What do you think about the array of available CRMS?
I've never met anyone who loves the CRM they use and for us indie hackers (along with just about anyone else building a business), CRM solutions are so, so, so important.
Is it just me or do all the available solutions, both large and small, just ... kind of suck? What am I missing in my thinking?
What do you guys think?
Co-founder of Tapdesk CRM here. We took a user-centric approach in our definition and design of CRM. We found out from our research and interviews with salespeople that all the major CRMs are developed with the customer at the core of the platform. While the C in CRM stands for Customer, we tend to forget that customers do not use this software, salespeople do. And I think that is where the major problems with CRMs start. We focus so much on the customer and ignore the needs of the user. Unlike other software, the user is usually the central customer forcing a design thinking process that revolves around the primary user. For CRMs, the case is complicated with the introduction of a new element (the customer) that the idea is built around.
Well, as you observe, many attempts have been made, and it seems like it's not easy to get a good match between product features and the intuitive thinking of the big variety of people using it and their cases.
Due do note that at the end of the day the solutions are there and people are using them, it's not that they choose to go without.
Also note that with a big choice on offer, the satisfaction just goes down overall, which might be counter intuitive but a tested behaviour.
I'd say that it might not be the systems themselves, but it's actually a process of, ok that thing your doing you want to machinise, you now need to sit down and think what you actually want, than set the system to your decisions, it's not that seamless of my brain matches a system and that system should have a software..
Take it as a hard problem you don't yet fully understand rather than I know more than these 100+ companies and their 1,000s of people
Ah, this was a very insightful reply to me!
For what it's worth, I don't feel like I understand the problem fully but I'm beginning to understand the friction of these CRMs is due to the way these systems are set up vs. how the brain is set up to think about the problem.
CRMs all feel very functional to me but not at all 'fun' to use.
How about a little experiment?
Have 10 conversations with 10 different people.
Document each conversation to the best of your ability as in what you think is meaningful (not every word)
Now after these 10, read them out to yourself
based on them make boxes of information type to record for future discussions.
re-enter the information of these conversations to these boxes.
Now have another 10 conversations and document them based on the boxes you've set.
Now tell us, how fun were the boxes to use for these last 10 conversations?
Do you want to modify the boxes?
Are you frustrated about the boxes?
Do you want to do that again?
How about extracting meaningful information now from these boxes you made?
Like how many times people said "hmmm..." or some other random thing you can think up off...
Have a conversation with one of the previous people again, but read your last documented one before starting talking to him. Was that useful? was it time efficient? would you like to change your boxes?
How about having a 3rd party ask you random questions about what you have documented? are you able to easily answer them? would you change the boxes again in anticipation of more and/or repeat question from this person?