Base CRM (Now called Zendesk Sell) Adds Events & Accounts

Update: Novem­ber 2018: Base has joined with Zen­desk Sup­port. Their new name is Zen­desk Sell. Their pric­ing struc­ture has changed as well. It spans from $19, $49, $99 and $199 per user. I use the words Base CRM in the arti­cle below, writ­ten in 2014. Dur­ing the past sev­er­al months, the Base CRM devel­op­ment team has been very busy pro­vid­ing many valu­able updates to their sim­ple yet effec­tive Cus­tomer Rela­tion­ship Man­age­ment (CRM) cloud soft­ware. I have been using Base for the past cou­ple of years for my own busi­ness. After the last cou­ple of big updates, it has become an even bet­ter tool for my com­pa­ny. I use it dai­ly, and if you are still look­ing for a great CRM, you should give it a try your­self. It is built for small and medi­um size businesses.

Recent Updates:

Events Are Now in Base

I have been eager­ly await­ing the day Base intro­duced a full blown cal­en­dar sys­tem like Google Cal­en­dar. This wish became a real­i­ty a cou­ple of weeks ago. The new cal­en­dar fea­ture is a two-way sync with Google. It is Ver­sion 1 so it will not com­plete­ly keep me from using Google Cal­en­dar. How­ev­er, if I’m man­ag­ing just my own cal­en­dar, I can use Base on the desk­top, iPhone or iPad 100% with­out hav­ing to touch Google Cal­en­dar. I can also view all of my oth­er Google Cal­en­dars with­in Base: I just can­not edit them just yet. This fea­ture is on it’s way! The rea­son I like using the Base Cal­en­dar over Google’s is that it keeps track of my meet­ings with con­tacts I have in Base already. I spend less time jump­ing around pro­grams now that this fea­ture has been released. Base has told me they are work­ing quick­ly to make the events fea­ture even bet­ter. So stay tuned…this could replace Google Cal­en­dar 100% some­day. Base has also informed me that a lot of updates are being added to the cal­en­dar fea­ture this year!

Accounts

Accounts are new in Base as of late March as well. This was not some­thing I was think­ing was need­ed, but the more I spend time look­ing into Accounts, the more I think it is an awe­some addi­tion to Base CRM. In short, you can quick­ly view who your best accounts are by fil­ter­ing con­tacts or through report­ing. It is not always based on the amount of dol­lars the client spends on your ser­vices either. Maybe you have a cus­tomer who uses you all of the time? Accounts will tell you how many jobs you’ve won, how many poten­tial jobs you have in the pipeline and the total of jobs won or pend­ing with­out hav­ing to do a lot of inves­tiga­tive work. Know­ing more about your cus­tomers is cru­cial. As you review your accounts in Base, you might dis­cov­er bet­ter (more per­son­al) ways to mar­ket and keep in touch.

Oth­er Updates to Base This Spring

• Task Noti­fi­ca­tion: Now you can cre­ate Task on the desk­top or mobile app with a bet­ter reminder sys­tem (like Google). You can be noti­fied at the time of your event, 5 min­utes before, 15 min­utes, etc. Before this update, all task reminders were set 1 hour before the deadline.
• Task On Cal­en­dar: You can view or hide your task on the Base Cal­en­dar. This saves you from hav­ing to go back and forth between your task and events tab. This update only works on the desk­top version.
• Push Noti­fi­ca­tion & Pop Up Reminders: Now on the iPhone/​iPad you can get pop up reminders of upcom­ing events. It also shows up in your noti­fi­ca­tion drop down menu.
• Email, Calls & Text Mes­sag­ing: You can have your entire sales team use Base for text mes­sag­ing, phone calls and sending/​receiving emails direct­ly via the Base mobile app and desk­top ver­sion. It works very much like iMes­sage. The tex­ting fea­tures are only avail­able on the Enter­prise plan (cur­rent­ly). I hope Base changes this! But it works very well (just costs more). On this plan, users are giv­en a unique phone num­ber. The real ben­e­fit is that all com­mu­ni­ca­tion with a prospect, ven­dor or cus­tomer is tracked 100% with­in the Base CRM sys­tem. It just keeps get­ting better.
• Report­ing: The reports on the desk­top ver­sion are eas­i­er to nav­i­gate, cus­tomize and are a bit smarter too.
• Scor­ing: This is a brand new fea­ture. It is also only avail­able for the Enter­prise ver­sion. It is a bit tricky to set­up at the moment. How­ev­er, it is a beau­ti­ful con­cept for larg­er sales teams that deal with var­i­ous indus­tries. To read more about Scor­ing, vis­it the Base Blog.
• Cus­tom Lead Forms: This fea­ture makes it easy to make a con­tact form on your web­site. If you want to add or remove an item on your lead form, it is a piece of cake. The screen­shot below is from my web­site. When some­one fills out their infor­ma­tion here, it goes direct­ly into my Base Leads sec­tion and noti­fies me by email. I have also set­up my Auto­mat­ed Task in Base to let me know the next course of action to take in the sales process. [cap­tion id=“attachment_2308” align=“aligncenter” width=“291”] Cus­tom Lead Forms on Base CRM[/caption]

So, there have been a lot of updates as you can see from Base CRM dur­ing the first 4 months of 2014. They are also mov­ing their offices to the Bay Area to be clos­er to the ​“Tech World”. They plan on releas­ing updates at a much faster rate this year. One of their big goals is to go head to head with Sales­force. Can they do it? So far, I’m real­ly lik­ing the func­tions of Base CRM. For those who want a lit­tle more cus­tomiza­tion with Base, check out Zapi­er (i.e. Base to Quick­books functions).