MyCustomer has pulled together the latest global review data to determine which CRM systems are rated the most user-friendly.
User-friendliness is a fundamental requirement for organisations deciding which CRM system to deploy.
Without usability, employee adoption of a CRM can wane at a rapid rate – deemed another expensive system failure labelled with an unaffectionate four-letter word.
Of course, “user-friendliness” can be subjective, and with circumstances and needs varying wilding from organisation to organisation, identifying a system that is universally user-friendly is near-impossible.
And as with last year’s results, this subjectivity is mirrored to some degree in the reviews: there is no unanimity in the findings – a look across these different studies reveals no solution universally hailed as the most user-friendly.
Nonetheless, by digging through the vast numbers of customer reviews for CRM tools across three prominent studies, it’s possible to get a broad picture of how well received various solutions are on average, for their ease of use.
Here’s the findings.
G2 Crowd’s CRM Software Implementation Index
Software review platform G2 Crowd applies a proprietary algorithm that factors in real-user satisfaction ratings to deliver their ‘implementation’ score. Crucially, the implementation score is affected by the following factors (ranked in order of importance):
- Customer satisfaction with the set-up process for each product based on reviews by users.
- Amount of time (in months) required for each product to go live based on reviews by users.
- User adoption percentage based on reviews and by users.
- Implementation method used by customers according to answers by G2 Crowd users.
- The number of reviews received on G2 Crowd; buyers trust a product with more reviews, and a greater number of reviews indicates a more representative and accurate reflection of the customer experience.
The findings of its most recent Winter 2017 CRM Software Implementation Index report reveals that Less Annoying CRM is the highest-rated tool for ease of use. The same system also scores when factoring in its three other key metrics – implementation time, user adoption and ‘other factors’, with a score of 9.6 out of 10, compared with the average score of 7.61 for the 128 products rated in the report. Nimble is ranked second.
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Top Ten Reviews (Business.com)
In the process of rating and ranking its Best CRM Software, Top Ten Reviews examines ease of use.
The score given to each tool represents how easy it is to navigate the software and locate tags and icons. It also considers the overall look and feel of the user interface, with the more intuitive and less cluttered tools receiving higher scores.
As part of the testing process, a mock company was created, with the most important tasks carried out on each system, including: adding and importing contacts, creating notes, calling contacts, and designing, creating and sending emails. Top Ten Reviews also tested inventory and employee features, where available.
The review concluded that OnContact the best overall and Salesforce the best choice for cloud-only CRM services. OnContact was the easiest to use out of those tested, with its system deemed to be intuitive and demanding the least amount of navigation, as well as offering a native option that Salesforce is unable to adhere due to its cloud-only focus.
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Capterra’s Top 20 Most User-Friendly CRM Software Report
Capterra’s rankings consider several different criteria: usability (how easy the tool is to use), what customer services are available (how well a vendor helps you get set up and supports ongoing use), and customer reviews (taken from its own website and its sister sites, GetApp and Software Advice).
The rankings also take into account which CRM is most affordable (deemed, in its most recent Nov 2017 rankings to be Yetiforce, followed by Snapforce and Apptivo).
The latest rankings found Salesforce to be most popular with users, followed by Zoho and Odoo.
However, for the Top 20 Most User-Friendly CRM Software report, direct user testing was undertaken, measuring how many seconds and clicks it would take to complete common tasks in a CRM solution, such as: creating a lead; adding a task pertaining to the lead; adding an interaction/note pertaining to the lead; setting a reminder to follow up with the lead; changing the lead’s stats to the next stage in the pipeline; uploading a document to the system; and generating a report.
What’s telling, in this test, is how Salesforce compares to the competition on usability. Ranked as Capterra’s ‘most popular’ among users, Salesforce doesn’t even make the top 20 when it comes to usability.
An infographic summarising the findings of Capterra’s user-friendly CRM study is below.
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Chris was an Editor at MyCustomer from 2014 to 2022. He is a practiced editor, having worked as a copywriter for creative agency, Stranger Collective from 2009 to 2011 and subsequently as a journalist covering technology, marketing and customer service from 2011-2014 as editor of Business Cloud News.
Replies (4)
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Chris - I have written (here on MyCustomer) my thoughts about some of the review sites. The data across the board is heavily skewed - people paid to review - seem to rate things on a scale from great to super awesome. If you look at the G2 data (I was there at one point, full disclosure) take away the 'other factors' and see if there is a statistically significant difference among the top 20 vendor products (just use an image cropping tool).
That said, side-by-side comparisons are quite good on G2, better than just about any of the others. The number of reviews is a self-serving metric, after a point. What will make the review space really take off is if there were a way to encourage users to write meaningful reviews without the gift card encouragement.
I would really like the sites to spend time digging into the data and also to use the software to see what the differences might be, why one is better than another - just my humble opinion.
Thanks (3)Thanks Mitch.
We try and specify where we can that the review sites are just one piece in the jigsaw of a CRM purchase/ deployment, and hopefully that comes across in this article.
There's still value in cross-referencing different systems across the review sites, however you raise some key points about the wider validity of relying on the review sites for making decisions.
Thanks (1)Thanks for nice list, just wanted to share my own experience in using one of CRM (https://www.appsandreports.com/category/crm-software) systems, which, as I think, could fit in this list too. I`ve used for a while a great newcomer called EasyERP it seemed like good and quite interesting CRM/ERP system, with really good-looking and friendly UI. BTW EasyERP is opensource, so it`s free! Hope you`ll have a glance at it and, probably, will consider including it in another iteration of this great topic.https://www.appsandreports.com/
Thanks (1)Thanks for posting content related to CRM tools, Great article! Useful and well-structured information. if you are looking for CRM tools you may like our list : https://www.softwaresuggest.com/crm-software
Thanks (2)