So many CRMs list Google Calendar as a supported integration. But “integrates with Google Calendar” can actually mean very different things in practice.

For some tools, it means that events added to Google Calendar show up in the CRM. For others, it means that changes sync in both directions. And the difference between these only really surfaces the first time a rep moves a meeting in one of the apps, and the update doesn’t happen in the other app. It still shows the old meeting time.

Teams often evaluate the integration by whether it connects at all, rather than how the tools communicate changes between each other. But connecting is the easy part. The rest is where the real test is.

Consider, for instance, if a meeting is rescheduled, an invitation is declined, someone cancels at the last minute, or a rep edits the meeting details from their phone instead of at their desk. The test then is whether the other system finds out quickly and whether it attaches the change to the correct contact record.

What tends to happen when it doesn't is that reps start losing trust in one of the two tools. Typically, they’ll continue to check the calendar for the real schedule and treat the CRM as something they update later, if at all. When that habit sets in, the data in the CRM falls behind, and nobody can say exactly when it all began to fall apart.

So, if you're evaluating CRMs for a team on Google Workspace, what's the one thing you'd test before you call the Calendar integration good enough? And has anyone been burned by one that looked fine in the demo?

So many CRMs list Google Calendar as a supported integration. But “integrates with Google Calendar” can actually mean very different things in practice.

For some tools, it means that events added to Google Calendar show up in the CRM. For others, it means that changes sync in both directions. And the difference between these only really surfaces the first time a rep moves a meeting in one of the apps, and the update doesn’t happen in the other app. It still shows the old meeting time.

Teams often evaluate the integration by whether it connects at all, rather than how the tools communicate changes between each other. But connecting is the easy part. The rest is where the real test is.

Consider, for instance, if a meeting is rescheduled, an invitation is declined, someone cancels at the last minute, or a rep edits the meeting details from their phone instead of at their desk. The test then is whether the other system finds out quickly and whether it attaches the change to the correct contact record.

What tends to happen when it doesn't is that reps start losing trust in one of the two tools. Typically, they’ll continue to check the calendar for the real schedule and treat the CRM as something they update later, if at all. When that habit sets in, the data in the CRM falls behind, and nobody can say exactly when it all began to fall apart.

So, if you're evaluating CRMs for a team on Google Workspace, what's the one thing you'd test before you call the Calendar integration good enough? And has anyone been burned by one that looked fine in the demo?