If you're a small business, you probably fall into one of these two scenarios. Either you're using outdated tools, like a spreadsheet, to manage all of your customers and projects or you're using an enterprise level CRM system that was designed for hundreds of employees.
Well, there's a much better and simpler solution, and best of all, it's free. Here I am within Bigin by Zoho CRM, and if that name Zoho sounds familiar to you, it's because they already build one of the best enterprise level CRM systems out there.
But Bigin is different because it's specifically designed with small business users in mind. So one of the first things that you'll notice is that Bigin is designed under a Kanban or board style view. Now that's nothing new for CRM systems, right?
Starting with a client here on the left hand side and then dragging or moving them through the different stages or the different funnels of your sale or your deal or your booking. But this type of design becomes even more powerful, because we can manage other things than just deals and sales.
We can manage projects
and other customer related activities. On the left hand side, you can see that we can quickly take a glance at all of our contacts. Many of your contacts of course, are associated with companies, but we can also manage our products, activities, and even see a high level dashboard.
So you can see everything that is going on at just a glance. But back to our pipeline's view, I really appreciate the cleanness of this view and Bigin doesn't add anything additional that we don't need if we're a small business user.
If I want to start or add a new booking, I can simply click this button
in the top right hand corner and input the relevant details. And of course, I can set up in advance, which of these fields are required and which are not. But let's jump into an existing booking and just see how clean and easy it is to see and access the information that we need.
Of course, we've got the size of the deal and the name at the very top. We have contact information here on the left hand side, so we can see details like the stage history, when did it move into a different stage, how long did it remain in that particular area, and who made the change itself?
Are there any relevant notes that I want to go back and reference and what is the full timeline of this particular deal? The other thing that I really appreciate about this view is that we can still see those different phases in a visual manner at the top of the screen.
Of course, we should be able to move things along or move things back, but I especially appreciate that they keep that Kanban, or pipeline feel happening even within the record itself. So I can either jump directly to one area of my pipeline or see exactly where it is within that particular phase.
But to call Bigin simply a CRM system, isn't giving it justice because it's real strength is allowing you to manage the other customer relationships and other customer activities that happen after the sale or the contract or the booking. Often there is some customer onboarding involved
or maybe the delivery of a product or a service or a request for a refund. Well, you can continue to manage the entire customer life cycle, along with other projects right here, from within Bigin.
Here on the left hand side, you can see that I have other pipelines that I'm using, including cancellation requests, which of course are very different than my booking requests. And rather than creating a board or a pipeline that is 27 phases in length, I can break them up in a much more reasonable manner.
I have reschedule requests here, I have refunds and support, and in this last one here,
perhaps I have a form on my website which feeds directly into my customer feedback.
So either myself or other members of my team can reply in a timely manner We can manage it here within the same system, within the same screen, and without having to bounce back and forth between other applications. Think for a moment how many other tools you either currently use or you're thinking of using just for one specific function.
And if it's just for one specific function, you're probably only using a fraction of those total features, but you're paying full price. Here, we can keep as much if not all of our customer related activities in one place and set up as many pipelines as we like. Down below, you can see that there are a number of templates
that can help you get started quickly and easily. The sales pipeline is going to be the most standard, but like we've seen before, we can manage refunds, we can recruit. So if we want to use Bigin to hire new staff, we can do that all here as well.
What better place to gather and manage contact information than within a system that was designed nfor contact information?
We can even do a website launch or other project management right here from within the system. And there are additional templates designed specifically for industries as well. So for example, if you are providing
some type of consulting, we already have a template ready for you to go, and of course you can edit any of the fields or any of the phases within this pipeline. But what exactly are you getting with the free version of Bigin and what are the other versions available to you?
Here we can see that the Bigin Free Plan gives you a single pipeline and up to 500 records, and of course, you only need to upgrade when you need to.
The Express version at only $7 a month, gives you up to three different pipelines and 50,000 records but it also gives you a lot of additional features, including email integration, custom fields, and customizable dashboards and KPIs.
But wait, would you like to try out all of the Premier features of Bigin for absolutely nothing? If you click the link in the description, you'll get exclusive access to a 15 day free trial and can experience all of the features of the Premier Edition.
And if you have further questions about Bigin, CRMs, or managing your small business, be sure to let me know in the comments down below.
Thank you so much for watching, and remember, being productive does not need to be difficult. In fact, it's very simple.
