In today’s world, having a good relationship with the client is the basis for creating a strong, long-lasting business. Especially if it operates within the e-commerce sector. And in the fast-paced world where rapid changes often influence the business environment, making sure that the customer is on our side is important more than ever.

Curious about how e-commerce came to existence, I dig a little into the deep abyss of the Internet to find out the beginning of this so lucrative today's business sector. Surprisingly, one of the first things sold on the internet was a large pizza from Pizza Hut in 1994. There’s more to that so if you’re curious about the birth of e-commerce, you can follow this link.

But today, the business of online transactions is much more complicated. Even though making a purchase usually takes only one click, the entire process that leads to the customer’s shopping decision is based on an advanced system.

E-commerce and CRM

CRM (Customer Relationship Management) is an inseparable part of e-commerce. It helps in managing relationships with customers and in collecting all the data about them. Through the eCommerce CRM software, you can easily automate procedures, manage contacts, and use the tool as a pipeline manager. All that, and even more in one place.

It’s also a great source of information about your business. It allows you to see whether your business strategy is right as well as determine the strengths and weaknesses and answer such questions as how are your data management and communication systems working? Are the processes necessary in managing customer relationship going the right way?

However, all that isn’t enough, if you don’t know how to use CRM to grow sales of your online store.

5 Smart CRM Tricks for E-commerce

Today’s business world is very demanding. Everything changes rapidly and if you don’t follow these transformations, you will stay behind. But… knowing how to operate on the market and having the right strategies is what can help you stay on top.

Here’s what you can do to take your company to the next level in a smart way.

1. Implement CRM Software

One of the best and at the same time the smartest solutions for e-commerce is, obviously, implementing CRM software. If it’s not part of your e-commerce strategy, you shouldn’t linger around but get good software immediately.

CRM software can tremendously help in growing sales of your online store — it serves as a means of acquiring data about customers. But having that data does not solve all your problems and doesn’t answer any questions in itself. It’s about the way you use all the information and what you do with it.

If used in a smart way, the tool can work miracles.

First of all, CRM software automates the process of sales and incredibly enhances work. Many procedures become replaced by the program which very often eliminates most if not all tedious tasks.

But automation is not everything. One of the crucial aspects of e-commerce is creating and managing a sales pipeline and that’s what good CRM software can help you do. Proper pipeline management then helps to forecast sales, avoid mistakes, properly apply metrics, and easily review pipeline processes. According to Hubspot, “Companies that master pipeline management sees 28% higher revenue growth.”

The implementation of CRM software creates a unified system of managing customer data within your company. People can quickly and easily log all the statistics in there. It works as a reporting tool with always up-to-date facts.

Here are 5 of the best CRM software to automate and organize work of your online store:

1. Pipedrive
2. Salesforce
3. Zoho
4. Hubspot
5. eDrone

Having the right CRM software is a fantastic way to smartly outrun your competitors, get to know your customers and their needs.

2. Smarketing

Every store needs Marketing teams who would be responsible for promoting the business, and the e-commerce sector needs it more than others. But the trick is in making it smart.

CRM should serve everybody who is engaged in your online store because it can help people understand all the processes and gain a transparent view of the business. And that includes Marketing teams, not only the Sales team or people who are strictly responsible for managing the data about customers.

And so, a very clever tactic is to use smarketing. What’s smarketing? It’s engaging both Marketing and Sales teams into work to create a better marketing and sale strategy to gain more customers.

How are things looking like? What are customers’ profiles? Who shops at your store? The marketing team should know answers to these questions and have every information given straight up. It will not only improve the collaboration between the two teams but will be helpful in directing customers to more effective communication channels.

What’s more, in marketing everything happens now. All campaigns and activities are based on current information. And who has better access to the database if not the Sales team? Such cooperation is a must. When the information in the database change, so should the campaigns. It can also help expand marketing and reach out to more potential customers. There’s even more to that — it can be a source of an idea for a new product and it can help extend the offer of your online store.

That’s why it’s important (and smart) to use smarketing.

Sometimes, it may be hard to see the clear boundary between Marketing and Sales actions. Nevertheless, these two definitely should work together to grow sales of your online store. If you need, you can even merge the Marketing and Sales departments for even better results.

3. Retention

According to Invesp, it’s seven times more expensive to acquire a new customer than retain an existing one.

That’s why focusing on customer retention is a smart move. Loyal clients are those who bring the most revenue. They like your offer, are satisfied with the customer service, and want to come back to you. So what should you do to keep high customer retention?

Of course, the most important part of getting loyal clients is to provide them with professional customer experience. Attracting new customers is one thing but making sure the existing ones stick with you is another.

Your team should constantly evaluate the needs of customers, monitor their purchase history, and make conclusions based on such research.

A strong relationship with clients and knowing their needs are the best ways to keep or even increase retention. It also helps in attracting new customers. How? Happy customers who are satisfied with the product or service are more likely to recommend it to friends and family. That can create a chain reaction — customer one recommends your store to customer two, customer two recommends your store to customer three, and so it goes.

PRO TIP! Use live chat software to always stay close to your clients and keep them satisfied. Keep the conversations in support of history to always know what’s going wrong. It’ll help you prevent future problems and potential customer loss.

4. Outsmart your competition

Every business has competitors, so does e-commerce. But there’s a smart way to outsmart your rivals.

Personalized communication is key. With it, you will gain loyal customers. Because if your competitors reach out to your niche of clients, you will already have a strong customer database. It’s an astute way to outwit competitors and even win potential clients.

Remember, if your customer doesn’t choose you, he will choose your rival so make sure you keep the customer close and let him know he’s important.

PRO TIP! Use marketing automation tools — create targeted messages to customers, automate e-mail marketing and ad campaigns, create content, and many, many more.

5. Integrate

I mentioned the CRM software as one of the smart ways to help your online store grow sales. But it’s not the only tool that can help you.

There are thousands of apps out there that are made to enhance our work. Email marketing, customer support, accounting, document management, collaboration, team and workflow management, project management software are just a few of many that are available. And there are 3 types of integrations

• Native integrations — these are built into the CRM software
• 3rd-party integrations — created by independent companies
• Custom integrations — developed using APIs

If you integrate your CRM app with other tools, it will become a productivity and success powerhouse. Your team will avoid extra paperwork and will be able to fully automate most of the processes.

Use Zapier to automate your work even more. It’s one of the best apps for work automation. “Zapier is a web automation app. With Zapier you can build Zaps which can automate parts of your business or life. … Zapier supports hundreds of apps. You can mix and match triggers and actions to automate just about anything.”

Sounds great, right? Let’s look at how to smartly apply this solution to your online business on the example of integration between Pipedrive and Shopify via Zapier:

1. Improve workflow and transparency thanks to one shared place to store information about your clients/vendors:

• The team can easily check on the customers’ data
• Everybody can see the mailing history with your customers
• Everybody can put notes and share them with the rest
• Sync products between your store and CRM [there’s a zap for this Shopify <> Pipedrive]

Interestingly, this way of integrating relates to the first smart solution for e-commerce on the list — implementing CRM software. That’s because integrating other tools to your CRM system makes processes even easier and more agile.

2. Increase conversion by focusing on the abandoned cards:

• Abandoned cards display on the pipeline
• React to abandoned cards quickly to increase a chance to place an order by a customer
• Automate your work and send e-mails automatically when dragging and dropping a card to next stage [e.g. abandoned cart -> contacted]
• If you have a phone number, you can also call to check for the cancellation reason (e.g. learn that competitor has a better offer)

Now, this type of integration relates to the fourth point — outsmarting your competition. You can not only increase conversion but quickly make the customer choose you, not the competition. This brings us to point three — retention. If you take care of the customer who abandons cards, you are likely to gain a new loyal one. And increase retention as a consequence.

3. Handle canceled orders in a structured way:

• Once an order is canceled, information appears on your pipeline
• React quickly and send an automated email to your customer once the issue is moved to another stage and solved
• Identify customers most often canceling orders and be prepared to cancel in advance

How to Make It All Work?

Undoubtedly, it’s best if you use all these 5 elements together. They are very much interconnected and work best if applied en masse.

They say that if you care about your employees, they will take care of your customers. Don’t forget that the only way to achieve success and increase the sales of your online store is to be dedicated to your work and treating your employees as a second family.

As a customer, I am personally loyal to those online stores that care about my needs, are interested in my opinion, and quickly resolve conflicts (if there are any at all).

Thus, implementing CRM solutions is great but keep in mind that it also serves your customers and your employees.

Running an online store is a great thing, especially when it’s well-operating, bringing a steady amount of new visitors from your advertising activities or simply coming from Google organic traffic. But what if these visitors don’t turn into so many customers actually buying your products?

Even if you manage to capture new clients, there’s always some room for improving your conversion rate. According to Smart Insights, the average conversion rate for global e-commerce businesses in Q2 2018 was 2.86%. This means that on average, more than 97% of visitors at your store will not decide to buy your product. Quite a large crowd, isn’t it? So how to change this situation to your advantage and see your conversion rate growing with e-commerce analytics tools?

Data to collect with analytical tools

One of the most important things about optimizing your store for user experience and consequently, on conversion rate’s optimization is understanding how visitors behave at your e-commerce store:

• Which products do they visit most often?
• Which areas of pages do they like to click?
• When do they decide to quit your website?

All of this information can provide you with a pretty essential insight into your potential customer’s behavior and can be a valuable base for your website’s optimization.

But to gather the data, you firstly need a proper data-collecting software. And while you likely have Google Analytics already installed at your e-commerce store, you likely don’t take full advantage out of its data and features. Also, Google Analytics is not the only tool out there to help you optimize your store.

There are quite a few other e-commerce software solutions out there that can be easily installed at your store to bring you an additional set of essential data.

How to use the data in your decision-making?

But having all the data needed, how can it actually help you in growing your online business?

We can distinguish between 3 main areas of the website’s optimization:

• Top: Website’s structure -> the structure of linking/navigation of your website’s pages
• Middle: Pages’ structure -> the structure/design of particular pages in your store
• Bottom: Element structure -> the structure/design/color of particular elements within your page

So how can data derived from analytical tools help you in optimizing the top, middle, and bottom lines of your store?

Let’s say you use the analytical software to help you understand how users behave on your website.

Case 1. You see a visitor browsing through your store and you realize that the most often visited category within your navigation menu is shoes. This can signal you the information that it might be worth to put “shoes” as a featured category on your home page. At the same time with Google Analytics data, you realize that shoes are actually the category characterized by the lowest conversion rate. As a result, you might consider modifying your shoe category in an attempt to increase conversion rates, e.g. by offering an exit-intent discount using a tool like Sumo.

Case 2. When analyzing your customers’ flow within your online store, you might realize that when adding the products to the basket and proceeding to checkout, the customer decides to visit your “About Us” page, where he checks on more information about your company and team and then quits your website. This might be a signal to optimize your “About Us” page so that it includes reliable information about your team (e.g. your clients’ logos, the photo of your team), increasing the chances of your visitor coming back on the path to purchasing your product.

Case 3. When looking at the scroll data of your homepage, you realize that 90% of your visitors do not reach the final 25% of your website. As a result, they’re not able to see the option to subscribe to mailing discount updates. You might then consider re-designing your homepage to make sure you’re able to effectively capture your visitors’ email addresses.

The ways of using data to optimize your online store are endless, but first, it’s essential to collect the information required in the decision-making process. So below we look into a few most popular software solutions used by e-commerce businesses for analytics and conversion optimization.

3 best e-commerce analytics tools for collecting data at your online store

From a bunch of analytical tools, there are quite a few which are particularly popular and useful among e-commerce companies.

What’s important to look at when searching for an analytical tool for e-commerce business? There are a few things to consider:

• Does the tool integrate easily with the e-commerce platform you’re using?
• Can it monitor all stages and elements at your website (e.g. shopping cart, drop-down menus, JavaScript animations)?
• Does it provide you with an interface well-fitted to driving proper conclusions, e.g. the segmentation of users’ recordings/heatmaps?

You might also be interested in whether the software does not limit you from the proper data collection. E.g. after GDPR implementation in Europe, some analytical software has started to blank the input into the search and contact form queries. If you have a search form available at your website, this might turn out to be quite a significant limitation. You might be interested to use the software which would support you with an option to view search queries of your visitors.

1. Google Analytics e-commerce — an analytical basis for your online store

Google Analytics is the most popular analytical software. According to BuiltWith, 8.4% of the total websites available online are using Google Analytics, with 69.5% of the top 10k websites having Google Analytics installed on their website.

It’s likely you already have Google Analytics installed on your website, however, within Google Analytics, you’d be able to take advantage of the E-commerce Analytics module, delivering additional insight to you as the E-commerce business owner/manager.

What’s the difference between Google Analytics and Ecommerce Google Analytics?

The main distinctive element of E-commerce Analytics is its Customer Report option which can help you understand the behavior of particular customers at your store. This includes measuring metrics like:

• Products’ analytics -> which products are the most visited/purchased by your customers
• Conversion analytics -> which products/groups of products convert the best into paying customers
• Bounce rate changes -> this can help you experiment with product pages and observe the impact of any changes on bounce rate for your website
• Transactions -> the statistics for revenue, taxes, shipping fees for your transactions
• The time needed to realize the purchase
• Last order details
• Total money spent at the store
• Split between existing and new customers

Analyzing who are your actual customers and how they interact with your store can really help you in achieving the targeted growth. Did you know that Amazon generates 66% of its revenues from returning customers? This shows how important it is to target people who have already purchased something at your store.

There are quite a few ways you could use this data to your advantage and maximize ROI from the returning customers:

• Sending targeted emailing campaigns with the complementary products (e.g. purchased iPhone -> send the list of accessory products) using a mailing automation software
• Personalizing the pop-up message for the person returning to your online store, e.g. “Welcome back! We’re really happy to have you as our customer, so please grab a $10 discount from our team”
• Targeting people who haven’t been shopping at your store for a specific time frame with a tailored mailing campaign, e.g. “Hey, we haven’t seen you shopping for more than 3 months. Did you know we’ve recently introduced a -20% holiday season promotion for our branded t-shirts?”

Expert’s comment, Ronnie McKenzie, Storehacks

"Google Analytics — For a free tool it is an absolute powerhouse for data analytics. Having used it for years I am quite familiar with it, however, still find I haven’t even scratched the surface of its capabilities.
With enhanced e-commerce, you can delve deep into customer interactions with your products. If you LOVE data, you’ll love this. Aside from the information, you can gather from user behavior on your site there is another novel aspect…
Real Time viewing of what your customers are doing onsite. My favourite url handle… /checkout/thank_you

2. Hotjar— enrich your Google Analytics data by observing real visitors’ behavior

Google Analytics makes for a great base to analyze your e-commerce store and it’s more than a great data aggregator (or I’d say more sort of a data generator;) ). However, if you’re looking for a way to analyze the real user-experience at your online store, it won’t provide you with an essential insight into clicks, mouse movements, or most clickable areas of your online store.

With Hotjar, simply by installing a piece of code to your website, you get access to the following details about your online store:

• Heatmaps -> Areas most clicked at your store e.g. to learn which buttons/elements are the most engaging to your customers
• Recordings of visit sessions ->e.g. to learn reasons why visitors might quit your store
• Scrolling behavior -> the statistics about scrolling the web pages and the % of users reaching a particular level of the website

So having all of the above data, you’re well-equipped with the information needed for the decision making process. So how can you use it to get more customers at your online store?

• Analyze if customers actually click the buttons you want them to click -> try changing the design of the button, link and test if it impacts the customers’ clicks
• Analyze the % of scrolling the particular webpage -> try putting the relevant information higher if your visitors do not reach this point
• Analyze recordings of each customer’s session -> Monitor how customers interact with your store and e.g. how they react e.g. to exit-intent messages

Expert’s comment, Wiktor Sobolak, Growth Marketer, Divante.co:

While looking for the best heatmap solution for your business you should think of how it fulfills your actual needs. Beside heatmapping, you might want to consider if you really need recording, A/B testing or scroll depth. Before you proceed with any tool you should figure out do you need regular website analytics and test if a software you want to use can deal with advanced JavaScript animations or drop-down menu.
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3. CrazyEgg — analytical software with the built-in optimization tool

CrazyEgg is another analytical software solution, allowing for an in-depth analysis of your website/e-commerce store. It additionally provides you with in-depth analytics of clicks on your website, depending on the source of your visitor. What distinguishes CrazyEgg from other analytical tools like Hotjar is its built-in tool allowing for optimizing your website and testing different design variations.

With CrazyEgg, you get access to 3 major products:

• Snapshots -> with snapshots you’re able to identify the sources of your visits, how people are using your store or where they might get stuck
• Recordings -> recordings let you measure the exact behavior of your website’s visitors browsing through your website with the session replays
• Editor -> with CrazyEgg editor, you’ll be able to optimize particular elements of your website or do A/B testing without the need to engage an IT professional/designer

How can you use the above functionality to grow an online store?

• Optimize user experience for the visitors, depending on the visit source

So, having the information about your visitors’ behavior, depending on the source of the visit, you can add specific actions that influence your visitor, depending on the source they’re coming from. For example, let’s say you discover customers visiting your store after a Google search are less engaged and, never scroll down to enter the promotions section. You can set up a pop-up letting them know about the available deals, targeted solely at visitors coming from Google. Or, another way would be to set up an automated live chat message with the link to the directory.

• Identify the elements of your store customers want to click on and simply make them clickable

You might not even be aware that people click on specific parts of your store. Even more, they might think a particular element is a button, then discovering it’s not actually a clickable element. You can either take advantage of this discovery, making the element (e.g. an image) clickable or alternatively change its design so that it doesn’t distract the customer from his journey at your store.

• Test different design/layout and optimize for conversion

With CrazyEgg’s editor, you’d be able to test different versions of the website and check how the changes affect visitors’ behavior. However, to introduce A/B testing, you’d first need to make sure you have enough traffic on your website, which would increase the reliability of the implemented tests.

Expert’s comment, Vlad Calus, co-founder Planable.io:

Another good tool for optimizing your store’s performance is Visely. It’s supercharging your sales by giving you specific recommendations, based on the analytics in the back and people that are more open to buy the product. They’re doing an absolutely amazing job and you should definitely give them a try. I personally saw how sales were up with 10% just a month after installing it.
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As you can see, the analytical software installed at your store does not mean a straight path to success. A key is to properly use the data, drive the right conclusions, and test your store for optimization when possible. This, in connection with other e-commerce software solutions, should help you grow conversion at your store and drive more happy customers and 💰 your way.

Once you have your Pipedrive set up with your data imported into the system (data import) and your lead sources connected (CRM integrated with the website, mailing campaigns, customer service process) you’d now like to monitor how the leads progress through your sales process and how they respond to your campaigns.

Knowing how far you’re in the relationship with your prospects is essential to assess the chances of your sale’s success and to know which deals/prospects to focus on.

E.g. Let’s say you have 100+ deals in your pipeline but you only have 2–3 salespeople to handle the communication process. You’d rather have your team focus on the leads which have the highest probability to succeed (those that are the furthest in the sales process & show actual interest in your value proposition).

So how to do it properly in Pipedrive CRM with proper configuration & integration? Let’s take a look:

1. Configure sales process to actually reflect your relationships with customers.

A good first step to keep track of your leads’ activity is to properly set up the stages of your relationship with customers (pipeline stages). These should actually reflect the stages of your sales process.
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Once you have it properly set up, it’s much easier to prioritize your tasks and sales process. Simply focus on the deals that are furthest in the pipeline (the closest to the right-hand side in the pipeline). Also, start any summary meeting and discussion with your sales team from the deals which are closest to the right-hand side.

2. Set up probabilities for sales stages to forecast sales for upcoming months/quarters.

Once you have your sales pipeline configured, it’s worth spending some time assessing what’s the probability of each lead passing through a specific stage of your sales pipeline. This will provide you with the actual sales forecast, letting you plan your sales ahead of time.
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Inputting probabilities at the very beginning of using a CRM will be difficult as you don’t really know what’s the chance of progressing the deal to the next stage. Once you have some data to analyze (actual sales data) it will become much easier. You will then simply enter actual conversion data or Pipedrive (unfortunately, Pipedrive will not recalculate it automatically for you).

Tip! Pipedrive will also allow you to override overall stages’ probability with individual deals’ probabilities if you feel a certain deal is more likely to progress to the next stage of the sales process.

3. Implement a “no red circle” policy and set up “rotting days”.

After you have your sales process defined and sales forecast implemented, you can now focus on progressing the deals to the next stages and on monitoring your or your salespeople's activities and interactions with potential customers.

A good first step to make sure you’re able to effectively monitor activities for deals in your sales pipeline is introducing a so-called “no-red-circle” policy which means that none of the deals in the pipeline can have an exclamation mark (meaning no activity planned) or a red circle mark (meaning an activity with overdue date).
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This means all of your salespeople will need to actually report the activities they perform with leads in the CRM system. If any of the deals in the pipeline turns into a “red-circle” one, you can then set up a notification in Slack to notify your team about the need to execute or re-schedule the activity.

Also, if you’re in the industry with quick and intensive sales process (like retail), it’s good to set up a “deal rotting” making sure your deals cannot lag in your pipeline without any activity made for more than X days. Otherwise, they should be marked as lost.
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4. Integrate with lead activity software.

With the “no red-circle” policy in place, you can now monitor the activities/interactions of your team with prospects/potential customers. But how to make sure you then know what happens on the customer’s side? You can’t spy on them whenever they turn on the computer but there are some techniques you can use to know when customers are browsing through your offer, e-mail, or website.

Integrate with proposal software

If you integrate your Pipedrive with proposal software, like PandaDoc, you will then be able to know what happens once you send the proposal to the customer. This includes the number of times they open your proposal or the most often viewed parts of your offer. Also, you can set up an instant Slack notification every time a customer opens your proposal and have your team call your prospect exactly when they scroll through your offering.
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Integrate with a lead scoring system

As Pipedrive does not have a built-in lead scoring system at the moment, you’d need to integrate it with a proper lead scoring solution like Salespanel to score leads based on multiple data collected in your CRM. The lead scoring solution will collect overall information about your leads’ activity, presenting you with a unified score reflecting your chance to close the sale with the customer.
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Integrate with your website

After you send a proposal, it’s very likely that your prospect will be visiting your website checking on your value proposition, reviews, and many others. It’s good to know when somebody decides to visit your website after your email. By integrating with tech solutions like Leadworx or Outfunnel, you will easily check on the website visits of your potential customer.
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5. Track your sales and marketing email opens and clicks.

Mailing remains one of the most important channels to communicate with your prospects. Hence, it’s important to know if your communication catches the eye of a potential customer.

Integrate with your newsletter campaigns

It’s essential to know if somebody opens your newsletters and it’s great to have this kind of information in your central CRM system (e.g. to catch the customer on the follow-up call). If you’re using MailChimp for emailing campaigns, you will easily stay up to date with your prospects opening or clicking on them, e.g. using an Outfunnel integration.
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Integrate with your outbound campaigns

If you use outbound to reach out to potential prospects, you can also use a proper integration to know about your prospects opening on clicking on your outbound campaigns. Set up an integration with your CRM system and have your team react to any replies, clicks, or opens of your campaigns (you can use Slack notification as additional notification support).
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Make use of built-in Pipedrive’s mail tracking features

Pipedrive will allow you to monitor clicks and opens for every email you send from Pipedrive CRM. Make use of this feature and monitor the status of your emails without the need to leave your CRM system. You can do it by marking a click and open icon whenever you send an email and by using a sales assistant every day you use your Pipedrive CRM.

Monitor your leads’ activity and stay active in your sales process

Having the data about your leads and their activity in one central place will allow you to make data-driven decisions in your sales process. It will also help you focus on the leads in your pipeline which actually have a chance of closing instead of reaching out to each and every lead not interested in what you’re offering.

Integrating with all the lead activity happening in your business will also let you analyze the activity data and optimize your sales processes. However, we will look into data analytics in the next part of our guide.

For now, use the right tech setup and integration to your advantage and to improve your team’s sales efficiency.

We were very happy with Zapier and Pipedrive integrations SoftwareSupp implemented for us, it was a rather complex project that required parsing email data and they did a great job making it work.

‍Lauren, Director of Marketing at Diesel Sales

Time of the project: 1 month

Scope:

• CRM custom fields setup
• Multi-website integration
• Email parsing
• CRM integration

Effect: 1h a day saved on manual data copy

Company’s biggest challenges

Diesel Sales is an automotive company that focuses its sales efforts on utilizing several external portals for lead generation. Once the lead is interested in buying an automotive part, they fill out the questionnaire on one of the landing pages leaving their contact information. Then, using the Intermedia Distribution List, it is distributed to a given employee that is taking over further conversations.

There were so many offers coming from several different landing pages that it wasn’t possible to directly integrate them with Pipedrive or add Pipedrive web form to them. That’s why the CRM used to be filled manually. It was problematic for the employees and consumed too much time. In addition to that, the customer’s requirement was that the emails needed to be clearly and graphically visible in Pipedrive along with all the data.

Once Diesel Sales reached out to SoftwareSupp, we got to work right away. We estimated the project scope in 1 hour, started it in 24 hours. Every ticket or request during the whole cooperation was taken care of in 1 hour.‍

But let’s get into the details

We were ready to cooperate in our usual way. Right away we created an Asana board that was integrated with the ticketing system and dedicated Slack channel. All these channels were shared with the customer so the information was smoothly and instantaneously distributed. By taking care of this high-level project management SoftwareSupp was able to maintain its open and clear communication policy.

Information flow needs to be as simple as possible, and the customer needs to have access to all the steps we’re taking towards success. This is our mantra.

After testing a few options, we came up with a solution:

First, we took advantage of Email by Zapier and added it to the existing Intermedia distribution list. Now, included in the list, Zapier also receives emails of finished questionnaires. Next, Zapier saves received emails in HTML format. Finally, Zapier collects all the form data and passes it to Pipedrive along with the HTML version of the email. Thanks to this, it’s possible to view everything in a visually-friendly manner within Pipedrive. Our solution also made it possible to automatically generate deals using customer’s data and information from the form.

Final results

This solution was exactly what the customer wanted based on their business goals and needs discussed at the beginning of our cooperation. They saved at least 2 hours of daily manual work and automated a big part of their duties being able to spend this time on getting new customers.

We took the lead on providing excellent support to smoothly take Diesel Sales through their implementation using both our perfect CRM and 3rd party tools knowledge. Our 40h support package allowed Diesel Sales to automate crucial parts of their sales efforts and most importantly save time and money.

After running hundreds of projects, we’ve noticed that there are a few main challenges for companies working with freelancers, consultants and agencies supporting them with development and other services:

• Recruitment and execution — recruitment takes a lot of time and resources and execution of the professional hired directly cannot be guaranteed, with SoftwareSupp, you hire in 24h and make sure you always get continuous service
• Communication, project owning, settlement — When hiring directly, settlement rules are often not clear up front. Working with freelancer or agency there is often a mismatch of communication, due to different time zones and differences in availability, often there is no actual decision-maker owning the project and aligning technical implementation with business expectations. SoftwareSupp provides a simple and straightforward way of billing and acts as a party coordinating the service and hiring process
• Technical setup’s quality — in every project, the technical delivery part is crucial and companies are not able to ensure proper quality of delivered implementations if they hire directly, SoftwareSupp ensures quality through recruitment process and delivers high quality service

Let me show you how we address these problems at SoftwareSupp by managing the network of certified freelancers and what kind of guidelines we follow when working with customers, by:

• Delivering the right expert and launching the project in less than 24h, saving time and resources on recruitment and project organization
• Guiding the customer through the details of the project and liaising between the customer and developers/experts
• Ensuring quality by NPS monitoring, escrow mechanism, dedicated platform, task system

Customer service guidelines at SoftwareSupp

Important! SoftwareSupp is an elite network of freelance professionals and we always deliver highest quality work and services to customers, aligning to customer's demands and expectations. Experts need to organize their time and engagement (either full time, part time or hourly) to meet the standards required by SoftwareSupp's customers and are required to deliver actual relevant work for the customers. Certified SoftwareSupp Freelancers need to represent highest standards both in terms of communication and skills and shall properly represent SoftwareSupp.

‍Work and updates
We work in weekly sprints, meaning:

• Tasks planned and executed for every week
• Weekly summary calls with the customer if requested by the customer (at customer's preferred time/convenience) and/or email summary
• Weekly summary reported in SoftwareSupp system with hourly measurement

Key work is planned and reported through a dedicated platform available for experts and customers for free.

Reporting and communication

‍Key communication like milestones updates and additional work need to be reported through SoftwareSupp project board.

Regular communication is conducted through a preferred customer's communication channel.

For email communication, SoftwareSupp delivers a dedicated mailbox under domain expert.softwaresupp.com for every member of the network.

All the tasks that are in progress or are completed need to have a number of hours spent reported.

All the tasks that are on the to do list, need to have an estimated number of hours to complete, indicated.

The above are required for a proper settlement, remuneration process as well as to ensure top quality service for our customers.

Query replies
We provide 1h response time to the customer. For every query handled we deliver:
a) an answer to the customer question (the real and actual one, once we don’t know something and need to check on this, we say this, if we require more time to work on the job/problem, we communicate it transparently)
b) estimated time to complete the job, delivery time
(in hours or a deadline when it can be delivered, preferably by reporting in SoftwareSupp project system)

Every query (if it requires action on the developer/expert side) should be followed by:
a) Actual action/activity taken by the expert/developer, work delivered
b) A task created in the system (this can also be done in weekly summaries)

If we don’t know the answer:
a) if it can be checked quickly (e.g. by asking our community/partners) we 1. Inform the customer that we’re checking on this, 2. check with other experts/developers. An internal SoftwareSupp team or a community of expert can then come back with the answer to the question and support a developer/expert in solving the issue)
b) if it requires research (e.g. dev issue) we 1. Inform the customer that we’re checking on this and that it might take a while and 2. check on this by running research.

Password submission
Any access to the software should be collected by using one of the below process:
a) Adding your email under domain expert.softwaresupp.com account as admin, or:
b) Adding support@softwaresupp.com account as an admin, or
c) Submitting access through a secured form

Dev work/release
Any dev work is performed according to the following process:
a) The solution is always first implemented on the freelancer's or company’s staging environment
b) The solution is tested for proper setup/implementation
c) The solution is released on the production or is simply duplicated for the company’s production in the same way it was implemented on staging

Meeting (or remote sessions) guidelines:

• Customer can book a meeting with an expert/developer at their convenience using a SoftwareSupp meeting system available to customers and freelancers
• An expert/developer needs to attend the meeting with the customer
• If the expert/developer person due to unusual circumstances is not able to attend the meeting, he must send the message to the customer that he/she is not able to attend and propose an alternative time to meet (reschedule)
• Every meeting should be followed by a 3-point summary sent to the customer. Any additional tasks following the meeting should be submitted through the task system (this can also be done during weekly reporting)

Hourly tracking at SoftwareSupp:

For projects with hourly tracking, we do hourly tracking for every completed job and item, reporting the time spent in the dedicated project board.

Quality monitoring guidelines:

A customer is sent a weekly questionnaire checking on the customer’s NPS score (how likely he/she is to recommend our services to a friend).

Link to the form is available in the dedicated project board.

Payment guidelines:‍

Payments for services are made based on reported hourly time and freelancer's hourly rate every 2 weeks to the freelancer's safe balance account.

To receive payment for your services to your bank account, please send the payout request to payments@softwaresupp.com, together with the bank details and/or invoice.

The payments to the bank accounts are made in 24h time.

Processes guidelines at SoftwareSupp

1. Expert lead acquisition

SoftwareSupp experts can participate in lead acquisition process.

By participating in lead acquisition process expert can earn:
- 25% of the customer's lifetime value if the lead is passed to the pool of other certified freelancers (e.g. no work capacity)
- priority in handling the customer as an expert

This process involves:
1. Introduction of SoftwareSupp network (SoftwareSupp’s values, mission and the kind of benefits SoftwareSupp customers get once they become the customer including network access, platform, etc.)
2. Presentation of the SoftwareSupp offer, pricing.
3. Planning and project drafting
‍
The sales process involves 30-60 minute meeting showcasing how SoftwareSupp works and presenting the next steps in the process.

SoftwareSupp provides customers to be serviced through SoftwareSupp platform.

The minimum hourly rate is $50/h and the customer will always get the person with the right tech/software stack within this rate from EU / Asia, ready to start work in 24h time. In case the customer requires a US-located or Western Europe located person, the minimum hourly rate might rise to $100/h.

The minimum hourly rate is non-negotiable.

Every lead needs to receive a summary with planned work through SoftwareSupp Project system (expert creates an account for the customer if this hasn't been created by the customer and builds the project in the system), this acts as tracking for commission and remuneration purposes.
‍
Once the hourly plan is launched, a customer instantly opens the communication with a certified freelancer, having access to the project board allowing to submit any tasks or items for realization.
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Once a customer has an hourly plan active, they might decide to realize a larger project or regular engagement, get an offer and estimate for their project. For this a similar process applies (planning work through project system).

Expert should notify SoftwareSupp about every lead's outcome, both in case of success or loss.

SoftwareSupp notifies expert about the outcome shall it arises on the SoftwareSupp's side.

Important! Experts can earn by acquiring and processing SoftwareSupp leads but can also refer SoftwareSupp externally, earning 25% lifetime commission.

2. Expert matching

The information about the project is shared with the available pool of certified experts based on experience and skills in selected technology. Typical information indicated in the project include:

• Job information/tasks
• Budget (this is typically an initial budget for the work with most of the contracts set as hourly engagement)
• Any other information on the job required

Experts can sign up for the the project providing most important information about their offer, including:

• Remuneration for the service (you always get a full price indicated in your quote) - still most of the SoftwareSupp projects are hourly-based
• Scope of the service
• Any additional information like the project's schedule

Important aspects of sending your offer at SoftwareSupp:

• The offer you send to the customer is valid and represents the final quote or hourly rate (you always get the full price quoted)
• Please do not provide your direct contact information or pricing issues in the additional information field (direct contact is provided to the customer by SoftwareSupp on signing the contract with the customer)
• If you're not able to provide exact price for the work/project, please provide the estimated price based on the provided scope or for hourly projects your remuneration for the indicated hourly work

The expert is then selected by the customer or suggested by SoftwareSupp team based on:

• Matching the customer's needs
• The availability and budget
• The speed of response

The ultimate decision on the expert's selection/choice is always made by the customer.

Important! Contracting SoftwareSupp customers/projects outside SoftwareSupp and discussing the expert's remuneration issues between expert and SoftwareSupp without SoftwareSupp engagement/approval is forbidden and can result in immediate termination of co-operation between SoftwareSupp and the expert.

3. Project launch

After the customer's decision and start of the project, a customer and expert receive a welcome email that contains:

• A welcome message with more information on the service
• Introduction to the dedicated expert/freelancer at SoftwareSupp
• Information on the next steps in the project (tasks shall be planned through SoftwareSupp project system)

4. Platform onboarding and collecting information

Once the customer is onboarded to the project, he/she is requested to share access to software tools through a secured password submission form. Together with the password, the customer should also be requested to deliver information about the company’s stakeholders (email addresses, phone numbers).

5. Expert onboarding

An expert/freelancer is onboarded to the project, following the below process:

1. Providing access to the SoftwareSupp application/marketplace.
2. Presenting with the customer service guidelines we follow here at SoftwareSupp.
3. Introducing the expert to the customer and planning the execution in SoftwareSupp project system.

If you’d like to integrate your SendGrid mailing campaigns with Pipedrive, there are 2 ways to do this:

• Zapier integration
• API integration

Let’s look into the ways Zapier could be integrated with SendGrid:

• Zapier integration

Within Zapier, SendGrid offers one action which is sending an email. That means that you will be able to send emails automatically from SendGrid once an action is performed in Pipedrive. How to trigger an email sent to your customers in Pipedrive?

1. Set up a custom field (single choice) field “Add to SendGrid campaign” for a contact.

2. Create a Zapier connection between Pipedrive and SendGrid to send email automatically once the custom field changes in Pipedrive.

3. Test and launch the integration.

Still, you can select other actions to trigger the action in SendGrid (like a deal progressing to the next stage or an update in your company’s details.

• API integration

Alternatively, you can use a Pipedrive & SendGrid API to create a more robust custom integration.