Businesses of varied sizes find customer relationship help

Kelly Fallis has inadvertently become something of an expert on customer-relationship management, or CRM software. She has gone through eight platforms in three years as chief executive of RemoteStylist, a five-employee company, based in Toronto and with an operation in New York, that provides free design advice and sells furniture at discounted prices. ?They were way too complicated for us and did not have a great user interface,? she said. ?I need to spend time running my business, not figuring out technology.?

That is the lament of many small-business owners trying to navigate the world of CRM software, which automates sales and marketing functions and acts as a central database, keeping track of everyone who comes in contact with a business. The software enables businesses to communicate quickly and frequently with customers and keep track of their preferences and needs. For example, it automates tasks like sending out shipping confirmation e-mails and surveying customer satisfaction.

Small businesses generally do not need all the bells and whistles many advanced CRM systems offer; instead, they need a program they can put in place quickly and easily, without the help of an information technology department. Many small businesses began using CRM platforms in more numbers about five years ago, said Amy Larrimore, managing partner at the Empire Builders Group, a technology consulting firm in Philadelphia.

More recently, the platforms have become cheaper and easier to use, making them more of a crucial buy. With so many options available, we asked some small-business owners to tell us about their experiences.

?Very small companies usually just need something to manage contacts,? said Larrimore. Her own firm used Batchbook until it reached 17 staff members, then it switched to Sugar CRM. Taylor Aldredge, who heads branding and marketing for Grasshopper, a company in Needham, Mass, that offers a virtual phone system for small businesses, uses Buzzstream, software that helps manage social media marketing campaigns. It costs the company $40 a month for each of three users.

Aldredge wanted a way to track conversations with prospects, customers, journalists and bloggers. ?I needed something that had the ability to track interactions and mentions?whether that is social media, links or press?to see which conversations were worth pursuing,? he said.

Thanx, a San Francisco start-up that offers retail loyalty programmes with rewards linked to a customer?s credit card, started with Salesforce. The service had many useful features, said Zach Goldstein, founder and chief executive of the nine-employee company.?

In December, he switched to Close.io, a platform that lets Thanx sales representatives make calls by clicking on a page representing a lead, without leaving the application or having to use the phone. It also sends and receives e-mails.

Scott Gerber, founder of the Young Entrepreneur Council, an invitation-only professional organisation for entrepreneurs under 40, has been using CRM software from Infusionsoft for about a year. The organisation offers a mentoring programme and Gerber uses the software to track those who are being mentored and to send them specific learning materials.

?It?s easy to customise content and create the right tracks for where that content needs to go,? said Gerber, who added that the software had increased his organisation?s productivity. ?If I have 50 people I e-mail today and want to follow up in a week, I can send a personalised communication by writing the copy once, adding in the variables, and it will be sent out at the exact time I need to the designee of my choice? Gerber said.

Derek Christian, owner and chief executive of My Maid Service, with 37 employees in its Cincinnati and Dallas offices and about $2 million in revenue, also began using Infusionsoft a year ago. Christian paid $1,200 upfront along with a $200 a month licensing fee. He praised the company?s tech support, and also liked the drag-and-drop interface and the ability to build a customised e-mail marketing campaign.

Enterprise CRM systems, like those from SAP or Oracle, can take years, millions of dollars and a parade of consultants to put in place, but they include powerful features. Yet some enterprise-level features are available in nonenterprise systems like Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics and a few newer platforms.

Mike Wolfe, president of WAM Enterprises, a digital marketing firm in Katonah, NY, uses Salesforce. His five-employee firm specialises in generating leads using social media, search-engine optimization and e-mail campaigns. Although some small-business owners say Salesforce is too complex for them, Wolfe likes the basic edition, Contact Manager, and pays $300 a year. He said he especially liked the mobile app. ?With the app, if a client needs to reach us and we weren?t planning on it that day, there?s no reason for anyone on our team to say they didn?t have the information they needed to call back,? he said.

Benjamin L Luftman, a partner and co-founder of Luftman, Heck & Associates, a law firm in Columbus, Ohio, that has 30 employees and four offices, likes the AppExchange, an online market where vendors sell a variety of business applications that can be integrated with Salesforce. Luftman uses Salesforce?s Enterprise edition, which costs $125 per user each month, with the Conga Composer app to create packets of forms needed by the courts for each client. ?I hit one button and all the fields in these forms are populated with that client?s information,? he said.

NYT