The objective of every business is to strive in the market. The growth can be attained through an effective contact management solution that falls under Customer Relationship Management (CRM). Contact management system enables the storage, organization, Tracking, maintenance, and management of contact information like names, physical addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, fax numbers, company size (employees and revenues), birthdays and anniversaries, product information and other essential data.
Every business irrespective of the size has a variety of contacts, including customers, partners, vendors, clients, suppliers, sub-contractors, and many more. With the increase in the business size, it becomes difficult to manage the enormous lists of contacts through smartphones or emails. Also, it is difficult to get any data output or any relevant purposeful information from your contact list, which can be utilized for marketing and other business promoting tasks. These problems give rise to the requirement of effective and complete contact management automation tools that facilitate the tracking of complete information and communication based on your contact list.
Contact management system facilitates:
- Organization of your contacts through a centralized platform for all the information of the customers, suppliers, partners, employees, or any business relationship
- Calendar integration: saves the time consumed in manual maintenance of contact database and client liaison
- Improved data management
- Email integration
- Sales generation and Tracking
- Ease of communication
- Documents and conversation management
- Import/export utility
- Enhanced customer satisfaction
- Reduced expenditure and saves time
- Track your communications
- Imports contacts from various platforms
The entrepreneurs often focus only on building products or services of high demand and undermine the importance of customer services. Customer satisfaction is the key to win their trust, which will define the success of any startup /business venture. Gaining the customers’ loyalty and confidence at the initial stages of your startup will boost your business. The contact management automation facilitates a proper, well organized, efficient central platform to provide the relevant information about the customers and their interactions and behavior with the company. This data can be analyzed and utilized for strategic sales planning, sales generation, and providing better customer services.
Currently, a vast range and variety of contact management software are available in the market. These systems should be chosen very carefully based on your priorities and specific business requirements. The contact management system not only stores your contacts’ information but also keeps it secured. Thus, making the selection of the correct system is more important.
The significant characteristic features for a selection of effective and efficient contact management software for your business are discussed below:
- Clear presentation of the relevant information
- Suitable grouping and filtering capacity
- Cost/Price
- Contact list limit
- Tagging and Ease of use
- Profile enrichment
- Mobile access
Clear presentation and relevant information
The basic features like a contact name, phone numbers, and addresses are essential, but they are not sufficient for a startup’s relevant information. The efficient contact management system aids in additional details and other relevant details like records of all the purchases (products or services), the products or services liked by the customer, the expectations of the services and products a customer prefers, records of the transactions and other projects done with the customer, the details of the team member dealing directly with the customer, records of customer feedback or request for any special needs or preferences by the customer and others.
The robust contact management system collects and records the relevant information in a user-friendly manner and allows this information to be augmented and edited. It will enable users to keep all the information updated quickly and simply.
Efficient grouping and filtering capacity
Finding particular relevant information about contact can be similar to finding a needle in a haystack if they are not grouped and categorized in a proper and organized manner. After recording the business contacts and their relevant information, they need to be managed and organized to be easily accessible and employed as per the requirements. An effective contact management system tool allows users to group relevant information in important categories, which can be accessed anytime by applying various filters. For example, you can group the customers who bought a particular product or belong to a specific geographical area. These filters will help in the customization of your product as well as the precise targeting of the promotional material.
These groupings and filters are not confined to the customers only. They can be applied to the suppliers and subcontractors as well.
Price of the software
Price is a significant factor for a startup, where every penny matters. The cost management software should be selected based on your business’s required features, which can efficiently manage your contacts. There may be many features in the available contact management system tool which are not needed by your startup. Thus, efficient, robust, and cost-effective software should be selected.
Contact list limit
You should be aware of the limit to store or import contacts of the selected contact management software. Many contact management systems impose a limit to store or import contacts, which can lead to additional costs for your startup to add more contacts. Therefore, you need to be careful about this aspect.
Tags and user-friendliness
Tagging your contacts saves a lot of time and eases the work as it allows you to perform updates and to find the data quickly using the tags. The chosen contact management system should have the feature of tagging as well as it should have a user-friendly interface.
Profile enrichment
The best contact management systems can automatically update your customer profile through third-party app integration. It can easily find the data, social media profiles, and other informational details in an effortless way.
Mobile accessibility
The selected contact management software should have the feature of mobile access through the mobile app. It will ensure your uninterrupted communication with your clients when you are out of your office, leading to enhanced efficiency and increased productivity for your business.
Type of contact management systems
Contact management systems can either be installed in your business computer system or can be a hosted, software-as-a-service option.
- Installed contact managers
- Software-as-a-Service
The SaaS option is considered better than the installed system as SaaS has many advantages:
- All the essential tools for business are included through which your business can be managed, scheduled, perform various tasks, and handle customer relations as well.
- Tracking is done through social networking data which can be searched by applying various filters
- The expenditures are low with a Software-based model as compared to the installed software (hardware costing, human resources, time for installation, and maintenance).
- The information can be shared internally (within your team members) and externally (with your customers, sub-contractors, and channel partners) through a Software-based contact management system.
- You need only an internet connection for accessing your contact information from any computer system anywhere.
- The SaaS provider stores all your information securely with back up mechanisms; thus, there are no chances of losing your important information.
Contact management automation
There are various options available in the market for the selection of correct contact management software. The software should be chosen, keeping in mind all the requirements and the priorities of your business.
- Bitrix24
- Pobuca Connect
- Sales Rabbit
- Google Contacts
- FreshSales
- Close
- amoCRM
- Salesmate
- EngageBay
- CentraHub
Bitrix24
Bitrix24 is the free online contact management software suitable for small-sized businesses with the following features:
- Easy to use
- No limit for contacts
- Email marketing
- Advanced sales tools
- Fully featured CRM
- Contact manager
- Efficient collaboration
- Captures & stores lead data
- Sales reports generation
- Audience segmentation
Pobuca Connect
Pobuca is a cloud-based contact management software that allows the storing and sharing of contacts with the team members and the partners. Some significant features are:
- Suitable for all sizes of business: small, medium and large
- The software transforms the multiple, overlapping, scattered, forgotten business contact lists into a single unified business address book accessible from anywhere.
- The contact details are synced from different devices and keep them updated.
- Contacts can be saved with different custom fields and can also be imported for sharing with external sources in the form of Excel files or csv files.
- PobucaBot is one of the features which serves as the Virtual Assistant helping the users in searching or updating the stored information.
- Pobuca facilitates the organizations to exchange business cards, email signatures details, and, likewise, other tasks.
SalesRabbit
SalesRabbit is a cloud-based sales and customer relationship management tool which is best suitable for the management of field sales by outside sales teams. The software’s basic aim is to enhance team efficiency and gain mastery in sales. Some of the characteristic features of SalesRabbit contact management software are discussed below:
- The software can be accessed on the computer system (both Windows and iOS devices) as well as on mobile devices (Android and iOS).
- Data collection and reporting can be done very easily.
- The lead progress in the field can be tracked and utilize digital sales presentation tools for achieving sales targets.
- Customized agreements and customer approval from the mobile app can be performed.
- It also permits the collection of client signatures.
- It has an online training program, the SalesRabbit Learn module, which tracks employee growth and encompasses the content from industry experts.
Google Contacts
Google Contacts is one of the simplest contact management tools which permits the storage, syncing, and organizing of contacts of the users present in different devices. It acts as an online address book that can be accessed anywhere. Some of the google contacts features are:
- Ability to integrate with all Google Apps
- Contacts restoration
- The facility of keyboard shortcuts
- Available as mobile apps
FreshSales
Freshsales is the cloud-based contact management software and sales CRM, which helps businesses of all sizes to manage and nurture the interactions with their potential customers.
The characteristic features of Freshsales contact management software are given below:
- The facility of built-in phone (one-click) and email
- AI-based lead scoring
- Sales lead tracking
- Sales management
- Visual deal pipeline
- Event tracking
- Webpage tracking
- Behavior-based contacts segmentation
- 360 Customer view
- Intelligent workflow automation
- Customizable visual reports and dashboards
- Integration with Freshdesk, Segment event tracking, and Google Calendar
A well-organized contact list ensures a precise and efficient approach to deal with any business opportunity that can be beneficial for the growth of your business. None of the opportunity should be lost due to inefficiency. Installing contact management software might give an impression of high expenditure, but it is worth it. The system contains the very precious and sensitive data of your business, which, if leaked, can prove to be a disaster for you and gala time for your competitors. Therefore, there should be no loopholes in system selection, should be inaccessible to unauthorized users, and should be protected at all costs.
In a nutshell, the contact management automation software plays an important role in increasing your business productivity (by reducing costs, saving time and manpower), promoting collaborations (with clients, partners and other integrations) and enhancing customer satisfaction (easy access to your contacts, quick reply to the inquiries and increased efficiency through tagging). All the above factors lead to revenue generation and growth and development of the company.
