I heard a rumour that Google had released a CRM product, so I decided to scour the Net to find out what it could do. It looks fairly capable, but I’m not too sure about the interface. As this is a beta application, I’m sure that improvements are going to be made, but at the moment, it seems to suffer from an identity crisis.

From the example you can see that Google have included it into their homepage system. Now, I can’t imagine that this would be a wise choice as information is designed to be presented as a “homepage” and it doesn’t really work for CRM.

Maybe more investigation is needed to find out exactly what Google has planned (if they’re even sharing this kind of information). Software as a Service vendors may have something to worry about if Google seriously decide to step into this ring.

I know that sometimes we need to deal with complex problems, markets and processes. But, one simple thing stays the same, customers want service. It doesn’t matter if the price is cheap, customers still want some kind of service. I was thinking this over, and thought, in relation to CRM software, less can be more. If things are kept simple, then staff have the freedom to serve the customer. If we control processes too tightly, then customers hear the phrase “I’m sorry, but it’s against our policy”, and customers don’t want to hear that, so they won’t be coming back.

When solving certain problems, CRM needs to have a level of complexity, but let’s not forget the simple things, as they can make all the difference.

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There are many CRM software packages which offer all sorts of feature sets to their customers. I’d say all offer contact management, and many offer sales automation, technical support/service tracking and marketing functionality. Some go as far as providing event management and financial smarts. I’m interested in finding out, which features do most small businesses find essential to their CRM solution?

A fantastic article has been written on the Newsfactor Network that talks about improving a new staff member’s adoption of your CRM system when first joining your company.

A great quote:

“You see these very highly scripted scenarios, but what would help more is for a rep to see a day in the life of a customer,” he says. For instance, a rep could go through a session where the customer looks for information on the Web site, doesn’t find it, and then gets frustrated trying to navigate the automated voice response system.

“By the time they get to the rep, the customer is irritated, and now the rep knows why,”

Have a read of the full article here.