Contact Management Software
At its core, contact management programs store customer contact information. This can include customers’ names, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses and even social media profile information. These databases are often easily searchable and store important documents within each contact profile.
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Zendesk Sell (formerly Base) is the web and mobile-based customer relationship management application that allows B2B and B2C sales professionals to manage sales, track leads and engage proactively with customers from anywhere.... Read more
FreeAgent CRM delivers a next-gen work experience on a customizable cloud-based platform help teams unlock productivity and grow sales effortlessly. Stay in the zone, with AI-guided selling. See only what you need... Read more
NetSuite CRM+ is a cloud-based customer relationship management (CRM) solution for small and midsize organizations. NetSuite caters to thousands of customers across a wide range of industries including wholesale distribution, m... Read more
Top Producer is a web-based CRM system suited for agents or brokerages in the Real Estate industry. The system helps agents personalize follow up and manage clients from initial contact, to long-term repeat and referrals. ... Read more
iHomefinder is a CRM and marketing solution designed for real estate agents, teams, and brokerages. With marketing automation tools, this solution enables real estate agents to save time while generating business leads. iHomefi... Read more
Whiteboard Mortgage CRM is a cloud-based solution that enables loan originators to connect with customers, communicate with partners and plan campaigns. It is primarily designed to help loan officers manage content, prioritize ... Read more
The Salesforce Sales Cloud is an on-demand CRM platform offering applications for small, midsize, and enterprise organizations, with a focus on sales and customer relationships. ... Read more
Claritysoft is a cloud-based customer relationship management (CRM) solution designed for midsize and large enterprise businesses. It offers sales automation, customer service and support, marketing automation and social CRM wi... Read more
BenchmarkONE (formerly Hatchbuck) is a sales and marketing solution designed for small to midsize businesses. The integrated solution offers combined sales automation, marketing automation and email marketing features. Benchmar... Read more
Quick Base is an application development platform that enables people to build business applications without coding. The platform is cloud-based and accessible on any browser or mobile device. Users can build apps on Qu... Read more
Maximizer CRM is an integrated customer relationship management (CRM) solution suitable for organizations of all sizes across various industries. This solution can be deployed on both on-premise and in the cloud. Maximi... Read more
Creatio (formerly bpm’online) is a unique synergy of unified CRM and intelligent BPM platform for marketing, sales and service automation. The solution allows midsize and large companies to manage the customer lifecycle f... Read more
Pipeliner CRM delivers dynamic visualization of the pipeline, sales process and sales activities. Its visual contact management allows users to gain a comprehensive view of their customers and prospects and even map out how the... Read more
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“Usability” includes user ratings for Functionality and Ease of Use.
“Customer Satisfaction” includes user ratings for Customer Support, Likelihood to Recommend and Value for Money.
Reviews analysis period: April 2020
Buyers Guide
Last Updated: October 22, 2020Effectively managing contacts is one of the most mission-critical tasks of running a business. Sales and marketing need the ability to quickly find the current status of an active opportunity in their database, while support teams should be able to quickly find a contact’s entire customer history.
This buyer’s guide will provide a brief overview of contact management software, which is designed for these purposes (among others). Here’s what we’ll cover:
What Is Contact Management Software?
Common Features of Contact Management Software
Contact Management vs CRM: What's the Difference?
Market Trends
What Is Contact Management Software?
At its core, contact management programs store customer contact information. This can include customers’ names, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses and even social media profile information. These databases are often easily searchable and store important documents within each contact profile.
Screenshot of Base user dashboard
These systems are designed to increase efficiency by consolidating critical customer data into one tool. Rather than trapping contact information in your team’s individual inboxes or address books, everyone maintains a single view of the customer.
Common Features of Contact Management Software
In addition to the core capabilities described in the previous section, contact tracking systems might also include the following features.
| Calendaring & notifications | These features allow users to schedule events and tasks and associate them with a contact in your database. This might include reminders to follow-up with an active opportunity in your pipeline, or a task for an account manager to send a renewal contract to one of your customers. |
| Note-taking | In addition to storing contact information, your team might also want to make notes about a particular customer or opportunity. This might be notes from a recent call or meeting, or comments about the best time or day of the week to reach a certain person. |
| File-sharing | Your team likely creates a variety of documents during the course of their relationship with each customer. These features allow them to easily store these contracts, proposals and other files in account profiles. Often, users can simply drag and drop files from their desktop; or, they can quickly click to upload them to the contact profile. |
| Tags | Tagging features allow users to quickly pull subsets of customers at once. These tags are often highly customizable, so businesses can create groups by geographic region or project, for example. Think of it as a sort of index for your accounts, allowing you to quickly find customers of a certain type. |
| To-do lists | Allows you to create to-dos for your team within each contact profile. Often, staff will be notified when a to-do is assigned to them. Then, when that person closes out the task, management receives an alert. Often, these tasks can be selected from a drop-down menu, which allows you to standardize workflow. |
Contact Management vs CRM: What's the Difference?
Contact tracking software is essentially a more basic version of a customer relationship management (CRM) system, although vendors sometimes use these terms interchangeably, particularly when discussing CRM systems designed for small businesses.
Typically, CRM systems include the most common contact management features described in the previous section; however, they might also incorporate more robust workflow automation, reporting and interaction tracking, among other features. Depending on the CRM application, the system might also offer features for marketing automation, sales force automation, customer service, field service and help desk and call center management. For more information on CRM software, visit our buyer’s guide.
Despite many vendors differentiating their systems in this way, you might still encounter systems that have more features than another product described as being a CRM system, and vice versa. Regardless of what the system is called, deciding between a basic contact management system or a more robust CRM system could depend on a variety of factors.
Most of the buyers we speak with are smaller businesses, or smaller departments within larger businesses, which don't require capabilities beyond tracking contact information. These buyers most often can function exclusively with the core capabilities described in the “common features” section.
Meanwhile, CRM software buyers need more capabilities that extend well beyond simple contact management. They may need features specific to their industry (e.g., field service) or for a particular operational role, such as customer service. Very large enterprises might also need contact managing features to work in concert with other types of automation, so they would buy an integrated CRM suite.
Market Trends
The world of business software has offered contact management solutions for many years, probably longer than most other types of business software. But just because contact management apps have existed for many years, that doesn’t mean the products and their functionalities aren’t still evolving. Vendors of contact management software continue to refine their products in light of the changes brought by increasingly digital business environments. Modern contact management systems are often designed to be:
- Always omnichannel. Omnichannel software allows companies to seamlessly engage with customers and clients across all common communication channels, from personal and business email addresses, to phone calls, live chat conversations and more. Omnichannel contact management systems ensure that information regarding preferred communication channels, and contact details, are stored with every contact’s entry.
- Increasingly integrated. Contact management software is often combined (integrated) with other CRM functionalities into broader software suites. Integrated suites add efficiency to internal workflow processes by minimizing the number of interfaces employees use to complete individual tasks. While in years past contact management systems were often sold as standalone products, today, they’re more often found combined with other applications, like those used specifically for sales, service or marketing.
- Interdepartmentally available. As more and more businesses find value in increasing the cooperation between their internal departments, more software vendors are designing platforms to facilitate cross-departmental information sharing. Contact managment solutions that allow all internal departments to share and work from the same database are increasingly common.