20 Features to Look for in a CRM

What is CRM software?

CRM software is a platform that helps businesses manage and analyze customer interactions and data throughout the customer lifecycle. It also helps streamline sales and marketing processes and improve customer service. 

CRM software is your sales team’s best friend and primary tool. The best CRM software can help with the following: 

• Organize leads and customers: Your CRM solution should organize your company’s leads and customers to help your marketing and sales teams connect with them via appropriate channels. Centralizing customer data allows you to understand what customers need and how they interact with your company better.  
• Save time and resources: With the right CRM tool, you won’t waste time pursuing an indifferent audience. Instead, you’ll examine and analyze user information, needs and behaviors to pinpoint potential customers. When you tailor marketing campaigns to your target audience, you’ll enjoy more lead conversion success while boosting customer engagement and building customer loyalty.
• Build customer connections: CRMs track your customer and prospect communications to build more sustainable relationships. Enhanced customer connections can personalize your marketing efforts and improve your marketing, customer service and sales processes. 

20 CRM features to look for

The following 20 features are essential for high-performing CRM solutions. Assess your organization’s most pressing needs to select a platform that provides the tools and functionality required for CRM success.

1. Sales pipeline management

Many top CRMs include sales pipeline management functions that give representatives a complete view of the sales process. With this feature, reps can track deals from start to finish, even when juggling multiple deals at once. They can manage their time better and focus on converting the most promising leads.

Additional sales pipeline management features include: 

• Visual sales funnels that help marketers and managers see where deals are stalling so they can take remedial action. 
• Performance insights that allow managers to evaluate team members and determine whether they’re on target, enabling them to predict revenues better. 

2. Integration with key business apps

Many CRM solutions offer thousands of plug-ins and app integrations that boost functionality. Add-ons and application programming interface (API) connections let you connect your CRM to essential business software and freely share data. “Integration reduces silos, accelerates workflows and gives sales reps the full picture, enabling them to deliver a better customer experience,” explained Christian Wettre, chief of staff at SugarCRM.

Watch for the following essential integrations in any CRM software you consider: 

• Email marketing integrations: CRMs integrate with the best email marketing software to help sales and support staff send targeted offers and messages. Additionally, when a customer contacts your business, reps can access their information, previous interactions and purchase history to help them.
• Social media integrations: Social CRM integrations connect your social media channels with your CRM solution to help you focus on social customer care. You can also use CRMs to manage your social media marketing. 
• Web analytics: Integrating your CRM with web analytics software helps you collect and analyze website visitor data. You’ll glean insights that can help you make more informed decisions.
• Other third-party integrations: CRM software offers numerous integrations; some may be more specific to your business than others. For example, many CRMs integrate with human resources software, business intelligence programs, the best business phone systems and enterprise resource planning software, offering more streamlined functionality.

Wettre emphasized the importance of ERP and other software integrations. “Seamless integration with enterprise resource planning systems is a must, especially for B2B [business-to-business] sellers managing complex operations,” Wettre advised. “It ensures sales teams have real-time access to inventory, order history and billing data. Other critical integrations include marketing platforms, customer support tools and productivity software like email and calendars.”

3. Revenue tracking

Many businesses have difficulty with financial tracking — discerning how much money comes in and what business activities generate the most revenue. Modern CRMs often include revenue-tracking tools that allow business owners to monitor real-time data, such as sales sources, sales team and representative performance and overall profitability. Comprehensive revenue analytics and reporting features help entrepreneurs improve business decision-making. 

4. AI and machine learning

Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) are relatively new features to modern CRMs but they’re quickly becoming indispensable. (Check out our review of Salesforce to see how this leading platform integrates AI tools.) CRM-based AI and ML tools can provide the following functions: 

• Assist agents in real time to help close deals or resolve customer issues.
• Provide AI-powered predictive data analytics to assist with forecasting and interpreting customer behavior and sales trends. 
• Offer AI chatbots to handle initial interactions with prospects and customers, leaving sales teams more time to work on closing promising deals.
  Power hyper-personalized marketing campaigns so recipients of text or email marketing campaigns see offers of particular interest to them.

5. Role assignments and access permissions

Protecting your bottom line from data breaches is a top priority. However, sometimes hackers aren’t your biggest threat — internal bad actors are. CRMs enable you to assign specific roles to each staff member and restrict access to sensitive information based on their responsibilities. 

For example, your marketing team doesn’t need access to customer credit and debit cards, but your sales and customer service teams must access this information. Role specificity ensures team members only see what they absolutely must see to do their job, making your existing cybersecurity plan more effective.

6. Data collection and management

At many small and medium-sized businesses, teams work from different databases with varying information, creating confusion. In contrast, the best CRMs centralize vast amounts of data, including customers’ contact details, purchase history and email campaign responses. Changes are made in real time for everyone to see. 

In addition to storing data, CRM tools help you analyze data and benefit from greater insights into customers, marketplaces and business performance. Better still, most CRMs now integrate with third-party software to collect and analyze data from various sources, including web forms, customer surveys and social media activity.

8. Customer service management

CRMs should offer a complete view of each customer’s history, tracking everything from the first time they appeared in your system to the first sale and beyond. When sales or customer service reps engage with a client, they should have access to a summary of every interaction, purchase and incident to understand the client’s perspective better.

Helpful customer service customizations include:

• Premade templates for quick email replies
• Assigning case numbers on a new inquiry
• Assigning a team member responsible for managing a case 
• Sending acknowledgment emails when a case arises

These functions will help your team respond faster, maintain a consistent approach and resolve issues more efficiently.

8. Communication tracking across multiple channels

Customers communicate via multiple channels, including email, phone and social media. Many CRMs let you track all inbound and outbound customer communications — regardless of channel — and attach the information to each customer’s record. 

Tying customer communication data to workflow automations reduces the chances of missing sales opportunities or forgetting to return customer calls.

9. Multilanguage, multicurrency support

For businesses operating internationally or planning global expansion, many CRM systems offer multilanguage capabilities and support for payments in various currencies. Instead of teams in different countries working on separate systems and creating information silos, a centralized CRM provides leadership with complete visibility into performance across every territory.

10. Workflow automations

Repetitive tasks like data entry, sending emails and setting follow-up reminders eat into your sales team’s time. Manual processes also invite human error, leading to missed selling opportunities and unhappy customers. 

Fortunately, many CRMs include workflow automation tools, email templates and smart notification features that automate repetitive tasks, reduce human error and boost productivity. Look for CRM solutions with intuitive automation tools that make it easy to set, adjust and cancel workflows for maximum effectiveness.

Nikolaus Kimla, founder and CEO of AI-driven CRM platform Pipeliner, stressed that process visualization and workflow automation are key to improving customer relationships. “These two features enable businesses to manage customer interactions more efficiently, ensuring that no important steps are overlooked and relationships remain consistent,” Kimla explained. “When your CRM shares data with other apps, reps and everyone in the business [have] a complete view of customer interactions so they can enhance their relationship management.”

Jessica Andrews, vice president of marketing at media agency CRM platform Copper, agreed that automations enhance customer relationships, even if automation can feel impersonal. “[If] it’s done right, automation can reduce the unproductive but necessary [tasks] that take up a lot of time but don’t provide your customers with any value,” Andrews noted. “Consider automating re-kindling emails that you send to customers you haven’t reached out to in a while. Your CRM will be working in the background to surface customers that want to re-connect.”

11. Internal communication channels

CRMs shine as communication tools for workplace collaboration and information sharing. Communication and innovation are enhanced when teams and colleagues across the business share real-time insights, opinions and experiences while handling the same accurate, up-to-date information. 

Ensure your CRM includes integrations with communication tools like Slack to promote seamless collaboration.

12. Advanced reporting tools

CRMs gather data from multiple sources, including sales, marketing and customer service teams. This data informs customized reports that show how you’re performing as a company and at departmental, team and individual levels. CRM reports can act as decision-support systems to help business owners make better data-driven choices. 

You can run customized CRM reports on sales team calls, customer inquiry response times and email campaign click-through rates, to name a few examples. You can also measure customer satisfaction levels and discover which parts of the sales funnel need attention. 

13. Forecasting tools

Forecasting tools project your business’s growth and opportunities according to your sales and marketing efforts. A CRM with excellent forecasting tools can keep you from overestimating necessary inventory and show how your campaigns and strategies will impact sales growth.

14. Lead tracking

Many CRMs include lead-tracking features that help you follow potential customers and target consumers who are more apt to buy. This feature is particularly important because your sales team may be juggling hundreds of leads at different stages of the customer journey. CRMs keep your sales team focused so they don’t lose track of where each deal is.

Look for a CRM solution that can analyze leads and pinpoint the most qualified ones showing interest in your product. You can use that data to create personalized marketing campaigns that encourage purchasing. 

15.  Document management

Document organization is vital to a well-running sales process. A CRM with a document management component lets you store digital paperwork and information in one central location. Your sales and marketing teams can easily access the data they need without searching through multiple systems or tabs. 

16. Contact management

Contact management is a crucial CRM feature. The best CRM platforms let you manage all prospects and contacts in a central location. They also support contact segmentation, making it easier to search for and connect with specific target audiences. 

Contact management involves gathering and adding detailed customer data to a contact’s record to improve your marketing strategy. Detailed data fosters better customer relationships because you can tailor interactions based on the person’s expectations, previous interactions and other information.

Layla Sawyer, the senior marketing and e-commerce coordinator of Yabby, an Australian interior design firm, says contact management was a major motivator behind the CRM tech stack the company eventually chose. “The features you should keep an eye out for when you’re looking for a CRM should be contact management, automated follow-ups and segmentation,” Sawyer explained. “These will all be quintessential for building stronger customer relationships.”

Sawyer noted that Yabby uses Pipedrive to manage its sales pipeline, helping it track interactions and tailor communications. (Read our Pipedrive CRM review to learn more.)

17. Lead and deal management

Lead management is another crucial CRM feature that helps sales teams follow up with potential customers based on several factors, including demographic, financial and psychographic data. 

Lead management improves a sales team’s efficiency and productivity by using lead scoring to focus on warmer prospects who are more likely to turn into customers. 

18. Full-featured mobile apps 

Many businesses want a CRM platform with a high-functioning mobile app that provides users with the information and features they need to close sales and handle inquiries while on the go. 

Mobile CRM solutions are increasingly valuable for remote workforces and businesses that use cloud-based systems. 

19. Campaign management tools 

In addition to traditional relationship-management features, robust CRM solutions allow users to manage entire sales campaigns. These CRMs let you plan, execute and evaluate sales campaigns from a central user interface your entire team can access. 

Campaign management features include digital campaign return on investment data, scheduling tools, analytics reports and more. After your campaign, you can combine campaign-management tools with your CRM’s reporting features to generate numerous customer data points. This data can help you make informed decisions about future sales and marketing efforts.

20. Customer satisfaction monitoring

CRMs are all about managing customer relationships, so take advantage of the features that can improve customer satisfaction. Many CRMs let users track customer cases and view their satisfaction levels. By tracking your customers to gauge their satisfaction, you can work to improve their experience and create better processes for the future.

What else to look for in a CRM software solution

In addition to essential features and functionalities, consider the following attributes when selecting a CRM software solution.

1. Ease of use

Many CRMs are easy to use out of the box, with minimal learning curves. They feature intuitive, user-friendly dashboards and tools, including easy-to-build custom workflow automations, allowing your staff to quickly access the information they need. In contrast, a poor interface and complicated workflow automations will frustrate your staff, waste time and lower productivity. 

“A user-friendly CRM system is intuitive and requires minimal training,” Wettre explained. “Key indicators include a clean interface, clear navigation and easy access to key functions.

Wettre emphasized that frontline users should be involved in the CRM decision-making process. “Skipping input from end users — like sales or support teams — can result in a mismatch between the system and actual workflows,” Wettre cautioned.

Sandy Meier of content marketing firm Contentellect agreed that frontline user buy-in is essential. “You involve your team in the selection process because even the best and most powerful CRM is absolutely useless if your people won’t use it,” Meier advised. “Keep in mind that your first CRM choice rarely ends up actually being your last.”

2. Robust security

Look for a cloud-based CRM that adheres to the highest data security standards and complies with laws like the California Consumer Privacy Act and General Data Protection Regulation. These systems lock your customer’s sensitive data — and your company’s commercial secrets — behind a robust technical firewall made more secure by strong cloud encryption. 

If there’s a problem, most CRM providers offer backup systems that guarantee uptime and minimize business disruptions. Remote hosting and data management also reduce your vulnerability to cyberattacks and data breaches.

Kimla emphasized the importance of prioritizing security when selecting a CRM. “[Choose a CRM that’s] built on reliable cloud services, such as AWS [Amazon Web Services] and adheres to up-to-date security protocols to ensure data protection,” Kimla advised.

3. Customizability

CRMs often provide an overwhelming number of features and options. Consider choosing a flexible CRM platform that allows you to turn off unnecessary or unused features to declutter users’ screens and help them focus on crucial tasks.

Andrews emphasized the importance of customizing a CRM to fit a team’s needs. “Your CRM needs to fit into your team’s existing workflows,” Andrews explained. “For example, incorporating a Gmail inbox in a CRM is important because, for many users, that’s where they spend their time. Your CRM should meet you where you spend your time without disrupting your preferred way of working.”

4. Straightforward visual interface

Many CRMs prioritize a straightforward visual interface that helps users navigate to essential features, find crucial data quickly, spot opportunities faster and manage workflows smoothly. 

AI is a current CRM adoption trend that supports the low-code and no-code movement, making user interfaces even easier to customize.

5. Strong customer support

Responsive customer support is vital when selecting a CRM platform. Before making a decision, evaluate the vendor’s customer service hours and available contact methods. Many providers offer support through email, phone and live chat, along with comprehensive online knowledge bases for quick resolutions to common issues.

Additional advice about choosing a CRM

Consider the following advice when selecting a CRM platform for your business:  

• Focus on the CRM features you truly need: Our experts advise determining your business’s needs when shopping for a CRM:
  • Sawyer cautioned against getting caught up in a platform’s extensive feature set when it’s unlikely you’ll use many of those functions. “One of the biggest challenges is over-prioritizing features you aren’t sure you’ll use,” Sawyer said. “When you look at a new tool, you can easily get lost in all of the impressive features. But, when all is said and done and you’ve paid for the platform, you probably won’t end up using them.” 
  • Wettre agreed that focusing on flashy features instead of your business’s needs is a mistake. “A CRM overloaded with unnecessary tools can overwhelm users,” Wettre explained. 
  • Kimla noted that businesses often prioritize advanced analytics and customization capabilities, which can result in costly systems that employees reject.
• Prioritize integrations with your business software: Another pitfall is not thoroughly investigating a CRM platform’s integration capabilities. If the CRM doesn’t sync with critical systems like your ERP software, it creates inefficiencies. Ensure the platform you select works well with the tools you use daily. 
• Evaluate the CRM’s ease of use: Wettre cautions that many companies underestimate the importance of the user experience when choosing a CRM solution. A poor use experience often leads to disappointing adoption rates.
• Start simple: Our experts all agreed that it’s best to start with a CRM’s most straightforward functions and build from there:
  • Meier advises caution to avoid overwhelming your team. “For growing smaller businesses like ours, I would recommend starting simple with something like HubSpot’s free tier offer, which has all your core functionality without overwhelming your teams with too many bells and whistles,” Meier suggested. “Then, as you grow, you can add more features strategically rather than just paying for unused capabilities from day one.” (Read our review of HubSpot CRM to learn more.)
  • Mike Wittenstein, founder and managing partner at business consultancy Storyminers, also urged business owners to be strategic and patient with their first CRM implementation. “Start with the basics (whiteboard them in a group meeting to create and maintain alignment),” Wittenstein recommended. “Slowly add in new capabilities as your team shows proficiency. Making small gains, like 1 percent per week compared to 20 percent all at once, is a more comfortable and predictably successful approach.”