So you’re looking for a good CRM. Investing in this kind of software is one of the best things you can do for your field service business.
Businesses that use a CRM can save themselves 10 to 11 hours of work a week. That’s thousands of pounds in savings, just from making a smart investment.
However, why settle for any old CRM when you can get the best?
To help you out, we’ve put together this guide on the best CRMs for field service businesses, comparing the different options available to you and how well they suit field-based teams.
In case you’re unclear, field service CRM refers to software used by field teams to optimise communications between a business and its customers.
With field service CRM the field team, office team, sales team and customers have access to seamless communication and information sharing that allows for an optimal customer experience and increased efficiency across the whole business.
CRM software is the single best software investment a field service team can make for their business. While there are many different technologies available that offer value, a good CRM can allow a service business to make massive savings and optimise its operation to a new level.
Deciding which CRM to invest in for your business is dependent on a few different factors.
You need to quantify what your primary challenges are as a business and match these up to the solutions available to you.
Although a good CRM offers multiple features, different CRMs will focus on specific pain points.
To make life easy for you, we’ve identified some of the biggest challenges service businesses face and have recommended the best CRMs to solve these issues.
Managing a field team can be a challenge.
A business needs to be able to quickly share essential job information between technicians, without overloading the team with too many details. Communication is key, as is the ability to access the right information.
Given this, the quality of a CRM’s mobile app is essential.
Payaca has a powerful app that allows you to share information across your field team very easily. Key features include:
This US-based company is a great option for field-based businesses that want to manage their team.
ServiceTitan’s app is optimised for use on a tablet, with a broad range of features designed to make handling customers on the ground easy.
Core features include:
Joblogic describes its app as mobile workforce management software. The idea is that their software is optimised for managing the whole field team from one platform.
This approach is reflected in the features they provide, all of which are designed to make life easier for your field agents on the ground.
Some of their best features include:
If your core challenge is to improve your sales and attract new customers then the right CRM can really help you with this.
Look for features that allow you to sell your services in the best possible light.
Things like the ability to add images to your quotes, being able to use multiple choice and upsell options to the customer and the ability to send out automated follow-ups are all powerful sales tools.
Salesforce is one of the largest and most established CRM companies in the industry. With Salesforce you can expect a large range of features that have been tried and tested by many large businesses.
As suggested by the name, Salesforce has some great sales features such as the lead management tool that flags and filters high-value leads or their new sales AI capabilities.
Features of note include:
SIMPRO offer a decent selection of sales features and is an established player in the industry.
Some highlighted features include:
One of the features that makes Payaca stand out is its ability to upsell to customers.
When building a quote you can give your clients the option to choose from a selection of different items allowing for a more natural e-commerce-style shopping experience.
Payaca sales features include:
Sales and customer management have some overlap, so the likelihood is that if sales is a focus for you, then managing the complete customer journey is going to be important to you too.
The right CRM really comes into its own for customer management. With this technology, you can optimise your communication with customers, track how projects with them are progressing and convert more leads into work.
Joblogic’s stand-out customer management feature has to be their customer portal.
Essentially this is a customer-facing interface where a client can contact your business, see what the status of their jobs are and independently take action.
This takes the operational pressure off the admin team as the customers can manage their interactions themselves, helping reduce overheads for a business and giving the customer a better experience.
Other features include:
This CRM is a great option for customer management.
BigChange has a strong focus on customer support with features designed to make it easy to sign up and process new customers.
With BigChange they make it possible to give your customers a high level of support and care.
Features of note include:
Payaca recently released a game-changing customer portal. This user-friendly interface allows your customer to directly manage all their interactions with your business and allows you to more easily provide them with information and updates.
One stand-out feature that can be managed through this portal is customer service plans. These types of repeat projects can be signed on to and organised directly from the customer interface.
Other features of note include:
It’s all well and good having an efficient field team but to really optimise your business, this needs to be paired with a system that your office-based team can use.
With the right CRM, you have complete control across your whole business and can manage all your processes from a centralised system.
Rather than having to juggle all your admin, the right software streamlines everything making it far easier to manage.
When it comes to breadth of features, Salesforce is a leader, with an extensive range of capabilities that give you lots of options for managing your business.
One feature that stands out is their activity timeline. Similar to Payaca’s pipelines, this feature allows you to track the stages of a deal with a customer, giving you insight into where the customer is in your sales process.
Also, the document management system provides valuable functionality allowing the team to sync and share files across multiple devices.
Other notable features include:
Payaca’s business management features are excellent, with functionality designed to allow your admin and field team to work together seamlessly.
This is achieved very effectively by using customisable user profiles such as the Admin, Sales Manager and Field Agent profiles. Each of these customisable permissions allows your team to focus and organise work according to their roles in the company.
Payaca also has other great features such as:
One of ServiceTitan’s strengths is its inventory management capabilities that allow your admin team to track inventory levels, order new supplies, and manage equipment very easily.
It also has extensive features that help with managing all aspects of your business operation such as project labels and project summaries with financial information.
Notable features include:
If you’re trying to decide if a CRM is a good investment then we can safely say that any of the recommendations above will have a noticeable and significant positive impact on your business.
Which CRM you decide to go with comes down to the unique set-up and priorities of your specific business.
All 5 solutions that we have recommended have excellent features that will allow you to solve many of your challenges. However, taking the time to find out which solution aligns most closely with your needs is important.
That being said if we had to recommend one CRM as an overall solution we recommend Payaca.
You may be unsurprised that we recommend our own software, however, we are confident that the features we provide will give your business the best opportunities to succeed.
If you’re still not confident check out some of the reviews from our customers here. You can also give the software a go for free on our free no-strings-attached trial.
We offer a free trial of all our features, no credit card required. Setting up takes just 30 seconds.
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