 years ago|reply
I just tried Heap, it's pretty good, also I installed sugar on my testing machine, not as good as heap, IMO.
[+] huherto|18 years ago|reply
We use salesforce.com for one person. That way we don't have to pay anything and it is all that we need.
[+] vdm|18 years ago|reply
Please, link these things up people.
[+] jgrahamc|18 years ago|reply
At Electric Cloud we use SalesForce.com. It works.
[+] nextmoveone|18 years ago|reply
SugarCRM is cheap, but I am not too fond of it...
[+] dshah|18 years ago|reply
We use Salesforce.com at my startup HubSpot.
[+] nickhac|18 years ago|reply
We evaluated SugarCRM and i have heard at least 20+ reccomendtations to use it.

In the end we went with salesforce.com and our guys love it... The outlook integration has made it easy to bake into everyday processes (along with xobni for search etc).

That said ideally we would like to see something more holistic from CRM.

It seems most "CRM" products are really just great at sales pipeline management, and dont really cover the end to end business efficiency features we really need...

Eg Cross Channel Marketing Conversion linked into the sales pipeline management as well Project management, Timesheets, Invoicing, Profitability Reporting, Customer satisfaction surveys etc

Solving the problem of how to best acquire customers is a great problem fix, but it creates a whole new bunch of problems around making sure you actually have really happy customers that are profitable to you (which is just as important to success and may be even harder to get right)

Anyone have any reccomendations for this?

[+] jyu|18 years ago|reply
What you're asking for doesn't seem like a something a CRM should do. It seems more like a managerial accounting question.

First off, for every new customer, you should have built in metrics to figure out where they came from. For instance, use a different number on your direct mail pieces, use trackable order links in your e-mails and PPC campaigns.

Secondly, place a system to automatically follow up with existing customers. E-mail power user tips after 15 days, Phone call after 45 days of use to gauge satisfaction, etc. For gauging customer satisfaction, you get more useful feedback from someone on the phone than filling out a survey.