CRM Software Examples: Finding the Best Tools for Your Business

In this section, we’ll explore the top CRM softwares that have proven to be essential for businesses across different industries. Each of these tools stands out for its unique features, capabilities, and use cases, making them popular choices for businesses of all sizes. Let’s dive into how each CRM software performs based on its overview, key features, use cases, and pricing.

1. Lark

Lark is a comprehensive collaboration platform that integrates messaging, meetings, calendars, documents, data management, emails, and more into a single solution, making it a powerful CRM tool for businesses. It supports customer data management, sales pipeline tracking, marketing campaign planning, and automates repetitive tasks, allowing teams to focus on higher-value work. Lark’s core strength lies in its seamless collaboration ecosystem, where all tools (such as Messenger, Base, Docs, Calendar, etc.) are interconnected. This enables users to manage CRM-related tasks, such as tracking sales leads, assigning tasks, recording customer information, and generating reports, all within one platform. Additionally, Lark Base offers no-code data management capabilities and a rich library of templates, allowing businesses—from startups to large enterprises—to quickly customize CRM systems tailored to their needs.

Key features

• Seamless integration: 

  • Connect your favorite CRM tools seamlessly. With Lark's AnyCross, you can link your Lark account with Zoom, Salesforce, Square, and over 100 other tools, enabling you to centralize all work in one place.

• Team collaboration: 

  • Lark combines Messenger, Docs, Calendar, and Meetings into one platform, allowing teams to communicate efficiently and complete CRM tasks in a collaborative environment.

• No-code data management:

  • Highly customizable fields and tables in Lark Base: Add process fields (track sales lead status), personnel fields (assign tasks), date fields (set reminders), and more to create anything from simple contact databases to complex sales pipelines or customer management systems.

  • Pre-built CRM templates: Quickly launch workflows for sales lead tracking, customer visit records, contract management, and more.

• AI-driven lead management: 

  • Automatically categorize and enrich lead data, such as company size and industry. Use AI to generate personalized discovery questions for client calls, enhancing lead engagement.

• Data visualization tools:

  • Monitor pipelines, targets, and team performance with fully customizable dashboards. Tailor dashboards to focus on the metrics that matter most, enabling actionable insights and data-driven decisions.

• Automated workflows:

  • Automate follow-ups, reminders, and customer interactions. Receive automatic notifications in your chat when you get a lead, close a deal, or receive inquiries, ensuring prompt action. Save time by eliminating manual tracking of sales processes and focus on core priorities.

• Advanced mobile tools:

  • Advanced mobile tools: Empower your sales team with an optimized mobile experience to manage deals, track sales processes, and submit real-time updates from anywhere. Stay connected with your team, whether on desktop, mobile, or web.

• Permission management: 

  • Set role-based access permissions for team members to ensure secure and organized data management.

Real-world example

V12Software, an automotive marketing platform based in California, serves over 7,200 new and used car dealers with online advertising solutions. As the business rapidly expanded, the company faced several challenges:

• Fragmented customer data: Customer data was scattered across multiple platforms, making it difficult to track sales and customer progress comprehensively, which hindered decision-making.

• Isolated team collaboration: Sales teams operated in silos, preventing optimization of overall sales performance and increasing the risk of missed opportunities.

• Complex customer portfolio management: The customer success team needed more flexible tools to analyze customer status while centralizing updates, avoiding distractions caused by excessive views.

Solution
V12Software adopted Lark Base to build a customized customer management hub, addressing data fragmentation and collaboration challenges while streamlining customer success processes:

• Unified customer management hub:

  • Integrated sales and customer success teams into Lark Base, centralizing the management of sales leads, onboarding statuses, follow-up dates, and key information.

  • Sales teams could submit new deals via form views, calculate commissions in real-time, and monitor team performance easily.

  • Customer success teams efficiently recorded onboarding and follow-up statuses, with custom permissions ensuring each team viewed only relevant records. Advisors could create private views to organize clients independently.

• Automated workflows:

  • Automated processes added new customers directly to the customer success workspace, ensuring smooth onboarding without requiring manual reminders or multiple meetings.

  • Customer success teams set reminders for key dates via Lark Messenger, enabling timely follow-ups and improving service punctuality.

• Data visualization and team collaboration:

  • Custom dashboards created in Lark Base provided real-time insights into customer growth trends and team performance.

  • Dashboards were embedded directly into team chats, allowing teams to discuss actionable improvements and optimize customer success strategies.

Outcome

• Improved customer management efficiency:

  • Centralized customer data enabled tighter collaboration between sales and customer success teams, reducing manual work and meeting requirements.

  • Automated workflows accelerated onboarding and follow-up processes, ensuring the customer success loop operated efficiently.

• Enhanced team performance:

  • Real-time dashboards allowed teams to compare performance, identify areas for improvement, and optimize sales strategies.

  • Customer success teams improved service punctuality and client satisfaction by leveraging reminders.

• More time for customer-focused work:

  • Sales and customer success teams had more bandwidth to focus on onboarding, follow-ups, and improving customer success rates, driving business growth.

By utilizing Lark Base, V12Software successfully built a high-efficiency customer management hub, achieving centralized data management, streamlined workflows, and enhanced team collaboration, significantly improving customer success processes and driving business development.

Pricing

• Free plan available for up to 20 users.

• Paid plans start at $12/user/month (billed annually).

2. HubSpot CRM

HubSpot is a comprehensive CRM platform designed to track customer relationships and enhance marketing, sales, and service processes for businesses of all sizes. Whether you’re a small, medium, or large enterprise, or part of a marketing, sales, customer service, operations, or executive team, HubSpot provides tailored solutions to meet your needs. By integrating multiple modules and dozens of tools, HubSpot helps businesses optimize internal collaboration, improve customer experience, and drive growth throughout the buyer journey—creating a win-win scenario for both businesses and their customers.

Image source: hubspot.com

Key features

• Multi-module integration: Includes Marketing Hub, Sales Hub, Service Hub, and Content Hub, catering to the unique needs of different teams.

• Comprehensive timeline view: Tracks and records all customer interactions across sales, marketing, customer service, and operations in one place.

• Exceptional user experience: An intuitive and easy-to-use interface reduces operational complexity, allowing teams to focus more on customers.

Real-world example

Cold Jet, a global leader in dry ice blasting and production equipment, faced several challenges with their outdated CRM system that hindered customer engagement and operational efficiency:

• Fragmented data management: The CRM lacked integration with their enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, resulting in extensive manual data entry, frequent errors, and delays in order processing and shipping.

• Lack of mobile functionality: The sales team was unable to access customer data on the go, limiting productivity and responsiveness.

• Inefficient communication: Disjointed data caused untimely and irrelevant customer communications, such as sending training information for machines customers didn’t own, reducing satisfaction and engagement.

• Operational inefficiency: Teams lacked real-time visibility into projected deals and inventory needs, delaying service delivery and impacting customer experience.

Solution

Cold Jet implemented HubSpot Sales Hub and Smart CRM to create an end-to-end solution:

• Unified systems:

  • HubSpot integrated with Cold Jet’s ERP system, creating a single source of truth for customer data, improving transparency, and reducing cross-departmental errors.

  • Automated data synchronization and updates eliminated manual input, saving time and ensuring accuracy.

• Mobile-friendly tools:

  • The sales team gained access to HubSpot’s Mobile CRM App, enabling them to manage deals, track sales pipelines, and interact with customers anytime, anywhere, significantly boosting productivity and responsiveness.

• Personalized communication:

  • HubSpot’s unified data platform allowed Cold Jet to deliver tailored and proactive services based on customer needs and interaction history, enhancing engagement and satisfaction.

• Customizable user experience:

  • Unique dashboards and views for different departments provided targeted access to relevant data, promoting efficient collaboration across teams.

Outcome

• Automation and efficiency improvements:

  • Automated outreach and deal management reduced lead response time by 66% (from 3 hours to under 1 hour).

  • Order processing time decreased by 78% (from 45 minutes to just 10 minutes), significantly improving responsiveness to customer needs.

• Optimized operations:

  • Unified data management and ERP integration improved transparency across departments, reduced errors, and accelerated workflows.

  • Mobile-friendly tools empowered sales teams to respond faster, greatly enhancing productivity.

• Enhanced customer engagement:

  • Personalized and proactive communication strengthened customer relationships, leading to higher retention and trust.

  • Accurate and timely outreach ensured customers received high-quality service and support.

Pricing

• Free plan: Includes basic CRM features (free for up to 2 users).

• Starter Plan: Starts at $15/month.

3. Zoho CRM

Zoho CRM is a powerful and cost-effective customer relationship management tool designed for businesses of all sizes looking to scale and optimize processes. Its omnichannel support and workflow automation features simplify complex customer management tasks, making it an ideal choice for growing organizations.

Image source: zoho.com

Key features

• Omnichannel support: Enables communication with customers via email, social media, and phone, integrating all data into the CRM platform.

• Workflow automation: Automates tasks such as reminders, customer assignment, and system alerts.

• AI assistant: Help to predict customer needs and provide actionable recommendations.

Real-world example

Zylker Insurance, a healthcare insurance company, faced challenges with its sales team managing high volumes of customer calls daily. These calls included inquiries from potential customers, guidance on policy documents, claims support, and renewal assistance. Due to the heavy workload, sales representatives lacked the time to manually record detailed call information and customer feedback. Sales manager Kristine sought an integrated system that could automatically log call data, save call recordings, and collect customer feedback through automation, enabling better team performance evaluation and improved customer communication.

Solution

• Phone integration:

  • Zylker integrated Zoho CRM with its phone system, allowing sales representatives to make calls directly from the CRM app.

  • All call details, including time, duration, and recordings, were automatically logged into the CRM.

• Customer feedback collection:

  • Automated workflows were configured to send surveys to customers immediately after each call, collecting feedback on service quality.

• Data consolidation:

  • Customer feedback and call records were consolidated within the CRM, creating a complete interaction data view for easy analysis by managers.

• Permission settings and report generation:

  • Permissions were set to ensure only Kristine and other managers could access detailed records.

  • Comprehensive reports were generated based on the data to evaluate team performance and customer satisfaction.

Outcome

• Reduced administrative burden:

  • Sales representatives no longer needed to manually log call information, saving significant time and allowing them to focus on improving sales performance.

• Improved management efficiency:

  • Sales managers could easily review call records and quality, generating reports to comprehensively assess team performance.

• Enhanced customer experience:

  • Customer feedback became a key metric for measuring satisfaction, helping Zylker optimize communication strategies and improve overall service quality.

Pricing

• Standard Plan: $14/user/month (billed annually).

• Professional Plan: $23/user/month (billed annually).

• Enterprise Plan: $40/user/month (billed annually).

4. Salesforce

Salesforce is one of the most widely used cloud-based customer relationship management platforms, offering businesses a variety of tools and services to optimize customer interactions. By streamlining sales, marketing, and customer service processes, Salesforce CRM helps businesses enhance customer experiences and drive growth. Its robust features enable efficient management of leads, sales opportunities, and customer service, while providing advanced data analytics and reporting to support informed decision-making.

Image source: salesforce.com

Key features

• Customer behavior analytics: Real-time insights into customer behavior and trends.

• Sales pipeline management: Visualizes customer journey stages and potential opportunities.

• Smart assistant tools: Includes Einstein AI to help businesses achieve goals through analytics and task automation.

Real-world example

Fisher & Paykel, a global premium appliance brand, aims to deliver customer experiences centered around personalization. However, they faced the following challenges in optimizing customer service and business efficiency:

• Data silos: Customer data was fragmented, preventing employees from gaining a comprehensive view of customer history and needs, leading to inefficient service processes and poor experiences.

• Customer service pain points: Traditional phone support was time-consuming and ineffective, while on-site technical support required customers to wait long periods for technicians.

• Partner needs: Retailers, builders, and designers wanted self-service tools for online ordering and inventory checks to simplify collaboration.

• Marketing precision: Lack of targeted marketing campaigns and real-time adjustments based on customer behavior hindered marketing effectiveness.

Solution

Fisher & Paykel utilized Salesforce’s integrated solutions to eliminate data silos and optimize customer experiences. Key implementations included:

• Unified customer data source (Single Source of Truth):

  • Leveraged Sales Cloud, Commerce Cloud, and Service Cloud to unify sales, service, and marketing data.

  • Employees gained real-time access to customers’ purchase history, support records, and current order statuses, enabling personalized service delivery.

• Automation and self-service improvements:

  • Retailers and partners accessed an online portal through Partner Relationship Management (PRM) and Experience Cloud, allowing inventory checks, quote generation, and real-time order tracking.

  • Commerce Cloud Order Management automated order processing and fulfillment, saving 30 minutes per order in manual labor.

• AI applications and optimization:

  • Einstein Bots handled common customer inquiries automatically, reducing online support workload by 30%.

  • Data Cloud and Marketing Cloud enabled comprehensive customer behavior analysis and automated marketing campaigns. Precise segmentation of customer data significantly improved email engagement.

• Field service optimization:

  • Field Service automated technician appointment scheduling and provided customers with real-time tracking links for technician visits, reducing wait times.

  • Customers provided feedback after technician visits; if ratings were low, follow-up support cases were automatically created to ensure timely issue resolution.

Outcome

• Improved operational efficiency:

  • Automation and self-service tools saved up to 3,300 hours per month, allowing employees to focus on complex customer needs.

  • AI bots resolved 30% of online inquiries, significantly reducing manual workload.

• Enhanced customer experience:

  • Customers received seamless support without needing to repeat information. Real-time technician tracking and automated scheduling simplified processes and improved satisfaction.

• Boosted marketing effectiveness:

  • Precise customer segmentation led to significant email engagement improvements (206% increase in unique email opens, 112% increase in unique clicks).

  • Subscription service users reached 30%, making purchasing more convenient and providing more accurate revenue forecasting.

• Improved partner experience:

  • Retailers and designers gained instant access to inventory and ordering tools, streamlining collaboration and improving efficiency.

Pricing

• Paid plans start at $25/user/month (billed monthly or annually).

5. Pipedrive

Pipedrive is a sales CRM and pipeline management tool designed specifically for small and medium-sized teams. It uses an activity-based sales model to help businesses streamline their sales processes and improve efficiency. With its visual sales pipeline at the core, Pipedrive allows users to clearly understand each stage of the sales cycle and focus on critical tasks. The platform also offers powerful analytics, customization, and automation features, making it a highly efficient tool for sales professionals.

Image source: pipedrive.com

Key features

• Visual sales pipeline: Clearly view the stages where customers are located and adjust strategies accordingly.

• Automated task reminders: Automatic reminders for each stage to ensure no critical tasks are missed.

• Email integration and customer follow-up: Supports email integration, contact history tracking, and lead nurturing to optimize customer relationship management.

Real-world example

Tiffany Largie, a successful entrepreneur and business consultant, initially relied on traditional sales methods during her early business ventures. She knocked on 40-50 doors daily and collected countless business cards. However, as her team expanded, she realized that many team members lacked organizational skills, leading to difficulties in managing customer relationships and data. Recognizing the importance of efficient data management for business growth, Tiffany sought a cost-effective, user-friendly solution to optimize her sales processes for herself and her team.

Solution

After comparing various software options, Tiffany chose Pipedrive for its simplicity, affordability, and ease of use. Key features she utilized included:

• Lead management software: Effectively managed leads and deals.

• Multiple sales pipelines: Supported simultaneous management of multiple revenue streams.

• Automation features: Saved time and simplified sales processes.

She equipped her 30 team members with iPads installed with Pipedrive, optimizing sales workflows and accelerating business growth.

Outcome

• Breakthrough in sales: Tiffany’s team achieved over $2 million in sales using Pipedrive.

• Business transformation: In 2015, Tiffany successfully sold her company and leveraged her experience to help other entrepreneurs. She continued using Pipedrive to manage events, consulting projects, and speaking opportunities.

• Customer referrals: Based on her success, Tiffany recommended Pipedrive to her clients, enabling more businesses to benefit from its efficient sales management capabilities.

Pricing

• Essentials plan: $14/user/month (billed annually).

• Advanced plan: $39/user/month (billed annually).

• Professional plan: $49/user/month (billed annually).

6. Freshsales

Freshsales, part of the Freshworks suite, is a CRM tool focused on intuitive sales management, customer segmentation, and communication features. Powered by AI-driven lead scoring and automation tools, Freshsales helps businesses quickly boost their sales efficiency and streamline processes.

Image source: freshworks.com

Key features

• Freddy AI: Provides contact scoring and actionable sales recommendations, optimizing decisions based on customer data.

• Chat channels and custom bots: Interact with customers via chat channels and set up custom bots to automatically send messages.

• Sales sequence management: Automates sales workflows, manages current and potential customers, and reduces manual tasks.

Real-world example

Blue Nile, a global leader in online diamond jewelry retail, specializes in offering high-quality custom engagement rings, wedding bands, and other diamond jewelry. As purchasing jewelry online is highly complex and requires significant trust from customers, Blue Nile faced the following challenges:

• Building purchase trust: Buying diamonds online requires brands to provide reliable information and services to help customers develop trust.

• Lack of data insights: The sales team lacked effective tools to record customer preferences, purchase history, and behavioral signals, making personalized recommendations difficult.

• High store appointment no-show rates: Customers often ignored scheduled store appointments, requiring the sales team to repeatedly follow up with them.

Solution

To optimize customer experience and sales efficiency, Blue Nile adopted Freshworks solutions (including Freshsales and Freshdesk) to address these challenges:

• Unified customer information:

  • Integrated customer preferences, purchase history, and interaction data to create a complete customer profile.

• Automated personalized interactions:

  • Automatically sent SMS reminders to customers about upcoming store appointments, offering convenient options for rescheduling or canceling to reduce no-show rates.

• Data-driven customer communication:

  • Used real-time data and purchase trends to engage customers with more precise and valuable conversations, improving sales conversion rates.

Outcome

• Improved store appointments:

  • Store appointment no-show rates dropped from nearly 50% to 20%, effectively reducing the sales team’s repetitive workload and operational costs.

• Sales growth:

  • More accurate and personalized communication methods enhanced customer trust, increasing purchase conversion rates.

• Enhanced customer experience:

  • Blue Nile’s team provided personalized recommendations at every step of the purchasing journey based on customers’ unique needs and preferences, significantly improving customer satisfaction.

Pricing

• Growth plan: $9/user/month (billed annually)

• Pro plan: $39/user/month (billed annually)

• Enterprise plan: $59/user/month (billed annually)

7. Insightly

Insightly is a software solution that combines CRM and project management functionalities, making it ideal for project-driven businesses. By integrating sales and project workflows into a single platform, Insightly enables businesses to manage the entire process, from customer acquisition to project completion, with ease.

Image source: insightly.com

Key features

• Linked contact and project records: Facilitates efficient collaboration between sales and project teams.

• Workflow automation: Simplifies task assignment and reminder processes.

• Custom dashboards: Generates visual reports on sales and project progress.

Real-world example

Brooklyn Outdoor, an outdoor advertising company founded in 2013, specializes in delivering unique advertising experiences for local and national businesses. As the company rapidly expanded, it faced the following challenges:

• Fragmented customer data: Managing customer relationships using Excel spreadsheets resulted in frequent errors and made real-time data sharing difficult, hindering team collaboration and decision-making.

• Complex and inefficient processes: Manual operations led to repetitive tasks consuming significant time, preventing the team from focusing on core activities like community networking and building customer relationships.

• Lack of scalable personalized support: Needed a system to help small businesses scale while maintaining personalized customer experiences that align with clients’ short-term and long-term goals.

Solution

Brooklyn Outdoor leveraged Insightly CRM’s customizable features and workflow automation to address data management and process optimization challenges:

• Unified data source:

  • Replaced Excel spreadsheets with Insightly CRM to create a single source of truth for customer data, enabling real-time visibility into business operations.

  • Facilitated real-time data sharing and integration, allowing the team to make more efficient business decisions.

• Workflow automation:

  • Insightly’s built-in workflow automation broke down business processes into repeatable tasks, reducing human errors and improving productivity.

  • Automated repetitive tasks such as data entry and process tracking, freeing up the team to focus on community networking and customer relationship building.

• Personalized customer relationship management:

  • Insightly enabled Brooklyn Outdoor to analyze customer data to understand their needs, goals, and feedback, allowing the delivery of tailored advertising and marketing solutions.

  • Supported scalable personalized customer experiences while improving customer satisfaction and fostering long-term relationship stability.

Outcome

• Improved team collaboration and decision-making:

  • Real-time data sharing and integration reduced errors and ensured the team collaborated and made decisions based on a unified dataset.

  • The team gained faster business insights, optimizing sales workflows and driving continuous improvement. 

• Enhanced workflows and productivity:

  • Workflow automation reduced the time spent on repetitive tasks, enabling the team to focus on core activities like community networking and customer relationship building.

  • Improved data integrity supported higher-quality decision-making and business optimization.

• Strengthened customer relationship management:

  • Insightly’s data analysis features helped Brooklyn Outdoor better understand customer needs and deliver advertising solutions aligned with their goals.

  • Achieved scalable personalized support, enhancing customer satisfaction and building stable long-term relationships.

Pricing

• Plus plan: $29/user/month (billed annually)

• Professional plan: $49/user/month (billed annually)

• Enterprise plan: $99/user/month (billed annually)

8. EngageBay

EngageBay is a comprehensive cloud-based CRM platform designed to help small and medium-sized businesses manage customer relationships, sales processes, and marketing campaigns. It integrates sales, marketing, customer support, and live chat functionalities into a simple, affordable, and easy-to-use solution.

Image source: engagebay.com

Key features

• Sales automation: Offers a visual sales pipeline with drag-and-drop functionality and supports multiple pipelines to track various sales processes.

• Customer scoring system: Scores leads based on customer behavior, enabling businesses to prioritize high-value prospects.

• Live chat module: Provides real-time chat functionality, supports website integration, and delivers analytics such as first response time, chat duration, and total chat count.

Real-world example

A+ Test Prep and Tutoring, an education company based in Pennsylvania, specializes in college entrance exam preparation and academic tutoring. As their business expanded, A+ Tutoring faced the following challenges:

• Tool fragmentation and data silos: The company used multiple standalone tools (such as Clickfunnels, Mailchimp, Calendly, etc.) to manage leads, marketing, sales, and customer support. These tools couldn’t share data, resulting in fragmented customer information.

• Inefficiency: Data fragmentation hindered team collaboration, making customer management and service processes less streamlined.

Solution

After extensive research and trials, A+ Tutoring chose EngageBay as a one-stop solution to consolidate marketing, sales, and customer support functionalities:

• Unified platform replacing multiple tools:

  • EngageBay replaced six standalone tools, including Clickfunnels, Unbounce, Calendly, Mailchimp, HubSpot Free CRM, and Freshsales.

  • Customer data was centralized within EngageBay’s CRM, eliminating data silos and enabling the team to access up-to-date customer information in real time.

• Automation and efficiency improvements:

  • Automated lead capture, deal tracking, and marketing campaigns reduced manual workloads.

  • Provided A/B testing and traffic analytics tools to optimize customer interactions and conversion rates.

Outcome

• Customer data integration:

  • Solved data silo issues, enabling the team to achieve a 360-degree customer view and improve collaboration efficiency.

• Improved customer conversion rates:

  • Application conversion rates increased 6x, streamlining sales and customer support processes.

• Enhanced customer support efficiency:

  • First Contact Resolution (FCR) rates improved by 50%, significantly boosting customer satisfaction.

Pricing

• Free plan available

• Basic: $11.95/user/month (billed annually)

• Growth: $45.99/user/month (billed annually)

• Pro: $73.59/user/month (billed annually)

9. ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign is a cloud-based customer experience automation platform and CRM system that provides businesses with solutions for automating sales and marketing processes. It focuses on delivering personalized customer experiences through automation while helping teams efficiently manage marketing and sales tasks.

Image source: activecampaign.com

Key features

• Process automation: Automates workflows from lead nurturing to sales follow-ups.

• Advanced segmentation and tagging: Analyzes customer purchasing preferences, interaction behaviors, and personality traits for highly personalized classification and management.

• Multi-functional integrations: Supports over 300 integration tools (e.g., Shopify, Facebook, and WordPress) to meet specific business needs.

Real-world example

Internet Strategy Labs (ISL), a B2B SaaS marketing agency with over 20 years of experience, primarily serves franchise brands, e-commerce businesses, and agencies. As ISL expanded its operations, its clients faced the following challenges:

• Isolated marketing and sales teams: The marketing team couldn’t share data with the sales team, leading to inefficiencies in lead management.

• Fragmented tech stack: Clients used multiple standalone tools (e.g., Google Ads, Facebook Ads, and AI software), but the lack of data integration resulted in wasted resources and reduced efficiency.

• Inefficient lead management: 40% of leads in the sales pipeline were unqualified, lowering sales team productivity and reducing conversion rates.

Solution

ISL leveraged ActiveCampaign’s highly customizable CRM and powerful automation features to address data fragmentation and team collaboration issues while improving lead management efficiency:

• Highly customizable CRM:

  • Used ActiveCampaign’s open architecture system to create custom fields for capturing franchise-specific data (e.g., “financial qualification status” and “target region”).

  • Integrated tools like DocuSign, Calendly, and Zoom to automate contract management, appointment scheduling, and client communication.

• Automated lead management:

  • Automated lead qualification: Filtered out unqualified leads based on financial status and region, moving them to a “pending stage” and sending follow-up emails automatically.

  • Reduced manual tasks by 50% through automation while increasing engagement rates for potentially re-qualified leads by 20%.

Outcome

• Improved lead conversion rates:

  • Lead conversion rates increased by 40%, significantly boosting sales team efficiency.

• Optimized lead management efficiency:

  • Lead qualification time was reduced by 35%, resulting in smoother sales pipelines.

• Revenue growth:

  • ISL achieved 25% annual revenue growth, primarily driven by ActiveCampaign’s automation and data integration capabilities.

Pricing

• Starter Plan: $15/month (billed annually)

• Plus Plan: $49/month (billed annually)

• Professional Plan: $79/month (billed annually)

10. Zendesk Sell

Zendesk Sell is a CRM software offered by Zendesk, designed to help businesses improve customer support efficiency, reduce churn, and increase customer satisfaction. It is ideal for customer service-focused businesses aiming to streamline operations and deliver exceptional customer experiences.

Image source: zendesk.com

Key features

• Sales process management: Centralized view of all sales opportunities, enabling teams to follow standardized sales processes for communication and collaboration.

• Call analytics and recording: Equipped with a robust dialer to record and analyze calls, helping businesses optimize outreach strategies.

• Data analysis: Provides detailed reports on service response times and customer satisfaction metrics.

Real-world example

Auctane, a global logistics solutions company based in Texas, operates 11 brands (e.g., Stamps.com, ShipStation, and ShippingEasy) and processes approximately 3 billion orders annually, serving over 5 million households and 2 million B2B and B2C customers. As its business scaled, Auctane faced the following challenges:

• Fragmented brands and platforms: Different brands used multiple platforms (e.g., Zendesk, Oracle Service Cloud, and Salesforce), resulting in isolated workflows and an inability to deliver a unified customer experience (CX).

• Inconsistent customer experience: Needed to provide personalized support for customers of varying sizes (individuals, SMBs, and enterprises) while maintaining operational efficiency.

Solution

Auctane leveraged Zendesk’s CRM platform to integrate its tech stack, optimize customer experience, and use AI and automation to enhance operational efficiency:

• Unified customer experience (CX):

  • Consolidated all brands onto the Zendesk platform, standardizing workflows and reducing dependency on third-party platforms.

  • Used Zendesk’s Sunshine Conversations to shift from chat to messaging functionality, reducing phone and email traffic.

• Personalized customer experience:

  • Leveraged Zendesk to collect customer history data and create personalized customer journeys while scaling support services.

  • Delivered responsive, effective problem-solving support that also anticipated future customer needs.

• Data-driven decision-making and AI applications:

  • Utilized Zendesk’s CX data analytics to improve customer retention rates and identify churn risks.

Outcome

• Enhanced customer experience:

  • Achieved a 79% first-touch resolution rate, with median first response times reduced to 1 hour.

  • Quickly responded to customer feedback, successfully turning negative comments into positive experiences and boosting customer satisfaction.

• Business growth and efficiency improvements:

  • Optimized operational workflows with AI and automation, increasing the speed and accuracy of issue resolution.

  • Supported Auctane in achieving its 25% business growth target while attracting more customers.

Pricing

• Sell Team: $19/agent/month (billed annually)

• Sell Growth: $55/agent/month (billed annually)

• Sell Professional: $115/agent/month (billed annually)