The Top 10 CRM Issues and How to Address Them

Your customer relationship management (CRM) software can be the most powerful tool in your business’s toolbox. It can help you organize your customer information, speed up your sales process, and close more deals, ultimately helping you earn more revenue and grow your business.

Unfortunately, these outcomes aren’t a given just because you purchase a CRM. Not all CRMs are created equal, and you may face certain CRM issues as you set up and use your relationship management system.

That’s why, in this blog post, we’re going over 10 of the most common complaints about CRMs, how to address them, and how Nutshell can help you avoid them.

Table of contents:

  1. Poor user adoption
  2. Inaccurate or outdated data
  3. Integration issues
  4. Lack of user-friendliness
  5. Lack of customization
  6. Cost
  7. Limited reporting and analytics
  8. Poor technical support
  9. Limited mobile access
  10. Data security concerns

1. Poor user adoption

Your CRM won’t do you much good if your team doesn’t use it. Unfortunately, getting your team to fully utilize a CRM system can be a challenge. 

Poor user adoption leads to incomplete data and inaccurate insights, disorganization, misalignment among your team, and missed opportunities. You won’t get the full potential benefits of your CRM, and your investment in the tool won’t get a good return.

Why do teams face challenges when it comes to user adoption? Often, it’s because their CRM is overcomplicated or doesn’t meet their needs. Employees may also resist using a new tool if they feel that leadership didn’t explain its benefits and provide the necessary training and support.

To prevent this common CRM issue, when choosing a CRM, get feedback from your team on what they want out of the tool and keep them informed about why and how they should use the new system.

You’ll want to choose a CRM that meets your team’s needs, is user-friendly, and offers quality customer support. Nutshell, for instance, is easy to use plus we offer free, friendly customer support so your team can get the most out of your CRM and your data.

2. Inaccurate or outdated data

CRMs help you organize your customer data and get more value from it, but keeping your data accurate and up to date can sometimes be tricky, especially if you have a CRM that isn’t exactly easy to work with.

Inaccurate data can lead to poor insights and decision-making. When you don’t have up-to-date information about your customers, your team might get things wrong when interacting with them and potentially miss opportunities to close sales.

To ensure your data stays up to date, follow these tips:

  • Enter your data as soon as possible once you get it
  • Periodically clean your data, fix errors, and remove duplicates
  • Automate as much of your data input and updating as possible

One of the most important tips for keeping your data clean is choosing a CRM that makes it easy to do so and includes user-friendly data management, automation features, and free customer support.

Nutshell is designed to make data management easy. Our CRM automatically: 

Nutshell also features dozens of built-in integrations that make it easy to keep your data aligned across your software tools. Plus, our support team is available to help you with your data—we’ll even import your data for you.

3. Integration issues

You want all of your tools and software to work together, but integrating your CRM with other tools can be a challenge depending on which CRM you choose.

Integrating your CRM with your other systems and tools helps to keep your data consistent across platforms, which leads to a more complete view of your customers, improved reporting, and reduced manual processes for managing data across tools. Without integrations, though, managing your various tools and the data they store can become messy.

To avoid this issue, choose a CRM that’s designed to work well with the other tools you use. Your CRM should come with built-in integrations or make it easy to set up custom integrations and be able to access data from various sources.

At Nutshell, we offer a long list of built-in integrations and make it simple to create custom integrations through Zapier and APIs.

Nutshell works with your technology

4. Lack of user-friendliness

Another one of the most commonly cited CRM problems is that some are overly complicated and difficult to use. 

This lack of user-friendliness means it takes longer to set up the CRM and learn how to use it. You may even need to hire a consultant to help you get started with it. 

It’s harder for a team to get the maximum value from a difficult-to-use CRM and tasks may take longer. Your team may also become frustrated and start to avoid using the CRM, meaning your investment is underutilized. 

Luckily, not all CRMs are like this. To avoid this issue, choose a CRM like Nutshell that’s designed to be simple and easy to use and offers free customer support to help you get started with the tool and deal with any challenges that come up.

5. Lack of customization

Another challenge businesses may face with CRMs is a lack of customization options. When you can tailor your CRM to your business’s needs, you’ll get more value from it and save time by ensuring you see the information you’ll actually use.

To ensure you get the most value from your CRM, look for one that has customization features that are easy to use. With Nutshell, for instance, you can customize your dashboards and reports and create custom fields, pipelines, and automated workflows.

6. Cost

Another common CRM issue for businesses, especially small businesses with limited budgets, is that they can be expensive. 

In addition to subscription costs, the more complex CRMs can be expensive to set up and maintain. Some CRMs also lock users into restrictive contracts, meaning they may be stuck paying for the tool even if they’re not getting value from it.

At Nutshell, we pride ourselves on being affordable and including free customer support in all of our plans, even during your free trial. With Nutshell, you also won’t have to worry about restrictive contracts or caps on contacts or data.

See Our Pricing

7. Limited reporting and analytics

To get the most out of your CRM data, you need to be able to analyze and report on it. Your CRM should make it easier to do this. 

Some CRMs, however, have limited reporting and analytics capabilities, making it difficult for businesses to track their performance and make informed decisions.

To avoid this CRM problem, look for a CRM with built-in analytics and reporting. Look for features that are easy to use and that let you customize your reports.

With Nutshell, you’ll get detailed reports on sales performance, leads, your sales funnel, and sales forecasts. You can also customize your reports and download presentation-ready charts.

8. Poor technical support

Good technical support is key to a quality CRM experience. If customer support is slow or of poor quality, you may have longer downtime and lower productivity. Some CRM companies also charge extra for technical support, meaning you’ll need to pay more to get the full value of your CRM.

Even for user-friendly CRMs, customer support is essential. Good customer support can help you get started with the new tool, address any issues that come up, and help you make full use of your CRM system.

To address this common CRM complaint, check reviews to see how users rate a CRM company’s support before choosing it. You can also get an idea of what support is like during free trials.

At Nutshell, we provide free, world-class support for all of our customers and trial users. It’s one of the many reasons our customers love working with us!

“”

Your customer service is hands-down the best I’ve seen in a long time. It is greatly appreciated. Keep up the good work!

Ryan M. Reichel Insulation

9. Limited mobile access

Another common CRM problem is limited mobile access. Sales representatives and other CRM users often need to access their data on the go, and without mobile access, it may be harder to close deals. Mobile apps can also help to keep your team updated as they can get important notifications anytime, anywhere.

To avoid this issue, make sure you choose a CRM that is easy to access and use on the go. With Nutshell, you can access your CRM data from any device through a web browser or our mobileA apps. Our apps help keep your team up to date with notifications and make it easy to add contact information with features like business card scanning.

10. Data security concerns

Data security should always be a top priority. Businesses store sensitive customer and business data in their CRMs, so they need to take data security and privacy seriously. It’s essential to choose a CRM that takes security and privacy seriously too.

At Nutshell, we’re committed to security and privacy. We are compliant with data privacy laws, we use encryption to protect your information, and you always own your data.

Have you faced any of these common CRM issues? If you have and you’d like help addressing them, consider making Nutshell your new CRM. Nutshell is an easy-to-use affordable CRM with all of the features you need plus free live support for every customer and trial user.

To discover for yourself what makes Nutshell different, start your free trial today.

Conquer your CRM challenges with Nutshell

Have you faced any of these common CRM issues? If you have and you’d like help addressing them, consider making Nutshell your new CRM. Nutshell is an easy-to-use affordable CRM with all of the features you need plus free live support for every customer and trial user.

To discover for yourself what makes Nutshell different, start your free trial today.

Start Your Free Trial

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