What is CRM?
CRM is an abbreviation for customer relationship management, a technology that not only lets you store data of all your customers; it also enables you to keep track of all the interactions that you have made with them, along with helping you manage follow-ups. It doesn’t stop there, a customer relationship management software can also allow you to group your contacts, generate reports, send emails, automate your sales processes, provide support, generate invoices and a lot more.
Here is a quick video tutorial showing how to use the CRM.
If you are interested in using this CRM for your own business, I do offer it as a managed service.
See Here for more details.
What do I use this CRM for?
Project Management
To put it simply, the project management system allows me to create a project and specify all the requirements, upload files, add notes and more. I then create tasks, assign them to a project/client, create discussions or tickets related to that project and record/track all the time I spent on any task.
When a project is complete I can then invoice my client based on the time recorded against each task/ticket.
You are also able to login to your account and view any projects/tasks assigned to you, add comments, respond to discussions/tickets, upload files etc.
The built-in support ticket system, task comments and discussion allow us to keep all communications for each project in one place, so all the replies related to that ticket/conversation are grouped together and thus easy to find/search through for both you and me.
This is much better/easier than searching your inbox for specific emails and avoids communication issues and confusion caused by lost emails
A ticket can also be linked to a project, which makes it even more convenient and intuitive.
Contacts
Each client account can have multiple contacts, each with their own login, permissions etc. This means that any ticket or project/task can be assigned to a different employee/contact, making for better communication.
Billing
My CRM also has a billing system, which I use for invoicing my clients for projects. I use this only for one-off / ad-hoc invoices and projects only.
For recurring billing and subscriptions, I have a separate billing system, which I prefer to use for complete automation and avoids issues caused by relying on manual payments, card expiring or declined payments.