In my first blog I explained why Bigin is a better and more cost effective option for a small business than Zoho CRM or other mid-level CRM applications on the marketplace. One way to demonstrate this advantage is by digging deeper into an area of primary concern for every client I have: communications and collaboration.
Some business owners think that just because they’re small, they don’t need a CRM. And that’s just not true. Sure a single freelancer could get away with a just email and tasks on a calendar app. But the moment you start adding people to your organization — be it employees or contractors — you’re going to need a single, shared system that everyone can use to communicate and collaborate. Otherwise things will fall through the cracks. Opportunities will get lost. Customers and clients may be ignored.
The good news is that you don’t need an expensive platform to do this. It’s all possible with a CRM system like Bigin.
You may argue that an application like Microsoft 365, Google G-Suite or similar platforms will do the job. But they won’t. Remember the database? These applications aren’t working off a shared database with everyone in a team that can access, view and change all of their pending and historical activities and emails, see specific data like sales and leads and then perform outbound marketing tasks like sending emails to groups of contacts based on the data that’s being collected.
That’s why a business needs more than just an office system. It needs a CRM. Bigin does this, and more.
In it, you can store and manage specific and customized information about your leads, contacts, accounts, opportunities, tasks, events and deals and then filter this information to create lists and views based on this information to send emails, schedule follow-ups or simply share status among your team. For scheduled items you can also set reminders to ensure that nothing gets missed. This is all out-of-the-box stuff and easily setup. But that’s not all.
You can send and receive emails from the application or integrate it with popular email applications like Gmail. Bigin also comes with Team Pipelines which brings together various customer operations into a single 360-degree view. This way businesses collaborate better by connecting key customer processes such as deal management, onboarding, delivery, training, ticket management, refund requests, customer testimonials, etc. all in one view for a team to share.
And just because there are so many online ways to collaborate online doesn’t mean that small businesses don’t speak on the phone. Because they do. Using either the built in PhoneBridge app from Zoho or one of the many certified apps that integrate with PBX services in the Zoho Marketplace, Bigin can allow users to make a call right from within the application with all of the contacts details right in front of them, and have their call log added to a record automatically.
From an email perspective, Bigin allows the creation of templates and can send both individual and mass emails to your lists, while also allowing users to opt-out if they desire.
What more does a small organization need to communicate and collaborate? If I were to ask my clients if they’re doing this now, many of them would say no. Just taking advantage of these features would push them a million miles ahead of where they are now.
Sure, bigger teams may need to send more emails, desire more customization or require more customization and integration with apps they already they use. But most small companies don’t need this. These collaboration tools are right out-of-the-box and with just a little configuration (and hopefully a little training) a team of any size can start working together one to provide a better experience for anyone in a company’s universe.
This is all a small business really needs to collaborate and communicate. And it’s all here.
