If you’re running a small business or if your company consists just of you, you may get away with tracking sales calls and managing customer relationships by just using a spreadsheet. But you may find that with the right tools, you can do much more: you can monitor as well as manage customer relationships along with pipelines. You can collect all customer interaction at a single place and then get a complete picture of your business.
Queue in Bigin by Zoho. It’s designed from the ground up for small businesses so that you can track customer interaction, make calls, send and receive emails, manage activities and see what’s happening in your business all within a simple interface.
Bigin is a CRM that’s based on the Zoho CRM. But in contrast to the “normal Zoho CRM, the feature set is focused more on the sales pipeline. You still get a 360-degree overview so that you can get in front of your prospects via email, phone, Twitter, and even web forums. It sits in-between spreadsheets for managing customer relationships and the complex, full-featured CRM solutions used by large enterprises.
Don’t get this the wrong way though, Bigin is not a watered-down version of its big sibling Zoho CRM. Bigin is focused on covering the needs of small to mid-sized businesses (SMB), especially people who’re (more) used to mobile. Bigin is optimised to run on smartphones and tablets.
Bigin was launched in 2020 by Zoho. Zoho is an Indian tech company that’s probably best known for its Office Suite. Since its launch in 1996, Zoho has added more web-based business tools such as its mails suite and CRM tool.
Pros and cons of Bigin
Bigin has 2 main focuses: The first is that it’s designed and optimised to run on mobile devices. The second is that it offers integrations with applications that are often seen in SMBs.
What’s interesting is that Bigin runs very well in Apple’s iOS eco-system. You’ll see that in the widgets and notifications for tablets and phones as well as alerts on the watch. You even can use the pencil to quickly jot down your responses on the iPad.
Pros
- Budget-friendly
- Intuitive interface
- Mobile-first with mobile apps to manage your tasks on the go
- Forever free
- Built-in telephony
Cons
- No matter what I did, I just couldn’t log into Bigin using Brave, with other browsers such as Firefox and Opera, there were no problems
- Mobile integrations favours iOS eco-system, meaning that integrations are not available on Android
Who is Bigin for?
Is designed from the ground up for SBMs. It’s reflected in the feature set, giving you all the tools you need to build and nurture relationships with your customers, especially if you’re just starting your sales journey. With Bigin, you can close deals and manage all the data in collaboration with your teammates. And, it’s mobile-first.
What is Bigin used for?
Bigin describes itself as a pipeline-centric CRM. This means, in contrast to other CRM, it optimises CRM processes from a sales perspective.
Bigin makes it easy for you to spot and manage opportunities. For that, you need to first input the needed infos such as Deal Name, Contact Name, Stage, and so on. With this, you can access and see your sales pipeline, no matter if you are at your desk or on the go.
Needless to say, you need to also import your contacts. In the tab Contacts, you’ll get a 360 view of your customers. It doesn’t only log calls and other interactions but you can also make calls as well as send and receive emails.
You can set up workflows, that is, you can automate a sequence of tasks to track deal updates, set up email alerts, or notify team members.
To build a healthy and profitable business, you need to keep an eye on your PKIs. You can at a glance
The opportunities in the pipeline
The top 5 of your best customers
The number of new contacts created this month and more
How easy is Bigin to use?
You’ll find Bigin has a nice and uncluttered interface. The interface works fine no matter if you’re using a desktop, tablet, or mobile.
Its navigation is located in the left side menu. You’re just one click away from finding what you need, be it current opportunities, activities, or contacts. There’s a search field that you can call up with CMD + K anywhere you are.
You really see and feel that a lot of thought went into the design of the interface. It’s very simple and hence very effective and totally intuitive.
Since Bigin is catering to the needs of SMBs, it has made a point for tight integrations with third-party services, particularly Microsoft Office 365 and Google G-Suite. With these, it plugs neatly into email and calendar so that it’s easier for you to schedule calls and meetings. You don’t even need to leave Bigin and can just find your appointments and emails.
Of course, it also integrates with the business tools made by Zoho such as Books or Flow. Then you get integrations with email marketing providers and telephony. If you don’t see what you need you can either suggest an integration or build your won with its API.
Bigin customer support
Sometimes, you hit a wall even with such an easy to navigate interface. If that’s the case for you, just click the button Feedback in the lower right-hand corner. You can choose to send a message to the Zoho team or find the answer in the knowledge base.
As part of the business tool suite, you can also contact Zoho in one of their offices dotted around the world.
Bigin pricing
You can test-drive Bigin for 15 days for free. It has very budget-friendly prices and a free tier. With €7 and 12€ per month respectively, Bigin is generous – full stop. If you need additional file storage space or records, you can always add add-ons. For each backup, you need to pony up €5 each time.
Is Bigin the right tool for you?
Are you wondering if you should move on from spreadsheets? Don’t. For a measly 7€ per month, you get a CRM with multichannel customer outreach and email marketing.
It’s well worth its price so that you can keep in view what stages your customers and prospects are while automating tedious and repetitive tasks.
Original post here: Bigin by Zoho review
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