Base CRM Updates in June 2013 (Now Zendesk Sell)

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 2013.

Base for Teams

Base CRM, from Future Sim­ple, recent­ly made a few more changes to their desk­top and mobile appli­ca­tions. The lat­est fea­ture they are call­ing Base Teams. You can read their blog arti­cle about Base Teams here. A few of the fea­tures are not­ed below and are avail­able for those who have the Enter­prise ver­sion. Most of my small busi­ness clients are on low­er plans and will not need these new changes. This update is for larg­er organizations. Here are the lat­est updates: 

• Mul­ti-lev­el hier­ar­chies let you orga­nize your team how you want to — teams, groups, you name it
• User-lev­el per­mis­sions con­trol who sees what quick­ly, eas­i­ly and visually
• Advanced report­ing means you can fil­ter all your reports based on user lev­els you set

Tweaks to the UI of Mobile

The iOS app also got a few user inter­face (UI) updates. The updates are bare­ly notice­able to most of you using the App. How­ev­er, I did find them nec­es­sary and use­ful. The UI update I liked the most is the search func­tion. It is more intu­itive and eas­i­er to access. I now use the Search func­tion to type in a key word (i.e. Con­tact) to find what I want.

Mobile Update

The oth­er big change last month was for the iOS and Android devices. This new fea­ture is called Base Voice. You can now make calls with­in the iOS & Android appli­ca­tion. This is a nice busi­ness fea­ture to not have to leave the mobile App. A sales­per­son can open up Base, find the con­tact, click on the phone num­ber and then is giv­en a screen that looks like the pic­ture on the RIGHT. He or she can click on ​“Call with Base.” Once the call is fin­ished, it will log that a call was made and I believe it actu­al­ly records the call (don’t quote me on that as it might be an enter­prise feature). 

My Feed­back

The Base Voice fea­ture is not free. You pay for a cer­tain amount of min­utes to use. I find this a lit­tle dis­ap­point­ing. Users are already pay­ing a pre­mi­um fee for Base CRM. Their new price fea­tures are get­ting close, and in some cas­es more, than Sales­force CRM. I am a big fan of Base CRM, but they do not offer as many bells and whis­tles as Sales­force. There­fore, I hope they keep their pric­ing rea­son­able and their prod­uct bug free. The $45 a month fea­tures are worth it for those who will use it. I have sam­pled the Base Voice and the per­son on the oth­er end could not hear me very well. One per­son heard a lot of crack­ling nois­es. I think this is because Base is using a VoIP call sys­tem that is not as good as using the cell or land­line ser­vice. So at this time, I’m not going to pay for min­utes and won’t use this fea­ture until I know the call clar­i­ty is almost per­fect. It is embar­rass­ing to be on a call with a prospec­tive client when he can’t hear me. The Base sup­port is very tal­ent­ed, and I am sure this is a fea­ture that will only get bet­ter in time. Base CRM has told me they are now work­ing on updat­ing the Task fea­tures with­in Base. This to me was more impor­tant than the tweaks they have been mak­ing late­ly, but I’m not part of their advis­er team…and maybe their recent updates were the most request­ed. I just find that the task func­tion is lack­ing and a lit­tle bug­gy at the moment. It is a must need­ed CRM fea­ture that needs to work and work beau­ti­ful­ly. All in all, Base CRM is still a very pow­er­ful and easy to use CRM. It is not for every­one but does offer some great mobile and desk­top fea­tures. Their graphs & report­ing fea­tures are still not as easy to use as Pipeline Deals and, export­ing data for mail­ing is painful. It can be done…but requires a few extra steps. There is still not a per­fect CRM out there, but I’m stick­ing to endors­ing Base and Pipeline Deals for small busi­ness own­ers pri­mar­i­ly (not large corporations).