The CRM Features Users Care About Most (CRM Study: Part 3)

SMBs Make Their CRMs Work Hard

Many of the people we surveyed indicated that their teams were bending their CRMs to the company’s needs.

A clear majority of respondents (62.5 percent) said their teams used most of their CRM’s features. Meanwhile, another one-third of respondents said their teams used at least half of the features in their CRMs.

Most teams customize their CRMs to meet their unique needs, too. More than half (53.5 percent) of respondents said they had added some customizations to their software, and another 19 percent said they had added deep integrations to their CRM.

That said, more than one-fifth of respondents (22 percent) said their teams used an uncustomized, off-the-shelf tool. CRM vendors targeting the SMB market should be prepared to address the needs of these users as well as the multiple-customizations of the power users.

The Must Have Features

Far and away, “customer management” was the No. 1 use case among our survey respondents. Four other features stood out as must-haves for about half of respondents:

  • Email marketing
  • Lead management
  • Sales funnel / Pipeline management
  • Customer interaction tracking

The Features SMBs Use Least

Likewise, a handful of features stood out as things few SMBs need from their CRMs. At least one-fifth of respondents said they never use the following features:

  • Social media sentiment analysis
  • Product suggestion
  • Social media management
  • Quote / Proposal creation

CRM Buyers Study

Here’s how 200+ software decision-makers say you can win their business and become their CRM provider. This study explores how to attract and convert CRM buyers at small to medium size companies.

Download

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Casey Meehan
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