7 signs it might be time to switch CRMs
Advances in technology, a better understanding of business needs, and evolving customer expectations have all contributed to significant improvements in modern CRMs — leaving homegrown and legacy solutions in the dust.
Here are seven signs it’s time to switch CRMs:
Your CRM’s interface feels cluttered, complicated, or outdated
A poor user interface is more than just a nuisance. It can seriously impact your sales, marketing, and other customer-facing teams’ ability to do their job efficiently and effectively.
Nearly 75% of CRM users value ease of use over robust functionality2, highlighting the need for a user-friendly, intuitive interface.
Nobody knows this better than your sales and marketing teams, so it’s worth asking their opinion. What are their favorite and least favorite aspects of the current interface? How would they rate it on a scale from 1 to 10?
If the average answer is under an 8, that’s a red flag, and it’s time to switch CRMs.
Fortunately, you now know what design elements your team does enjoy. You can ensure those same features are present in your next CRM.
An elegant solution is to use a CRM that allows you to customize every aspect of the user interface, so you can build an interface that suits your team’s needs exactly.
You’re missing any of these essential features
A good CRM will support all of these features “out of the box”:
- Emails and conversations, including shared inboxes, directly within the CRM.
- Seamless integration with calendar and email clients.
- Automations and API access.
- Basic project management tools in the form of tickets, assignments, tasks, notes, and boards.
- Custom fields to store data relevant to your business and your industry.
- Detailed reporting and analytics for forecasting, expected revenue, team performance, and customer behavior.
If your current solution doesn’t include these features, there’s almost no question you should make a change.
You’re still relying on manual processes for everyday tasks
The real power behind modern CRMs is their ability to automate dozens of day-to-day tasks.
Freed from these repetitive and mundane responsibilities, sales and marketing teams can focus on creating genuine connections with customers, demonstrating creativity and innovation, solving problems, and closing sales.
As a start, your CRM should support automations for creating tasks and tickets, adding notes to leads, sending emails to clients and employees, updating records, creating leads and accounts, placing phone calls, and sending text messages.
The ability to call custom functions, add formulas to fields, and access all your data via API adds even more value.
Without these essential functionalities, you’ll always be two steps behind your competitors.
Automations should also be easy to build and require zero special knowledge to set up. Look for a visual automations builder with a simple “if this, then that” syntax.
Fireberry supports automations that are both powerful to use and easy to set up.
Your CRM stores data — but it doesn’t make recommendations
The hallmark of an effective, modern CRM is that it supports your team's efforts proactively.
This means that in addition to storing customer data and allowing you to analyze and visualize it, your CRM should make timely recommendations on the next best course of action based on a customer’s behavior and preferences.
As with automations, this functionality helps ensure opportunities don’t get missed and that your customers get the best possible service.
Want to learn more about the intersection of AI and CRM? Check out this article on AI Transformation in the CRM Industry: What You Need to Know.
Your sales, marketing, and customer service teams are all using different tools
A good CRM breaks down silos, uniting departments and teams with a common goal and supporting them through access to shared data and tools.
If different customer-facing teams within your company are using different tools — e.g., another piece of software, a homegrown internal app, or an overloaded spreadsheet — that’s a sure sign it’s time to switch CRMs and get everybody on board with a flexible, intuitive solution.
Not only does this help speed up workflows and keep processes lean and efficient, but it also ensures your team members have access to the information they need, when they need it.
You can’t access your CRM data in the field
Most modern CRM solutions offer a mobile app or mobile version of their website, but plenty of teams still use legacy software or custom-built solutions that don’t. If that’s the case for you, it’s definitely time to switch CRMs.
A mobile CRM offers access to customer records from anywhere, at any time. This helps ensure sales reps and other customer-facing teams have everything they need when speaking with customers.
In addition, mobile accessibility is indispensable for companies with sales reps, account managers, and other roles that meet with clients face-to-face, attend conferences, trade shows, and other networking events, and value flexibility and responsiveness.
Your CRM doesn’t integrate with all the other tools you use
24% of companies that switch to a new CRM do so because they offer more or better integrations with other tools.1
Integrations allow your CRM to exchange information with the other tools you use, such as Google Workspace or Microsoft 365, your calendar, and your email client. They also allow you to easily import leads from other sources, such as your website or Facebook.
A good CRM should come with several of these integrations preconfigured and offer a simple way to build ad-hoc connections, such as a RESTful API.
Ensure your next CRM easily integrates with your team’s everyday tools, like Gmail, Slack, and Mailchimp, as well as important lead gen platforms, like Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn.
4 top tips for a smooth CRM switch
Switching CRMs may feel like a big undertaking, but the benefits can be enormous. Plus, there’s plenty you can do to ease the process. We recommend following these tips to ensure a smooth-as-silk transition.
1. Build buy-in from your team
An enthusiastic and excited team that understands the benefits of the new software will use it to its fullest and help maintain a well-organized, well-structured CRM database.
To get your team excited about the transition, show them how the new system will make their work easier and more rewarding. Highlight the software’s key features in a team meeting or email and share testimonials from companies whose employees swear by the new CRM.
Also, encourage your team to ask questions and provide feedback. This will help you address their concerns and account for their needs and preferences as you transition to your new CRM.
Source: Fauxels (Pexels)
2. Clean up records before migration
After just one year, as much as 70% of the data in your CRM may be outdated3, and 10-25% of your records may contain errors.4
Use your migration to a new CRM as an opportunity to audit your data and address any issues. Check for missing fields, malformed phone numbers, email addresses, and websites, as well as other common errors in data entry.
Likewise, ask your sales team to ensure leads are in the right pipeline stage, and have your customer service team check that queries have been allocated a ticket and assigned out.
Employees can also use this opportunity to clean up their notes, merge duplicate records, and weed out bad leads.
While this may take some time, it’s well worth it. It strips away all the clutter in your old database, giving you a fresh start for your new CRM.
Lastly, make a copy of this cleaned-up data before your migration — just in case you hit any unlikely snags while moving data.
3. Provide training on the new CRM
This is the best way to ensure success with your new CRM. Fortunately, many CRM providers offer training as part of the onboarding process or can provide you with materials to create your own training sessions, such as webinars and knowledge base articles.
During training, focus on features and workflows that will simplify employees’ day-to-day lives.
Encourage everyone to explore the software on their own, and set up ways for everyone to share their knowledge, like a Slack channel or dedicated time during a weekly meeting.
Finally, actively reach out to employees during the first few weeks of use and ask them if they have any questions about the software or have encountered any difficulties. Work together to find the answer, and compile everything in a Frequently Asked Questions document that everyone can consult.
4. Track your ROI with measurable goals
When you switch CRMs, you do so to achieve some kind of goal, such as increasing sales, reducing churn, or boosting customer satisfaction.
Decide what exactly you want from your new CRM in real business terms, and then set measurable goals so you can track your progress and provide additional support as needed.
Some useful key performance indicators (KPIs) include:
- Increased customer acquisition and retention rates.
- Higher average deal size.
- Reduced lead response time.
- Higher user adoption rates.
- Better data accuracy.
- Increased productivity and efficiency within your team.
Following these steps will help satisfy stakeholders who are keen to see a return on the investment and help you refine your CRM setup to ensure your goals are being met.
Make the switch to Fireberry CRM today
Fireberry.com
If your CRM software isn’t super simple to use or lacks competitive, modern features, there’s no question it’s holding you back. Moving to a new CRM can help your sales, marketing, and customer service teams be more productive at closing deals and helping customers.
Fireberry features an intuitive, customizable interface and all the essential features your teams need to break down silos, leverage the power of automations and AI, and smash through business goals.
Contact us to learn more, or sign up for a free Fireberry trial to explore everything we have to offer.
