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We're looking at conversational AI platforms for inbound customer conversations,mostly coming through WhatsApp and Instagram. The main thing we need is something that can handle common questions, qualify a lead and then pass the conversation to a human without losing all the context.
Most of the tools I’ve found seem focused on website chatbots, which isn’t really our use case. Ideally we’d also have one inbox where the team can see and take over conversations when needed.
Anyone using something like this? What’s worked well?

Small B2B team, 6 people, Pipesrive is our CRM and its perfectly fine for our deal size and complexity, not looking to rip it out. Problem is our current cold email setup doesnt talk to it at all, so every week someone exports a CSV of new contacts to upload for sequencing, then manuallt updates deal stages when someone replies. Its maybe 3-4 hours a week of pure copy-paste that shouldn't need to exist anymore.

Looking for an outreach platform that actually syncs both directions:

• new Pipedrive contacts flow into sequences without a manual export
• replies/engagement push deal stage updates back automatically
• some AI-assisted piece since we're evaluating those anyway, personalization or reply handling
• doesnt require us to abandon Pipedrive for something heavier like Salesforce

Anyone actually running Pipedrive alongside a modern outreach tool without the CSV dance? What's the actual integration depth like, native or Zapier duct tape?

Sharing this because I think a lot of people (myself included, for a while) over-index on lead volume and CPL as the main success metric for paid campaigns.

Ran a 12-month CRM analysis connecting monthly lead cohorts to their actual sales-qualified outcomes (not just "lead generated" but "lead qualified"). A few things stood out:

- March had the highest lead volume of the whole year: 747 leads. SQL rate was only 16.2%.

- July had way fewer leads (553) but hit a 25.1% SQL rate — the best month of the entire dataset, and actually produced MORE sales-qualified leads than March (139 vs 121).

- Overall across the full year: 4,499 leads → 609 SQLs → 13.5% average SQL rate. But that average hides a LOT of monthly variance (some months as low as 8.5%).

The takeaway that stuck with me: if you're only optimizing for cost-per-lead, you can easily end up optimizing for the wrong thing. A campaign that produces "cheap" leads that never qualify is worse than a campaign with a higher CPL but a much higher SQL rate.

The other underrated variable here: CRM discipline. Sales reps consistently logging accurate statuses (qualified, not interested, callback, etc.) is what made this analysis possible at all. Messy CRM data = you can't actually see this stuff.

Full breakdown with the monthly table and framework (ad spend → leads → SQL → opportunity → customer → revenue) is here if useful

Curious if others tracking SQL rate monthly have seen similar swings — what's caused the biggest jump/drop for you?

(I work as a performance marketing specialist, mostly digging into exactly this kind of lead-quality data for clients — happy to talk through anyone's setup in the comments if it helps.)

Hello everyone, I launched my CRM. I am now struggling of getting my first sale. I reach out to contractors on Facebook Marketplace. They reject. What do I do? What are your tricks/techniques? Put me onto it.

Curious if anyone else is starting to see this. I’m finding myself using the actual CRM UI less now. But weirdly the CRM is becoming more useful.

With both ChatGPT and Claude connecting into CRM, I've started using my chats to just ask questions instead of clicking through reports, views, dashboards etc. Things like what deals need attention, who havent we talked to in a while, what changed this week etc.

I also wonder if this starts fixing some of the old CRM problems. Sales teams hate updating CRM. Sales ops ends up stitching data together from multiple places. Leadership waits for someone to build a report.

Now some of that can happen through AI as the interaction layer. So I’m using the CRM less, but getting more value from the data in it.

Anyone else seeing this yet?

We’re looking at conversational AI platforms for inbound customer conversations, mostly coming through WhatsApp and Instagram. The main thing we need is something that can handle common questions, qualify a lead and then pass the conversation to a human without losing all the context.MoAnyone using something like this? What’s worked well?

we're reviewing our support stack and i've narrowed it down to hubspot service hub vs zendesk. the part i'm struggling with is that this isn't just a support decision. our sales and customer data already lives in a crm, so i'm trying to figure out whether having support tightly connected to that data is actually useful in practice or just sounds good on paper.

for teams that evaluated both:

• what was the biggest reason you picked one over the other?
• did crm integration end up changing how your support team worked?
• how useful were the reporting and customer history features?
• was onboarding straightforward or more work than expected?
• at what company size did the differences start to matter?

i'm less interested in feature lists and more interested in what actually affected day to day operations after the rollout.

what would you choose today and why?

I’m in the process of building a CRM/ATS aimed primarily at the UK recruitment market, at least initially. I already supply some software to a few UK recruitment companies, so it felt like a fairly natural direction to explore.

I’ve tried platforms such as Bullhorn, JobAdder, RecruitCRM etc. They obviously do a lot, but I’ve always felt that some of them are quite dated in places and, particularly when it comes to integrations, can feel overly modular. With some platforms, relatively straightforward functionality ends up requiring another product, another account, another implementation and another monthly bill.

I’ve been building mine for a little while now and I’m pretty happy with where it’s getting to. However, recruitment itself isn’t my day-to-day role, and none of the other software I currently supply is a traditional CRM/ATS, so I wanted to get some feedback from people who actually use these systems every day.
So far, I’ve covered things including:

Custom attributes across the main data objects: candidates, contacts, companies/leads, jobs, placements etc.

Configurable document management, including custom folder/file structures and document storage.

Customisable hiring pipelines, with reusable pipeline templates.

Tasks and reminders, including assigning tasks to other users.

Departments and teams, with configurable structures and permissions.

Sequences, allowing multistage outreach/workflows across channels such as email, SMS and internal tasks.

Automations, allowing actions to be triggered against candidates, contacts, jobs, placements and other records.

Email sync with Outlook and Gmail.

Two-way SMS and messaging.

In-app telephony, with a choice of VoIP providers for outbound and inbound calls.

I’ve also built the integration side more as a marketplace rather than forcing everyone down one particular route. At the moment this includes:

- Multiple VoIP/telephony providers
- SMS providers
- Outlook and Gmail
- Various AI meeting/note-taking platforms
- Data enrichment providers, alongside some native company-data enrichment
- Background screening, including digital ID and DBS checks
- Pay & bill/back-office software
- E-signature providers such as DocuSign

I have also built a number of AI driven features too that support with insights, reports, writing, analysis etc.

The intention isn’t necessarily to reinvent absolutely everything. It’s more to make the core CRM/ATS genuinely pleasant to use and cheaper to get going with, while making integrations feel like part of the product rather than something that requires a consultancy project every time you want to connect another service.

For those of you actually working in recruitment: what are the things your current CRM/ATS does badly, or things you constantly wish it could do?

I’m particularly interested in the small day-to-day frustrations that probably don’t make it onto a software company’s feature comparison page but make a big difference when you’re using the system for 8 hours a day.

Also interested in anything you think I’m obviously missing from the list above. I will eventually speak to some existing clients and get their feedback, but it would be nice to approach them with a solid first effort.

Thanks in advance for any advice/feedback/input offered👍

I’m building FloForge, a CRM/workflow automation application for small businesses. I’m currently working on the backend of the automation engine and would appreciate feedback from people who have built workflow systems, CRMs, or event-driven applications. The current system supports: Event-based triggers — lead created, deal won, status changed, etc. Conditions attached to triggers Actions such as creating tasks and recording activities Automation activation/deactivation Automation run history Linking actions to the record that triggered the automation For example: Lead created → automation triggers → follow-up task is created and linked to the lead → run is recorded I'm now focusing on making this reliable enough for real-world use. The areas I'm specifically concerned about are: Idempotency: preventing duplicate automation runs/actions when the same event is processed more than once Failure handling: properly recording failed actions and deciding whether subsequent actions should continue Observability: useful run history, statuses, timestamps, errors, and action-level results Record relationships: ensuring actions remain correctly associated with the record that triggered them Conditions: making sure conditions are evaluated consistently before actions execute Concurrency: preventing race conditions when multiple events arrive at roughly the same time Retries: handling temporary failures without accidentally performing an action twice Execution architecture: whether the current event → automation → action approach will scale reasonably I'm not looking for compliments on the UI. I'd rather have people point out what's wrong with the architecture or what I'm overlooking. If you've built an automation engine, CRM, workflow system, job queue, or similar event-driven application, what would you consider essential for a production-grade implementation? Repository: Json-error9/FloForge-Automations-website-v3.0-launch Screenshots of the current automation UI are attached for context.

I’d like to get opinions on what to look for in a CRM when working at a consumer goods company. With specific biz processes and ways sales reps and KAMs operate, what’s working for you?

I am wondering how other people are using CRM in a sales context. We write down meeting notes in the CRM and send newsletters for a mailing list. Couldn't this be all be done in an email calendar? Contact details can also be recorded in your email.

For what things do sales people use the CRM, which cannot be replicated in the email calendar, excel or other tools?

Hey all,

I'm up and coming GTM Engineer (hopefully) and I want to get some references & case studies for myself.

I dont take payment, I dont have a company, I'm basically a GTM engineer here at my company as employee. I never enjoyed any other work but this.

This. I love. I crave.

So here is the deal: tell me the issue, I'll see if it's viable to resolve, I'll tell you what it'll need to resolve and if you okay it, I can build a solution for you on my weekends or free time.

I build fast, but I have work, so don't expect to get a fix fast within a few days, some things may take weeks, especially if reliability is a concern. I'll tell you beforehand.

Requirements:

1. US or EU company with 10+ employees, some LinkedIn presence and is a legitimate revenue generating business, not an empty shell. Exceptions can be made for local businesses, just ask.

2. If software is required, you pay, but nothing expensive, always within budget. If it's not cost effective solution, it's my failure. Usually I utilize free stuff. I will use my own Claude and Codex unless it gets really complex and I have to burn my x20 subacriptions to finish it. Usually not necessary and I have plenty of leftover Opus 5 and Codex every week.

3. Comment explaining the issue, software being used, tried solutions, why it's important, how much is at stake. This helps me choose and prioritize.

4. You provide the contract. You'll likely need outline what is okay in case study and what isn't. Only approved numbers.

5. Communication is key, I will NEED to ask you questions. It can be dumb ones for you but important for me. I nerd your time, I need acceptable response time and I need you to be respectful.

P.S. Again, I dont work at an GTM agency, I'm not a contractor, there is no marketing or sales intent here, no payment involved, nothing. This is pro bono.

As it's pro bono, I have limited capacity, so I'll be choosing the person / company to help. No hard feelings, please.

My specialties: Marketing (paid and organic), Sales (inbound and outbound) Data (CRM, marketing, other). And automations for all of them Software: Hubspot, Apollo, Claude / Codex API, Google Meet, dialer

Most recent work: Server-side tracking, CV & LI parser, data entry from transcript

EDIT: I WON'T build a custom CRM. I'll show you how to utilize Hubspot for cheap though. You really don't need a custom CRM. And you don't need "AI-first CRM" and you don't need the crap people sneakily advertising here in comments and posts.

I'm also based in US.

I started working in the CRM field as my first job in 2022, so it has been 4 years now. I mainly focus on commercial targeting, liaising with the commercial planning department to design campaigns, and then executing communications through customer journeys via the selected channels (email/DEM, push notifications, etc.).

I have acquired knowledge of SQL, Salesforce CDP, and Marketing Cloud, and I earned the "Salesforce Certified Marketing Cloud Engagement Specialist" certification (formerly Email Specialist).

​Unfortunately, I currently work in consulting, which I want to leave to transition into an in-house CRM Specialist role at a company.

​How can I proceed? Does it make sense to get Salesforce AI certifications? If so, which ones?"

I’m doing a UX assignment for a mobile sales app and would love some input from people who work in field sales.

Between customer visits, what do you usually check first on your phone: leads, tasks, or sales numbers?

Also, what’s one thing your current sales app makes frustrating or harder than it needs to be?

Any real examples would be really helpful.

Contract changes are really giving us a hard time. Customers add seats, remove product, change billing terms, no big deal. until you have to update the CRM, original quote, pricing approvals and the make sure billing has the same info.

We pulled 350 recent amendments and found roughly 30% needed manual intervention beyond the actual customer request. Not to mention we've had 3 cases where the wrong version made it downstream.

We're looking into contract amendment automation. but i thought it doesn't hurt to figure out what works before we add another tool to the stack.

Do you automate the changes inside the CRM, use a separate tool or just accept someone in the team has to manually follow up the process?

We’re a small specialized construction/pipelining company with about 50 employees, but only 3 people currently using the CRM for sales. We expect that to grow to somewhere around 5–10 sales/account management users over the next few years.

We’ve been using Salesforce for about five years.
Salesforce has gotten us through, but I can’t say we’ve ever really loved it. The person who originally helped build and customize our Salesforce environment is no longer with us, and one of our biggest frustrations is that whenever we want to make changes, adjust workflows, or improve something, we need to use a Salesforce consultant.

Recently we started looking at Zoho.

We met with a Zoho consultant and Initially got pretty excited about it. Their position was basically that there is nothing we are currently doing in Salesforce that Zoho can’t handle.

The cost difference is significant. Depending on how we structure it, we’re looking at roughly a 50–75% reduction compared with what we are currently spending.

We also liked the idea of the larger Zoho ecosystem. CRM, Books, Inventory, etc. could potentially replace several separate applications we currently pay for and bring more of the business into one system.
We were pretty much ready to move forward.
Then I made the mistake of going down the Reddit rabbit hole.

I started finding posts from people saying Zoho is terrible, the UI is outdated or clunky, different Zoho applications don’t work together as seamlessly as you would expect, support isn’t great, and certain products seem like they were developed and then stopped receiving much attention.

That made me pump the brakes pretty hard.
I asked our Zoho consultant specifically about the UI concerns and, as expected, they feel those concerns are overblown and that Zoho has improved considerably.

But at this point I’m having a hard time separating a good sales/demo experience from what it’s actually like to live in the software every day for the next five years.
Our CRM needs aren’t really traditional high-volume sales.

We are a specialized commercial construction contractor.

A typical process is something like:
Lead comes in → qualification → site inspection → inspection processing/deficiency report → project planning/estimating → proposal → revisions/follow-up → contract → handoff to project management/operations → project completion/closeout.

Projects can be anywhere from relatively small jobs to $500k–$1M+ construction projects, so we care more about managing the entire opportunity and customer relationship than blasting thousands of leads with automated emails.

We need good workflows, task management, project/account visibility, reporting, estimating information, document management, and clean handoffs between sales, estimating/planning, and operations.

So I’m really looking for feedback from people who have ACTUALLY used Zoho, preferably people who have used both Zoho and Salesforce.

A few questions:

Is Zoho really as capable as the consultants claim?
Are the complaints about the UI legitimate enough that users actually dislike working in it, or is it mostly people being picky about design?

Do the different Zoho applications actually work well together, or does the “one ecosystem” idea look better in a demo than it works in reality?

How difficult is Zoho to administer internally? One of our goals is to stop needing a consultant every time we want to make a relatively simple change.

For a company with only 3 CRM users today and maybe 5–10 eventually, is Salesforce simply overkill?
Has anyone left Salesforce for Zoho and regretted it? Or made the switch and been happy they did?

Would we be better off spending the money to simplify/rebuild our existing Salesforce environment instead of migrating?

We’ve even considered building our own CRM/workflow system because we haven’t found anything that feels like it fits our business perfectly, but I also understand the potential nightmare of maintaining custom software long term.

I’m open to other CRM recommendations as well.
I’m not necessarily looking for the cheapest solution. I’m looking for something we can set up correctly, our employees will actually enjoy using, we can manage internally, and we won’t be trying to replace again three years from now.

Would really appreciate feedback from business owners/admins/users who have actually lived with these systems, especially anyone who has used both Salesforce and Zoho.

What would you choose if you were in our position?

Hi there. I'm researching how companies build hyper-personalized in-house solutions using AI to get off of big SaaS platforms like monday or salesforce. I'm curious to know if anyone here has any experience with that.

• Was the migration tough?
• Has it been a lasting solution?
• Are you happy with your new solution?
• What was the most challenging parts of building the solution and migrating to it?
• Is there need for constant services and care after the migration? Mainenance, upgrading, etc. If yes, how often and in what size of effort?

Thanks in advance for your attention.

Hi everyone,

I’m trying to understand the best way to manage follow-up calls after a customer places a new order in an online store.

At this stage, I’m not looking for specific CRM or AI tool recommendations. I first want to understand the process.

For those already doing this, what are the steps you currently use from the moment a new order comes in?

For example:

• How do you decide which new orders need a follow-up call?
• When is the best time to make the first call?
• How do you prioritize which customers to contact first?
• What information should the person or AI handling the call have before contacting the customer?
• What should the goal of the first follow-up call be?
• How do you record the result of the call?
• When should another follow-up be scheduled?
• At what point should you stop following up?
• Which parts of this process are best automated with AI, and which parts should still be handled by a person?
• What is considered the best workflow today for an online store?

I’d especially like to hear from people who already have a good process in place. I’m interested in understanding the steps, logic, and best practices first, before deciding which tools to use.

This is a weekly post for you to let out about something which happened this week for you in CRM that mattered: features, client requests that were either great or awful this week, and just generally chat CRM / CRM consulting chatter.

No self promo, just a place to share tales from the front-line of CRM!