I was scrolling through my Google Reader subscriptions and saw an article mentioning the customer relationship manager (CRM) called BatchBook, which is designed specifically for small business owners. Since I’m always interested in new tools that help out the small business sector, I decided to take a closer look to see how this CRM differs from the rest. Here are some of the key features that BatchBook says distinguishes it as a tool for the small business user:
- Organize contacts: Add a company and the contacts that are associated with it, or add contacts as their own separate entities.
- Organize communications: Ability to forward, Cc, or Bcc emails to a unique BatchBook email address that automatically adds the email (including attachments) into your BatchBook account.
- Organize your to-do list: Create tasks within BatchBook or email them to your unique email address that adds them into your account for you.
- Tags: Add tags to Companies, Contacts, Notes, To-Do Lists, and more to quickly categorize the object so it becomes associated with other related objects.
- SuperTags: Tags that allow you to create custom fields to add more description. For example, if you added the SuperTag ‘Auto’, you could add custom fields where you enter model, year, color, etc.
- Price: Five different pricing structures that range from the single user free ‘BabyBlue’ version to the ‘Indigo’ version, which is $99.95 a month for 100 users.
My first impression is that this might be a real alternative to other popular CRM’s like Salesforce.com, and ACT because of the way it emphasizes simplicity of use. Small businesses and/or individuals may also appreciate the flexible pricing options.
