Call routing is the function that sorts calls based on caller input, placing them in different call queues with the intent of connecting them to the right agent for their particular concerns. You’re witnessing call routing in action wherever you hear, for instance, “press one for customer service.” 

In a nutshell, call routing is the process of parsing incoming calls, sorting them based on intent, need, and circumstance, and then placing them in the appropriate queue to hold for an available agent.

Read more: What is a Call Queue?

What is VoIP call routing?

VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) call routing is a process that directs incoming phone calls through a virtual phone system, allowing businesses to manage and distribute calls more efficiently. Instead of simply sending all calls to a single phone or department, VoIP call routing sorts calls based on predefined criteria, such as the caller’s input, time of day, or the caller’s geographic location. For example, when a customer calls and hears options like “press 1 for sales” or “press 2 for support,” that is call routing in action. It ensures the call reaches the correct agent or department, reducing wait times and enhancing the caller’s experience.

This process is highly customizable, enabling businesses to configure routing rules based on their specific needs. Advanced VoIP systems can integrate with Interactive Voice Response (IVR) tools, allowing even more dynamic interactions, such as gathering verbal inputs from callers or handling simple tasks like order placement or identity verification. This level of automation not only streamlines operations but also improves customer satisfaction by minimizing misdirected calls and providing a more responsive support system.

How does VoIP call routing work?

Ok, the way this question is phrased is a bit ambiguous, which means we can supply a few different answers depending on what you meant.

How are calls sorted?

You’ll define the sorting parameters yourself as part of the setup process. That said, there are some pretty universal buckets that are used for call queues:

• The department the caller needs to speak to (finance, sales, technical support, etc.).
• Time zones/time of day/location (calls are often distributed based on which open call center is closest).
• Language (if you happen to serve more than one linguistic demographic).
• Market segmentation (separate queues for different business relationships, like patients/doctors, insured/insurer, buying from/selling to, etc.).
• Skill/authority (some calls need more in-depth support).

Sorting calls based on these kinds of characteristics is known as attribute-based routing. Which segmentation rules you end up using will be up to you, and there will likely be some common ones you don’t need (or uncommon ones that are a must for you). 

Read more: DialPad vs. RingCentral: Which is best?

How is this achieved?

By software wizardry, mostly. These days, a large contingent of businesses use VoIP (voice over internet protocol) for their telephone services, meaning calls are routed through a computer system. This allows for some impressive application-based gymnastics if you have it set up properly. 

As for how the system administers the parsing of calls, that’s a factor in whether your system relies on an auto attendant or an IVR (interactive voice response) for prompting and collecting input from callers. The former is more rigid and less capable. Auto attendants usually can only accept numerical inputs from keypad presses the caller makes in response to questions. It then uses these inputs to sort callers into the predetermined buckets.

IVR, on the other hand, can do quite a bit more; callers can state their issue verbally (with varying degrees of effectiveness), and the IVR can handle a number of simple tasks like taking payments, verifying identity, accepting orders, etc. With these more dynamic systems, more information can be gathered from the caller before the call is answered, making it easier to route it to the appropriate queue. 

Read more: VoIP vs. Landline: The Pros & Cons for Business

What does this look like for customers calling in?

From the customer’s perspective, this process is as follows:

1. Call connects and enters the VoIP system, and is greeted by the auto attendant/IVR.
2. Initial information is shared with the caller, and initial inputs are requested.
3. Caller self-identifies as a top-level category, usually tied to particular departments or business relationships. 
4. Additional subordinate sorting is applied if necessary, or automated self-help features are offered to potentially sidestep the need to route to a live agent.
5. Caller lands in the destination queue, perhaps after hearing a prompt to opt for the callback option.
6. The call is answered by a live agent, and things progress from there. 

Read more: Vonage vs RingCentral

Benefits and challenges of VoIP call routing

The biggest benefits of using VoIP to route calls to different queues are pretty self-evident. No business wants finance staff spending half their day answering calls that should be picked up by the support staff, and proper call routing minimizes that. 

With separate queues and separate staff answering each one, hold times tend to be a lot shorter. Callers get their answers faster. And workflow strain is dramatically reduced. 

That’s not to say the system is foolproof, though.

From the business’s perspective, impatient or inattentive callers may still end up in the wrong queues, slowing things down. Callers may attempt to intentionally sidestep the routing process by hitting the button that requests an operator. Callback options may go largely ignored by callers. And there’s always room for human error when it comes to caller inputs.

On the caller’s side, the call routing may feel needlessly complex or confusing. IVR systems may not make it clear what kind of input the caller should be providing. Lengthy messages or recursive menus intended to divert callers away from live agents may be frustrating and unhelpful roadblocks, especially for callers who know they need to speak to a human being to have their problem addressed. And callback options may inspire painfully little confidence that the callback will actually ever come. 

Best practices for VoIP call routing

While every system is different—and every business is different—we can recommend a few guidelines that should help maximize the benefits you reap from VoIP call routing.

Curate criteria for qualifying and distribution

You will have a better idea of what sorting system will be the most effective or helpful for your organization, so don’t just model your system after one used at a different company. Pick the buckets you use yourself, and don’t be afraid to make adjustments over time. 

Leverage data and analytics

If you’re already using a VoIP system, you’re likely already collecting a large amount of call data, and that can inform your decisions regarding routing attributes. If a large segment of calls are coming in about the same topic, need, or concern, that’s something you can account for. Add an explanation to the recorded greeting. Provide instructions, or dedicate a whole bucket to that one thing. You might even be able to add it as a function the IVR can handle, depending on what it is. Don’t let that data go to waste.

Read more: Nextiva vs RingCentral

Aim for simplicity

As mentioned above, customers want a less frustrating experience, rather than a more frustrating one, when they call into your business. However, a poorly implemented routing framework can feel very much like a step backward in customer experience. Put simply, the hold time isn’t the only metric worth tracking here. Callers may be expecting to wait in line for an open agent. 

What they don’t have a lot of patience for is when they feel like the “phone robots” are unnecessarily slowing them down. And heaven help you if they have to call in multiple times, only to wade through the tarpit that is a hedge-maze of an IVR routing tree. 

Revisit as needed

Again, you’re running this through a VoIP service, which means it’s all going through apps run on computers. That means you’re collecting data, and making changes is a lot easier than in decades past. So take a look at the trends you spot in the analytics, and make adjustments on a regular basis. It’s a nominal time investment for you, but will likely result in dramatic improvements for both your team’s effectiveness and the customers’ experience. 

Choosing a VoIP provider

When you’re scouting out a VoIP provider, especially with call routing in mind, you’ll want to be aware of at least three things. 

Your available tech expertise

This is true for just about every business software vertical, but there’s a sliding scale of capability and accessibility (in regards to low technical skill). A team with plenty of programming and/or IT skills to throw around will probably benefit from a tool that has a less rigid and templatized platform. It gives them the flexibility to build the plugins, integrations, custom functions, etc. they might need.

On the flip side, if you don’t have a lot of technical know-how to spare, you may be better served by the aforementioned drag-and-drop style interfaces. These tools may offer less freedom if you want to get under the hood. But if that’s outside your skill set, that might not be as big a priority as being able to assemble things yourself. 

Your customization requirements

Even with expertise set aside, some teams will have some very non-standard constraints, and not every provider is equipped to meet those needs. Some solutions will be aimed at a generalized market, while others will specialize in a narrower industry niche. And, in a few cases, you may get more mileage from retrofitting a general tool than with any of the ones ostensibly built with your use case in mind. 

Your existing tech stack

As ever, you’ll have to contend with the question as old as the internet: “Does it play well with my other toys?”

Integration, interoperability, and compatibility are all major concerns whenever your workflow depends on consistent and accurate exchange of information. Case in point: a lot of VoIP platforms and CRM platforms are designed to link up so that you can directly tie customer calls to customer accounts/profiles. Just don’t assume that the VoIP you’re looking at is capable of interfacing with your existing CRM by default. It’s a costly mistake, and double-checking costs you nothing. 

Frequently asked questions (FAQ)

The post What is Call Routing? appeared first on TechnologyAdvice.

You’re probably looking for a quick and dirty answer, at least to get you started. So let’s cut to the chase and give you the “and at this point, I’m afraid to ask” definition.

• VoIP: Voice over internet protocol, i.e., internet-based phone services.
• Queue: A line or waiting list, ordered by arrival.
• VoIP call queue: When a caller dials your business’s VoIP phone line and gets put on hold, they’re added to the existing list at the bottom, with any additional callers that come in being added after them.

Basically, a VoIP call queue is the business telecom equivalent of arriving at a packed restaurant or taking a number at the DMV. Any time a caller hears the phrase “your call will be answered in the order it was received,” they’ve landed in the call queue.

What is a call queue?

A queue is a list, a line, or an order of operations. It’s a hierarchy based entirely on the order in which the items in the list will be dealt with. Virtually without exception, this order is strictly first in, first out—or FIFO—as our friends working in logistics and accounting would call it. The earlier something is added to the list, the sooner it’s addressed in the queue. New entries are always added to the bottom.

So, applied to an organization’s phone system, a call queue is the waiting list of callers who are on hold, pending an agent picking up the line. Make sense? Great; time to dig a little deeper.

Terms to know

For the sake of thoroughness, let’s go over a few relevant and adjacent terms and concepts, so you have a broader foundation of familiarity with all of this stuff.

• Call handling: This refers to the entire kit-and-kaboodle of, well, handling calls. Every portion of the customer experience, from when they hit the call button to when they hang up, as well as all of the systems, policies, tools, and efforts that happen on the business end when answering these calls.
• Call routing: Call queues are usually closely related to call routing, or the practice of sorting callers before handing them to a live agent, so they (hopefully) reach the right department to address their concern on the first try. Any time you hear “Press 1 for customer support,” this is what’s happening.
• Interactive voice response (IVR): While a standard virtual receptionist can only take a few predetermined inputs from callers when routing them, IVR can perform some more complex tasks, such as taking payments, providing account updates, accepting orders, and more. It can also route calls based on spoken inputs from the caller, not just keypad entries.

Read more: What Is Interactive Voice Response (IVR)?

A call by any other name

It’s also worth noting that there’s been a shift in the past decade from calls—call centers, call queues, call routing, call handling, etc.—to tasks—contact center, task queues, task routing, etc.

Defining everything by real-time voice-only communication made sense when phone calls were the primary (or even sole) form of interacting with a business aside from walking through the door. These days, however, businesses interact with customers across a variety of platforms, channels, mediums, and the like. 

While all of these methods of communication can, technically, still be siloed from each other, that’s not a very sound strategy. Arbitrarily distinguishing between these only adds needless complexity to workflows. That’s especially true when the same agents that answer the phones also respond to chat messages, social posts, emails, and any other avenue a customer might use to get a hold of someone at your company. 

How does a call queue work?

Here’s a quick example of what the call queue might look like to a customer: 

1. The customer calls your business and is greeted by the virtual receptionist or IVR.
2. In the absence of any call routing, callers will be added to the queue once the recorded greeting has been played.
3. Calls will wait in the queue until those ahead of them have been answered and an agent is finally available to answer the one next in line.
4. The live agent addresses the caller’s concerns, transferring and/or escalating the call as necessary. 
5. The call ends, and everyone goes their separate ways (well, the caller does; everyone else stays at their desks for now).

You’ve likely experienced this from that side for one reason or another. For agents and team members on the business’s side, the process looks a bit different:

1. The call enters the VoIP system, and the software begins tracking them.
2. VoIP software administers any input prompts or call routing as determined previously during system setup.
3. The software logs caller inputs, routes them as appropriate, and adds them to the relevant queues.
4. Team members assigned to certain queues will see new callers appended to the bottom of their lists, awaiting an available agent.
5. Once an agent answers the call, the software timestamps the interaction, recording how long the caller was on hold and beginning the timer for the next leg of the call.
6. Software automatically logs info (varying by software/provider), and agents input info manually as necessary.
7. Calls are transferred and/or escalated as needed, adding them to queues elsewhere.
8. The call is finally concluded, with the system marking the call duration and the agent in question recording any remaining pertinent details (such as if the issue was resolved). 

Best practices and strategies for call queuing

There are a number of tactics that will likely help you make the most of your call queues, not to mention improve customer experiences. Here are just a few.

You’ve got to start somewhere

If you haven’t already, you’ll want to make a recorded greeting of some kind. Even if you’re not using IVR, you can’t very well have callers be dumped into the queue without a word of explanation or guidance. 

Read more: 35 Best Business Voicemail Greetings

Where are you routing to?

Have separate lines for each type of caller unless you’re a smaller organization that doesn’t need to filter calls and preemptively direct them to the right team member. You’ll need to segment your agents the same way you segment your callers.

Unless you’re a smaller organization, have separate lines for each type of caller, or otherwise don’t have any need to filter calls and preemptively direct them to the right team member, you’ll need to segment your agents the same way you segment your callers.

The criteria you use to group agents will depend on your specific use case. But common ways routing queues can be separated include:

• Departments: Sales, accounting, technical support, etc.
• Skill, seniority, or authorization privileges: Reserve your experts and managers for problems that only they can fix.
• Languages: It’s easier to solve problems when both parties can understand each other.
• Time zones: This ensures calls are routed to agents who are working during customers’ local time.

Automate wherever possible

You have two primary goals when it comes to call handling: meeting the needs of callers and reducing the burdens on your staff. Automation will aid in the latter and often lead to the former as a natural byproduct. 

Automation can take a lot of different forms in this context—the VoIP system recording call transcripts on its own, IVR streamlining call routing and handling simple tasks for you, workflow automation, and automated texts/emails/replies. But the point here is that anywhere direct human intervention isn’t needed stands to benefit from implementing automation in the process. 

The simpler, the better

If you’ve ever had to call a company that’s made you wade through a labyrinth of inputs, questions, routing options, and more, then you know how irritating it can be when a company’s attempts at automation only make it more difficult to reach a solution. 

Call length tends to be a core KPI for most teams that work the phones. But how long it takes a caller to reach the queue is nearly as important as how long they’re on hold and how long it takes an agent to resolve their concerns. 

As customers become more familiar with these systems and more savvy at addressing the concerns they can solve on their own, it will become all the more important to help those callers reach the correct queue faster. Odds are, if their concern was simple enough for, say, the IVR to handle, they wouldn’t be calling in the first place, let alone mashing 0.

Leverage callbacks

No one really likes holding their phone up and waiting for half an hour or more just to reach a live agent. It’s annoying, it’s disruptive, it’s boring, and unless they can go hands-free, it’s physically uncomfortable. 

Callback queues are an alternative that’s been rising in popularity. And while it’s not perfect (not knowing when the call is coming in, thinking the call is spam, callers assuming you’re not going to call back), it can provide a more positive customer experience for those willing to opt for it. Plus, it can help reduce the burden on your system and your team. 

Check the charts

Have you ever gone to the doctor for an issue and given the full spiel to the nurse, who writes it all down, only for the doc to walk in the door and ask you to repeat it all again from the top? It’s frustrating, and it’s a time sink for everyone involved. 

The same is true for callers who have to repeat information or provide information that agents can reasonably review on their own before answering. Most VoIP systems integrate with CRMs these days, and it will speed things up measurably if agents can pick up the phone having already “read the charts,” so to speak. 

Benefits of using call queues

Why would you want to use call queues? Why can’t you just send callers to voicemail when all the agents are busy?

Customers prefer not waiting over waiting. Some calls might be more urgent than what’s suited for an answering machine. Some teams aren’t as prompt or thorough about answering messages. And some customers will just hang up in frustration rather than leave a message.

Those aren’t the only reasons to use call queues, though:

• Higher customer satisfaction rates, thanks to higher numbers of calls answered.
• Shorter call durations in all respects, especially when routing is implemented.
• Reduced agent workload and burden.
• Better workflow management since the system is keeping track of who’s in line for you.
• More accurate analytics, as you won’t be missing calls or messages that might point to customer trends, recurring support issues, fluctuations in call volume, and more. 

Frequently asked questions (FAQ)

The post What is a Call Queue? appeared first on TechnologyAdvice.

When calls come in for your business but no one is available to answer, what happens next? Is it a lost cause? Do you shrug and think, “Better luck next time”? Do you chain a robot to the desk to answer calls in a stilted voice while the humans are off-duty? 

You can accomplish a lot with a simple business voicemail. A well-crafted voicemail greeting can do more to pitch your brand and build goodwill than just about any other touchpoint that doesn’t directly involve a living human. The tricky part is that “well-crafted” bit. But we’re here to help with that. 

In this brief guide, we’ll outline some of the important elements of a voicemail greeting, what to include, and some examples for different scenarios.

Key elements of an effective voicemail greeting

A voicemail greeting can be a lot of things, but it should be at least three things: clear, professional, and to the point. It will need to cover any essential information and should provide unambiguous direction for what the caller should be doing next. A basic template might look like this:

“Hello! You’ve reached [business/department/employee name]. We can’t answer the phone right now, but if you leave your name, number, and [insert situationally relevant specific details], we’ll return your call [insert time estimate, or “as soon as possible”].”

Here’s a list of a few dos and don’ts:

• Don’t try to pack too much info into the message; people get tired of waiting for the beep.
• Do specify clearly any information that you need the caller to leave in their message (and then expect that many of them won’t).
• Don’t set and forget the greeting; update it regularly, especially if it contains information that’s time-sensitive (everyone’s off-put by a year-end greeting in mid-June).
• Do consider recording in additional languages if appropriate (and if you have staff who can do that).
• Don’t use a greeting that’s confusing, misleading, or easy to misinterpret.

Those are the basics to get you started. Now, let’s take a look at some potential greeting themes and some examples for each. 

General company voicemail greetings

This is your go-to, standard greeting, the one that basically writes itself. Intro, business name, message instructions—it could be as simple as that. 

Some simple examples:

• “Thanks for calling McDuck’s Swimming Pool Installations. Our office hours are 8 am to 5 pm, Monday to Friday; absolutely no refunds.”
• “Hey, you’ve reached Arnold’s Pizza Shop. Nobody orders pizza at 6 am, so call back between noon and midnight, and we’d be happy to take your order.”
• “You’ve reached the voicemail of Parker and Sons, your friendly neighborhood photography studio. Sorry to leave you hanging. Leave a message, and we’ll be sure to leap into action.”
• “Hello there! You’ve reached Old Ben’s Salvage and Repair, located to the right of Tashi Station (from a certain point of view). If this is the business you’re looking for, leave your name and number, and we’ll reach out promptly.”
• “This is Bag End Bed and Breakfast. Sorry, we missed you! We must have been preoccupied with visitors, well-wishers, or distant relations. As always, we’re happy to make time for old friends and new friends alike, so leave a quick message, and we’ll be in touch.”
• “Thank you for calling Three Sisters’ Pot Removal Service. Hey, listen: If you’ve reached this message, we’re out of the office at the moment. But leave a message at the beep, and we’ll wake up one of our staff and send them galloping out your way as fast as the wind will carry them.”
• “This is the voicemail for Neeson Repossession Services. We can’t come to the phone right now. We don’t know who you are or what you want, but if you leave a message, we’ll return your call to determine if we have the particular skill set you need.”
• “You’ve reached Thomas Riddle, Magician Extraordinaire, the magic act that always leaves a mark on the audience. I’m terribly sorry I missed your call; I’m probably in my study, sorting through my magic hat collection. Leave a message, and I’ll return your call promptly.”
• “Thanks for calling McFly’s Cultural Museum, where the past and the future collide. We’ve stepped out for a moment. Leave a message after the beep, or just hang tight, and we’ll answer if we’re back in time.” 
• “Thank you for calling Cindy’s Cleanup Crew, open every day till midnight. At the tone, leave your name and number, and we’ll help you make your dreams of a clean home come true.”

After-hours voicemail greetings

These greetings are slightly more specialized, though they may still be fairly generic, as most businesses have times when they’re closed. 

Some guidance on creating a straightforward and effective message:

• Not every voicemail needs to include a forwarding address, figuratively speaking. In many cases, it’s perfectly fine to tell callers that you’ll get back to them ASAP and leave it at that. 
• In situations where there might be some urgency, it will be longer than usual before you respond, or callers frequently call the wrong line (and it has shorter hours than the one they actually want), then telling them who to call instead is a good idea. 
• Since you don’t have any way of identifying through a pre-recorded message exactly what the caller needs (and, by extension, who they should call next), you can make some reasonable assumptions based on normal caller behavior, the line of work you’re in, and the timeframe (e.g., weekend closures vs. seasonal closures vs. just calling outside of normal office hours). 
• Keep the forwarding instructions brief, and consider repeating the pertinent numbers because people don’t always have something to write with immediately ready. 
• You might also consider explicitly defining which callers should call the next number and who should just wait for a callback.

Some simple examples:

• “Thanks for calling McDuck’s Swimming Pool Installations. Our office hours are 8 am to 5 pm, Monday to Friday. If you’ve reached this message, I’m afraid you’ve caught us after closing, and you’re out of luck, laddy. Leave a message, or try again tomorrow.” 
• “You’ve reached the voicemail of Parker and Sons, your friendly neighborhood photography studio. We’re closed right now, but we’ll swing back into the office tomorrow morning, ready to suit up and leap into action. In the meantime, please send any urgent requests to Stark Raving Mad, Roger That Productions, or Thursday’s Best.”
• “Hello there! You’ve reached Old Ben’s Salvage and Repair, open every day from noon to 7pm. If you’ve reached this message, then these aren’t the hours you’re looking for. Feel free to leave a message or give us another call during open hours, and we’ll help you get things into order.”
• “This is Bag End Bed and Breakfast. We’ve slipped out from under the gaze of our patrons and headed home for the evening. But we’ll be there and back again, first thing in the morning, ready to assist you. Any concerns too precious to wait for can be directed to the local Eagles association.”
• “Thank you for calling Cindy’s Cleanup Crew, open every day till midnight. If you’re calling past pumpkin hour, we’re sorry to have missed you, but even a princess needs her beauty sleep. At the tone, leave your name and number, and we’ll return your call to see if our services are a perfect fit.”

Individual employee voicemail greetings

These are the greetings you’ll use for individuals running their single-person operations or for individual team members of larger organizations. 

Some tips for creating a welcoming and informative message:

• Greetings for individual staff members can follow very similar patterns to those used for the business at large, with a few tweaks based on how that individual’s role relates to the brand as a whole. 
• If that individual is the primary provider of goods and services (like a solopreneur, who does everything personally), then the individual is the brand, more or less, and the only thing you really change to the format is adding the person’s name. 
• Those who are part of a larger team, though, will likely need to add a bit more specificity to the message to narrow down the focus and help callers identify if they’ve called the right person or not.
• You may want to include specific information about what they should say in the message or how they can get in contact with you otherwise. Much like an after-hours message, you might leave contact info, but in this case, it might be an email address, a number they can text, or something similar. 

Some simple examples:

• “Thanks for calling McDuck’s Swimming Pool Installations. Mr. McDuck isn’t available at the moment, but leave a message here after the tone, and he’ll return your call to spend a few minutes answering your questions.” 
• “Hey, you’ve reached Arnold of Arnold’s Pizza Shop. I listen to every message before erasing it, so chill out, leave a message, and don’t terminate the call until you’ve stated your name and number.”
• “You’ve reached the voicemail of Parker of Parker and Sons. I’m sorry I didn’t stick around to answer your call, but I treat every message as a great responsibility. Leave a brief message, and I’ll be sure not to leave you hanging.”
• “Hello there! This is Ben of Old Ben’s Salvage and Repair. I’m out handling some trade negotiations but should be back shortly. After all, it would be so uncivilized to make you wait. In the meantime, leave a message, and I hope to return your call soon.”
• “This is Bag End Bed and Breakfast. Bill here; many sincere apologies for missing your call. Please leave a detailed message, and I’ll get back to you once the second breakfast has been served.”
• “Thank you for calling Three Sisters’ Pot Removal Service scheduling team. Saria and the rest of the crew are currently assisting other clients. At the tone, leave your contact info, and we’ll save some time to return your call.”
• “This is the voicemail for Neeson Repossession Services. I can’t come to the phone at the moment. Please leave a message at the beep. If this is not the first time you’ve called, and we’ve taken longer than expected to follow up, I apologize for the delay. I promise we will find you, and we will be in touch.”
• “You’ve reached Thomas Riddle, Magician Extraordinaire. I know you’re dying to speak to me, but all things come to those who wait. Notoriety can be quite the curse that way. But fear not; I shall return your call by quarter-till ten tomorrow.”
• “Thanks for calling McFly’s Cultural Museum. I can’t answer the phone right now, but once I find the time, I’ll return your call. Just leave your name, number, and your favorite historical period after the beep.” 
• “Thank you for calling Cindy’s Cleanup Crew. You must have caught me while I was away at the ball. Don’t worry; I’m back every night before midnight, and I’ll return your call first thing in the morning.”

Voicemail greetings for specific situations

These are your greetings for temporary, irregular, or uncommon situations where the information may not be readily available or expected. 

Some guidelines for creating a welcoming and informative message:

• You might expect that you’ll only ever need one greeting. But even over the course of a single year, there are ample opportunities for aligning the greeting with more situational themes. Capitalizing on said opportunities can do a lot with regard to brand perception.
• Take seasonal greetings. These can be used to highlight time-sensitive promotions, temporary changes to open hours, and other information that might be tied to a holiday or calendar event.
• You can also create greetings that directly address uncommon or non-standard variations in availability or circumstances. These might include essential employees taking a vacation, interruptions of service, emergencies, or other hurdles that might merit asking for the caller’s patience. 
• If you use a time-sensitive greeting, be sure to change it once you’ve passed the date in question. A holiday-specific greeting becomes a bit garish once the holiday is over and everyone has already moved on with their lives. 

Some simple examples:

• “Thanks for calling McDuck’s Swimming Pool Installations. Our office is open as normal through December 23. We’re open half-day on Christmas Eve.” 
• “Hey, you’ve reached Arnold’s Pizza Shop. Due to the recent machine uprising, we will be closed until further notice. Hasta la vista!”
• “You’ve reached the voicemail of Parker and Sons, your friendly neighborhood photography studio. In observance of the memorial services, we will be closed during the following dates and times…”
• “Hello there! You’ve reached Old Ben’s Salvage and Repair. In partnership with Wretched Hive, we’ll be hosting a community fundraiser and adoption event. Come join us, and find your newest chrome-plated addition to the family!”
• “This is Bag End Bed and Breakfast. Unfortunately, we are closed for the season as we make preparations for our next adventure. Please bear with us, and we’ll happily see you after our mountain trek.”
• “Thank you for calling Three Sisters’ Pot Removal Service. We recognize there has been some uncertainty and confusion regarding timelines and schedules this season. We are working to correct any conflicts and issues. In the meantime, please leave a message detailing your concerns, and we’ll get back to you soon.”
• “This is the voicemail for Neeson Repossession Services. I’ve taken a leave of absence while my daughter is away on vacation. Please forward all urgent messages to…”
• “You’ve reached Thomas Riddle, Magician Extraordinaire. If you’re calling about the you-know-what, please be aware that I cannot provide any secrets or spoilers that are not already publicly available.”
• “Thanks for calling McFly’s Cultural Museum. Our main attraction is currently out of order while we attempt to arrange for more sustainable power generation (1.21 gigawatts is a lot, after all). We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.”

Choosing the right business voicemail greeting for your company 

We could go on for ages with advice on dos and don’ts. But we’ve all got places to be and calls that need answering. And honestly, you’ve humored us for a lot longer than we expected.

Our best parting wisdom is this: There’s nothing wrong with a simple, no-frills greeting that gets the job done. Don’t be afraid to have a little fun with it too, though. After all, we deal with machines, computers, and artificiality enough as it is. A little humanity can do quite a bit to put people at ease and build their trust.

Frequently asked questions (FAQ)

The post 35 Best Business Voicemail Greeting Examples for 2024 appeared first on TechnologyAdvice.

If that made sense, and that’s all you need, thanks for reading, and have a nice day. If not, we have some clarifying details that might prove valuable.

Read more:VoIP vs. Landline: The Pros & Cons for Business

How do virtual numbers work?

If that previous example still leaves you a tad bit confused, then let’s try an analogy using a different medium of communication.

A simple metaphone

When you send a letter in the mail, it’s shipped to a specific physical location, determined by the address you used. If it can’t be delivered there, or if no one is there to receive it, it will eventually be returned to the sender.

Now, if you know the person you want to reach is out-and-about quite a lot, or maybe they don’t currently have a home address, you might be able to reach them on their cell phone via text. When you send a text, the “address” is their cell number. That means that, as long as their phone is connected to a cell tower, is on, and they have it with them, you can trust that they will receive your message.

But what if you don’t have their phone number? What if you’re trying to reach a group of people, who might be in different places or have different phones, etc.? What if you’re trying to reach an organization instead of a person? 

Well, then you have email and instant messaging. Email addresses and IM profiles are connected to accounts, and anyone with the proper login credentials can access them, from just about anywhere with an internet connection. 

In this analogy, physical mail is synonymous with landlines. Text messaging is identical in function to calling a cell number (at least as far as this metaphor is concerned). And the email/IM example maps very well onto virtual numbers.

Looking for a complete VoIP solution? Check out our comprehensive VoIP Service Buyer’s Guide for a complete list jam-packed full of product reviews with pricing, key features, our experts’ take on which tool is right for your specific needs.

What’s it like to use a virtual phone number?

A virtual number functions as coordinates, the same way that web domains and email addresses do. The difference here is that it’s designed primarily to facilitate real-time voice communication (like a normal phone line is). In practice, there’s a lot of similarity between the way they’re used and, say, a teleconference account (especially if everyone has their camera off). 

We discuss this more below, but getting a virtual number is also very similar to signing up for things like email, messaging apps, and all of these other things. The key difference is this: you’re tying the account to a legitimate phone number that can be called by anything that can make a normal phone call (including landlines).

Ok, that’s cool and all, but, uh…why?

Fair question. These days, our society has very different attitudes and relationships with telecommunication than it used to. 30-ish years ago, most everyone in the US had cable TV, a landline, and probably a typewriter. These days, all three of those things are rare except for sports fans, brick-and-mortar businesses, and crazy agoraphobic writers, respectively.

So you might be wondering why you even need something that is internet-enabled tech masquerading as the kind of phone that has to take turns with the dial-up modem to use the line.

A few key benefits stand out here.

Read more: How to Get a Free Business Phone Number

Less complex functionality

Forwarding numbers and making sure you can receive calls when you’re away from the office is typically a maddening process when landlines or cell phones are involved. Things have improved significantly, but there are whole businesses who only hired IT staff once they had to set up the internal phone systems.

Similarly, connecting multiple phones to the same system, allowing multiple people to answer the same line, adding “hold” functions, routing functions, etc.—there are a lot of common features that businesses want from their phone systems, and they’re not very user friendly to set up. IT staff already have enough to stress about without Steve the marketing intern complaining about how his phone won’t do a thing…again.

Virtual phone systems simplify a lot of this, and make it easier for even the least experienced users to make the most of it. In most cases, it’s no more complex than setting up, say, an out-of-office message for your emails when you’re on vacation.

Improved privacy

Second, a virtual number can provide a layer of privacy between a professional and the people trying to contact them. It can be notoriously fraught to use your personal cell number for business contact information, because once that number is out there, every prince with a hidden fortune or car warranty provider (both obviously scams, in case you hadn’t heard) will be dogging you day and night. 

A virtual number, like an email account, gives you options for screening, automatically sending to voicemail, setting no-contact hours, forwarding to other team members, and a whole lot else.

Better access management

Sometimes the phone is just for you. Sometimes, you need a whole team to have access, and sometimes you need a whole rolodex (they were real once, I promise) full of numbers for the organization. Whatever the case, controlling who can access, use, and modify the phone system for a physical setup is a major challenge. 

With a virtual phone system, it’s much more straightforward. You can make it easy for people who should have access be able to use their phone line whenr they need to. You can limit access, remove privileges when employees leave the team, lock up admin privileges for all but those who strictly need them, and transfer access when numbers, accounts, or features need to switch between staff.

Read more: 6 Best Vanity Phone Number Providers

Crossplay for professionals

Those gamers—with their newfangled Playboxes and Xstations—are always going on and on about “crossplay” these days. 

In their defense, we’ve all come to expect all of our apps and systems to work on all of our devices by this point. Whenever we jump to a different screen and it doesn’t, we start throwing around phrases like “They can put a man on the moon…”

Old school phones don’t do the best job of interfacing with digital systems. And when they do, you’re usually paying quite a bit for it. 

With virtual phone numbers, you can often link multiple devices to the system—desktop, laptop, tablet, smartphone, etc. Then, you can switch seamlessly between them, as can your team, without any major issues making the connection difficult or unreliable.

What’s more, you may not even need physical phones in the first place. Many implementations exclusively use computers (be they desktops, laptops, or tablets) and you can just plug in a headset to complete the setup.

Lower costs

Remember how we just said you often don’t need physical phones at all? Well, most organizations already have computers (cause it’s hard to do work these days without them). And a headset is a lot cheaper than a fancy business phone with all the bells and whistles. 

Now, multiply that by the number of staff members in the organization who use phones.

Physical landlines require specific hardware, dedicated installation, a separate telecom service, and a host of other costs. 

Virtual phones, on the other hand, operate via a lot of infrastructure youlikely already have in place. The bulk of the cost is already sunk, and you’re only paying (if you pay at all) for the phone account.

Add-ons and integrations

Finally, if it’s all through the computer system, uses the internet, and plays well across lots of devices and platforms, you can rest assured that you’ll likely benefit from useful add-ons and convenient integrations. In many cases, you can link the phone system into the rest of your tech stack and sometimes even use 3rd-party options for functions the phones usually include if it’s a better fit for your use case.

Read more: 6 Best Cloud Phone Systems for 2024

Is there any reason I shouldn’t get a virtual phone?

There are a few potential pitfalls to virtual phones, since no system is perfect. And, even though they’re largely situational, it’s important to be aware of what they are.

For a virtual phone number to be of any use, you’ll need at least three things: a device capable of receiving the call through the internet, an internet connection, and power for any of the things you’re using to meet the previous two requirements. 

What this means is, unlike landlines which can often continue to function even when the power is out, losing power, internet connection, or device functionality can leave you without a phone line. These problems tend to be situational, and there are some steps you can take to mitigate the risk of disruption. But it can still be a major concern.

If you live somewhere that experiences frequent power outages, or if you can’t get reliable internet at a high enough bandwidth, and can’t use smartphones as your go-to device for any reason, that may leave you in a position where a physical landline may actually be the smarter option for the time being. 

So, how do I get one?

The same way you get an email address or start using Teams or Slack: you sign up for an account with a provider.

Google Voice, WhatsApp, and plenty of other tools offer this as a service (usually with other options, add-ons, and tools). The most common method of running a virtual phone system is through VoIP (voice over internet protocol), and a quick search with Google will bring up a very long list of market options there.

Be aware that there are free options on the market, even for business users. There are even free options for multi-number accounts. That said, paid accounts often come with extra perks, and depending on who you go through, it may be a simple add-on for a service you’re already using (such as adding voice to Google Workspace). 

And you can get all of the same fun toys that are normally associated with traditional phones—answering machines, vanity numbers, and so on—all with the benefits of cloud-hosted telecom solutions.

So what are you waiting for? Pick a provider that looks like a match, and give them a ring (pun intended, obviously).

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

The post What is a Virtual Phone Number? appeared first on TechnologyAdvice.

So you want to manage your field services more effectively (doesn’t everyone?). Those field services aren’t going to manage themselves, after all, and what kind of business professionals would we be if we weren’t trying to optimize efficiency and boost KPIs?

LinkedIn buzzwords aside, you’re here either because you have a team of field service techs you’re trying to manage, or you need the support of third-party field services. Whatever the case, we’ll help you find some of the answers you’re looking for, and point you toward where you can look for the rest.

Defining Field Service Management

Similar to a painfully large number of terms in the corporate world, field services—and by extension, field service management (FSM)—have a few different meanings, most of which depend on context.

Field Service Management (FSM) software is a digital tool designed to manage and optimize the operations of field service teams. This software helps organizations schedule and dispatch technicians, track their locations and job statuses in real time, manage work orders, handle customer interactions, and maintain inventory and assets. 

FSM software often includes features such as mobile access for field workers, integration with other business systems, reporting and analytics, and customer communication portals. The goal of FSM software is to improve efficiency, enhance customer satisfaction, and streamline the overall service delivery process.

Field services: The “what”

To start us off, field service is a term that refers to a number of distinct yet similar roles and disciplines. In nearly every case, these roles are concerned with the setup, maintenance, repair, and replacement of a specific category of non-human assets used by businesses. Where field service technicians and teams differ from more traditional maintenance, I&O, or engineering roles is this: field services are the pros that handle the “house calls.” 

That’s where field service techs come in. They do many (if not all) of the same things that their locally tethered counterparts do, but their “office” is wherever the next call is. They go where the technical needs are and do the work in person.

Field services: The “who”

Now, field services aren’t found solely in computer-related industries. Under the broadest definition, any technician who travels to a distant location and uses highly specialized technical knowledge to meet needs and solve problems falls under this umbrella. Depending on who you ask, that could include:

• The repair guy sent by corporate gets the ice cream machine back up and running for the burger shop.
• The engineer is responsible for helping the local team install the new manufacturing hardware in the factory.
• The mechanic rolls out to perform scheduled tune-ups for company vehicles to increase their longevity.

There’s also an important line to be drawn regarding whether field service teams are in-house or third-party outfits. Some B2B service providers specialize in just field services, to minimize the headache and logistics required for their clients. In other cases, large corporations may have their own internal crews, perhaps with a network of distributed, localized hubs to put them within striking distance of most of their destinations. 

Field services: The “how”

Lastly, let’s talk about the “management” portion of the term (since that’s probably the main reason you’re here). 

As you might expect, field service management deals with the coordination, logistics, training, and, well, management of field service professionals. This may be for an internal team (or as the internal manager of a third-party outfit), or as the liaison/POC that interfaces with an external service provider.

With all of that out of the way, there is at least one more definition, and the one that’s probably the real reason you’re paying attention to any of this gratuitous wordsmithing in the first place: Field service management can, and often does, refer specifically to the software applications and platforms used to perform these functions with greater ease and efficiency.

In the same way we refer to CRM, for example, as both a discipline and a software category, you may see little (if any) distinguishing language that separates FSM software from the professional category it’s designed to support. 

Core functions and components of FSM

We just mentioned that the software and the profession are often referred to with the same moniker interchangeably, and we will be doing the same from this point forward. There’s a justifiable reason for this, though.

Like nearly every other B2B software category, digital FSM tools are simply a computerized version of the manual process, with all the automations and quality-of-life upgrades that entails. If you want to know how any of this applies to non-software FSM, just imagine the same thing, minus the screen and real-time updates. Oh, and plenty of sloppy handwriting. 

The nuts and bolts of FSM

 At the risk of being overly reductive, FSM is analogous to other forms of work and asset management. 

• Like project management, it entails the coordination and planning of who will be doing what, and when.
• Like asset management, it requires tracking the location and status of “assets,”—i.e. the team members—so that they can be assigned, recalled, and reassigned for optimal efficiency.
• Like task and ticket management, it involves tracking upcoming jobs and assignments, planning or predicting what can be, and making room for more urgent or unexpected issues that might crop up. 

Additionally, field service management has to contend with financial details, like accepting client payments and handling expense reimbursements for technicians. It has to address both human and inventory asset tracking, not to mention logistical issues like route navigation and driver logs. And it usually has to accommodate compliance measures.

Oh, and customers like having remote access to their accounts, so anything that’s not done on paper will probably need a client-facing portal to facilitate that.

FSM software trends, and leading characteristics

Those are the core functions (some of them at least) that any FSM suite will need to cover. But it doesn’t stop there. FSM providers are always looking for ways to increase the value they offer and stand out from their peers in the market. Over time, it resulted in a few noteworthy market trends. 

First among these is mobile-friendly design. By its nature, field service work depends heavily on being able to access your tools when away from headquarters. And while a laptop with a reliable hardline connection would probably be ideal for many techs, more realistically, most will be expecting and depending on access via a companion mobile app. 

That all points to cloud-based or hybrid systems, much of which is enabled these days by SaaS and PaaS model offerings. Where some software solutions lend themselves to local deployments and on-prem implementations, FSM is more challenging to facilitate this way because, well, the work itself isn’t done on-prem. 

What’s more, any circumstance that involves external service techs will inevitably have to address issues of information privacy and access rights. Obviously, the less information the tech has to be given direct access to, the better, but the minimum threshold will vary by industry, service, and so forth. So, the more that the digital tools can integrate, the less the tech will have to handle directly, and the better the principle of least privilege (PLP) implementation will be. 

Benefits of Field Service Management  

Most of us have at least tacitly accepted by now that, with a few rare exceptions, electronic processes are a huge upgrade over anything administered via pen and paper. How much of an upgrade, though, is still up for debate. A debate, it should be noted, that directly influences decisions about if and when to migrate to a digital system.

We get it. There’s a lot of cost involved in going digital, or even in switching from one digital solution to another. But the gulf of difference in effectiveness and efficiency between manual FSM processes and digitally enabled ones is only getting wider, just like everything else in business. The broader business ecosystem is catching on rapidly, and there are some very compelling reasons to jump on this particular bandwagon. 

Reducing overhead

Travel costs, overscheduling, underscheduling, delays, and more are common frustrations for anyone in charge of planning and managing workflows. But where field service differs is that it’s not just a matter of waiting for an email or report to be finished. There are legitimate physical limitations and constraints that have to be accounted for.

People can only travel so fast and be in one location at a time, so an error in this vein can have some pretty impactful, cascading consequences. Using software to more accurately predict, account for, and respond to the myriad of factors and circumstances can minimize costs, optimize travel efficiency, limit waste, and boost productivity. 

Empowering service teams

In the simplest terms, “getting more done” requires either doing more work or making work easier to do. But while a factory might be able to speed up the lines or run the machines for longer if they need to temporarily boost production, field service doesn’t exactly work that way. So, rather than asking techs to “pedal faster” to reach their destination, FSM tools allow you to remove roadblocks and obstacles.

Logistics and coordination is part of it (as mentioned above), but there are other important factors—increasing record accuracy, facilitating access to troubleshooting info, and reducing communication delays, for example. 

Improving client satisfaction

If things are happening faster, with fewer errors, and longer-lasting results, people tend to be happier with the work their techs do. It’s a lot like a visit to a doctor or mechanic; generally speaking, the less frequently it needs to happen, the better. Even when they do need to call in tech for a surprise visit, scheduling is easier (and more predictable), delays are easier to prepare for, and solutions are reached faster, so the tech can promptly exit stage left, and let the client get back to their work. Whether your service team is internal or external, favorable conclusions to service tickets are always a welcome sight.

Discovering and predicting patterns

No one can see the future. But if there’s any consensus for an acceptable use case for AI and other advanced algorithms, it’s this—parsing mountains of data to help us better predict and prepare for possible eventualities. You’ll hear a lot of big talk from major BI vendors about this, but there is at least a foundation of truth to these claims. What’s more, the adoption rate (either via native functions or integrations) for this kind of computational wizardry is better than basically any other.

In other words, the right field service tool can help you identify and understand what is happening, when it’s happening, why it’s happening, and which strategies have increased odds of leading to better outcomes.

How to implement field service management (FSM)

So, how do businesses adopt/migrate to/implement any new technology solution?

Start with research (you’re already a step ahead of us on that one; good job). Figure out your needs, how they relate to the market offerings, and which critical components are less commonly supported.

Then, start evaluating the solutions that claim to meet those needs. See how current and past customers fared in having those same needs met (bonus points for primary sources and direct recommendations). Build your shortlist, compare cost/benefit breakdowns, and get what hands-on testing done that you can. After that, if you’ve found a likely candidate, it might be time to make the call.

Honestly, it all sounds exhausting, despite being standard practice for this kind of thing. Then again, that’s the idea behind things like optimization and automation, isn’t it? You incur some additional expense in time, labor, etc. in the pursuit of reducing the strain and cost of ongoing daily processes. You know things can be better, and you know “doing nothing” doesn’t cost anything extra in comparison.

But without a hop or two over the relevant hurdles, work will continue to be as much of a grind as ever. And few groups of professionals deserve as much reprieve from the grind as the ones who keep things running smoothly for the rest of us.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

The post What Is Field Service Management? appeared first on TechnologyAdvice.

In our ongoing effort to help businesses choose software vendors based on how well they meet needs rather than sheer brand recognition, we’ve put together a host of articles looking at alternatives to leading solutions. 

In this article, we’ll break down some of the most compelling alternatives to Microsoft Power BI.

• Tableau: Best for data visualization
• Domo: Best for large data sets
• Yellowfin: Best for embedded analytics
• Zoho Analytics: Best for non-analysts
• Sisense: Best for end-to-end BI
• Qlik Sense: Best for mobile users

Top 6 Microsoft Power BI Alternatives

Tableau: Best for data visualization

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Pros

• Robust visualization features
• Discounted user licenses for non-analysts
• Extensive support tools

Cons

• Creator accounts require increased technical expertise
• Higher costs than most other options

Our Rating: 4.3/5

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Key Features

• Leverage Data Without Slowdowns: Tableau supports multiple connection types for a wide variety of data sources. For faster databases, set up direct connection. For slower or more bottlenecked sources, use in-memory data connections to minimize latency.
• Top-Tier Security: Data is more valuable than ever, so it’s a bigger target than ever. Tableau provides a host of permissions and authorization controls, as well as supporting integration with third-party systems like Active Directory. 
• First-Class Visualizations: Tableau offers one of the widest and most robust feature sets with regard to visualizing data. Trend lines, predictive analytics, customizable dashboards and reports, and even map support are among its laudable options.
• Improved Data Queries: With the Ask data tool, Tableau enables a measure of Google-level search engine functionality for the data itself. Conduct basic searches and queries with no need for advanced command of SQL or other query languages. 
• Mobile Functionality: Sometimes, the data needs to go where you go. That’s why Tableau can be used via mobile devices, enabling your analytics to go anywhere with you.

Pricing

• Tableau Viewer: $15/user/month, billed annually
• Tableau Explorer: $42/user/month, billed annually
• Tableau Creator: $70/user/month, billed annually
• On-Prem Hosting and Embedded Analytics: Call for Quote

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Why We Chose Tableau

Tableau is the undisputed king of data visualization.

Its expansive market reach and diverse client base, including many recognizable brands, is a testament to its expertise in delivering top-tier analytics solutions. Unlike its competitors, especially Microsoft Power BI, Tableau excels in offering more sophisticated, customizable visualizations, making it the go-to choice for complex data analysis. This distinction is crucial for businesses that require in-depth, adaptable data analysis and visualizations, whereas Microsoft Power BI might be more suitable for those seeking simpler, more integrated solutions with other Microsoft services.

Tableau’s recent updates further solidify its position as a superior option for data visualization. The Embedding Playground, for instance, offers a level of customization and interactivity that is hard to match. The introduction of custom data labels and dynamic axis ranges also speaks to Tableau’s focus on user-centric design, ensuring that data is not only visually appealing but also easily navigable and customizable to suit various business needs.

Regarding product design and user experience, Tableau’s interface, while requiring some initial learning, offers unparalleled customization and control over data visualization. This design philosophy ensures that users can tailor the tool to their specific analytical needs, a feature that sets it apart from Microsoft Power BI, which is known for its user-friendly interface but less customization in data visualization.

While Tableau is a leader in data visualization, it could improve by simplifying its initial setup process and making its pricing more accessible to smaller teams. Enhancing these aspects would make Tableau more competitive against solutions like Microsoft Power BI, which is known for its ease of integration with Microsoft’s ecosystem and user-friendly approach.

Our Ratings

Pricing: 4.2/5

General features and interface: 4.3/5

Core features: 5/5

Advanced features: 4.5/5

Integration and compatibility: 4.7/5

UX: 3.3/5

When it comes to market leaders that can go toe-to-toe with Microsoft in the BI space, few would argue that Tableau can be found at the top of the list.

The most recent update, Tableau 2023.3, introduces several notable advancements:

1. Embedding Playground: This feature provides an interactive environment for developing custom code in minutes. It allows users to embed interactive visualizations into applications rapidly, enhancing the embedded analytics capabilities of Tableau.
2. Custom Data Labels: Improving data discoverability, this feature lets admins define custom labels that creators and explorers can add to data assets. This aids in better discovery and auditing within Tableau.
3. Dynamic Axis Ranges: This addition allows more dynamic visualizations by using the value of parameters in the workbook to set axis ranges, offering greater flexibility in data presentation.

Tableau occupies a market position toward the higher end of the enterprise/premium spectrum. With a base cost that’s well beyond most of its competitors and a setup process that requires more extensive data and coding expertise than many of its peers, it’s not for teams looking for the cheapest or most basic solutions. 

That said, Tableau can provide a significant boost to teams already equipped to make the most of its analytics and visualization suite. With a little setup and a little training, the tool can cover a broad range of use cases and implementations.

Domo: Best for large data sets

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Pros

• Easily handles large data sets
• Advanced data insights and predictive analytics
• Plentiful visualization options

Cons

• No publicly available pricing information
• Some reviews report lackluster customer service
• Lacks options for reduced-access users

Our Rating: 4.2/5

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Key Features

• Data Integration and Ingestion: With over 1,000 pre-built cloud connectors and a powerful system capable of processing massive data sets without issue, Domo is among the best equipped to help brands put their data to work in minimal time.
• Real-Time Analytics: Domo’s platform makes it easy to stay up-to-date and even forecast with confidence. In addition to standard analytics and reporting, the tool enables predictive insights, allowing teams to look to the future and plan accordingly.
• Custom App Creation: With convenient API and SDK tools, Domo can be used to power custom apps and automated workflows, reducing labor requirements and speeding time-to-value.
• Secure Anywhere Operations: Domo empowers teams to work from anywhere, embed their analytics wherever necessary, and maintain permissions and access controls throughout.

Pricing

• Free trial available
• Call for quote; no listed pricing on website

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Why We Chose Domo

Domo offers perhaps the best functionality for those with high volumes of data to process. While it doesn’t offer much in the way of data cleaning and scrubbing, few solutions can ingest large data sets as quickly as Domo can. And with the demand for data only growing over time, the value of rapidly moving from data-aware to data-driven can’t be overstated.

When it comes to handling large datasets, Domo excels in speed and efficiency. Its system is designed to ingest and process data swiftly, a critical factor for businesses that depend on quick data analysis. This rapid processing capability sets Domo apart from other BI tools, including Microsoft Power BI, which may require more resources to scale for large data operations.

Domo’s continual evolution to meet the demands of big data analytics is evident in its recent updates. Enhancements like Nested Beast Mode Calculations, Cloud Amplifier, and Google BigQuery integrations, as well as advancements in Domo.AI, showcase the company’s commitment to staying at the forefront of big data processing and analytics all serve to add to its already powerful tools.

Domo’s user experience is tailored to manage complex data operations while maintaining an intuitive and user-friendly interface. This approach means that even with large datasets, users can navigate and utilize the platform without feeling overwhelmed.

Our Ratings

Pricing: 3/5

General features and interface: 4.1/5

Core features: 5/5

Advanced features: 4.5/5

Integration and compatibility: 4.7/5

UX: 3.8/5

Domo is a SaaS startup that has quickly made a name for itself as a major player in the industry. With some of the most convenient data warehousing and ingestion in the market, support for MySQL and Postgres ETL, and extensive visualization options, it’s a tool set that has proven attractive for brands across numerous markets and use cases.

Domo is particularly well-suited for organizations that prioritize rapid data processing and have substantial datasets. Its ability to quickly ingest and analyze large volumes of data makes it an ideal choice for businesses where delays in data-driven decision-making are not an option.

Domo’s AI Service Layer, a framework at the core of its AI capabilities, now offers integration with OpenAI, allowing developers to build generative AI applications and develop language models that include their own data. This integration is a game-changer for Domo, enabling a more conversational approach to BI, where users can interact with the tool using natural language. This advancement significantly lowers the barriers to analytics, making it more accessible to a broader range of users.

It also has a comprehensive approach to AI, ranging from conversational capabilities to integration with third-party services like OpenAI and Google Bard. This includes model management for combining external models with Domo models, a critical feature for organizations looking to customize their AI solutions. The AI Service Layer also offers text-to-code translation capabilities, allowing users to query data using conversational language, which is then converted to code for processing and back to natural language for user comprehension.

In addition to these advancements, Domo has introduced SDKs within domo.js, batch inference, and data preparation capabilities, enhancing its efficiency in processing large volumes of data for use in generative AI models.

Areas for improvement for the platform include enhancing its data cleaning and scrubbing capabilities could provide a more comprehensive BI solution, reducing the need for external data preparation tools.

Yellowfin: Best for embedded analytics

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Pros

• Extensive API support
• Low-code UI
• AI-generated insights

Cons

• Resource demands increase with every update
• No publicly listed pricing

Our Rating: 4.2/5

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Key Features

• Automated Monitoring and Data Discovery: Where many BI tools fall short is in the prep work; data is only useful if it’s clean and accurate. Yellowfin helps minimize the time and labor required to aggregate, clean, and standardize data, so you can make the most of it faster.
• White Label Support: Many organizations need analytics functions not just for their system but also for systems that depend on them. Yellowfin empowers teams to rebrand and embed analytics tools.
• Meta-Data Modeling: With a comprehensive modeling layer, Yellowfin enables meta-data analytics. Dig deeper into your data and how your organization generates and uses data than ever before.
• Guided NLQ: Yellowfin’s natural language query feature, Guided NLQ, makes it easier for less technical staff to access necessary information without having to pick up a SQL textbook.

Pricing

• Free trial available via AWS Mrketplace
• Contact for quote; no listed pricing on website

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Why We Chose Yellowfin

Yellowfin distinguishes itself in two ways: with its natural language query feature—helping users more easily query the database and pull the information they need—and with its full support of white-labeled analytics embedding. For brands that are looking to offer user-friendly data analytics with AI insights, Yellowfin is a solid choice.

Unlike Microsoft Power BI, which is often praised for its comprehensive data visualization and analysis tools, Yellowfin’s draw is its ability be fully integrated and white-labeled within other applications. This capability is crucial for businesses that aim to provide a seamless user experience without the apparent shift from their primary application to an analytics tool.

The design choices for the interfaces emphasize simplicity and efficiency. The platform’s user interface is crafted to reduce complexity, making analytics accessible to users of all skill levels. This design philosophy extends to its embedded analytics, where Yellowfin ensures that its tools blend seamlessly into the host application, maintaining a consistent user experience.

Our Ratings

Pricing: 3.8/5

General features and interface: 4.1/5

Core features: 5/5

Advanced features: 4.3/5

Integration and compatibility: 4/5

UX: 3.8/5

Yellowfin has been on the market for quite some time. With a history in BI SaaS that stretches all the way back to 2004, it’s had plenty of time to carve out room for its offering in the space. Built as a bridge between back-end expertise and front-end user convenience, Yellowfin offers a number of quality-of-life improvements over many of its peers when it comes to ease of use and UI user-friendliness.

Its evolution is marked by continuous improvements in UI user-friendliness and ease of use, making it a more approachable option for a broader range of users compared to earlier versions or other tools in the market.

To maintain its edge, Yellowfin could focus on enhancing its data processing capabilities and expanding its AI-driven analytics features, areas where competitors like Microsoft Power BI have made significant strides.

 Add to that full white-label support, and it’s the go-to tool for brands that need embedded analytics.

Zoho Analytics: Best for non-analysts

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Pros

• Full integration with other Zoho solutions
• More affordable than many competitors
• Convenient and intuitive UI

Cons

• Subscription tiers strictly limit features like data rows, user licenses, etc.
• Most useful for full Zoho One users

Our Rating: 4/5

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Key Features

• Data Preparation and Integration: Zoho helps teams use their data not just by pulling from their data sources but also by making standardization easier to achieve. Data integrity is a constant concern for analytics, so the tool has automated solutions to make it easier to clean data before running the numbers.
• Zoho App Family Integration: While Zoho Analytics can be used as a standalone product, it also has full integration and interoperability across the whole family of Zoho apps, so users can maximize the value of their subscription.
• Collaborative Analytics: As a remote-first brand, Zoho has built all of its apps to support distributed workforces. With Zoho Analytics, the software is designed to facilitate asynchronous collaboration, real-time updates, and other critical features.
• Host How You Need to Host: Zoho can be hosted on-prem or in the cloud, and cloud users can leverage the free version to determine if the tool will meet their needs.

Pricing

Cloud Hosting

Basic: $24/month billed annually (or $30/month if billed monthly)

Standard: $48/month billed annually (or $60/month if billed monthly)

Premium: $115/month billed annually (or $145/month if billed monthly)

Enterprise: $455/month billed annually (or $575/month if billed monthly)

On-Prem Hosting

Personal: Free forever, on local servers, AWS, Azure, and Docker

Professional:

Local Server: $30/user/month billed annually, 5 user minimum

AWS: $0.25/hr + AWS usage fee, 5 user minimum

Azure: $0.40/hr + Azure Infrastructure Fee, 5 user minimum

Docker: $30/user/month billed annually, 5 user minimum

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Why We Chose Zoho Analytics

For those looking to get started with business intelligence, especially small teams (or even solopreneurs), Zoho is a solid bet. With an interface that requires minimal technical or data expertise to use and a robust help center, it’s perfect for inexperienced analytics users or users in a distributed work environment.
Its comprehensive support system also adds to its appeal to users who may not possess extensive technical or data expertise.

Zoho Analytics excels in ease of use, scoring highly for its intuitive design. This makes it more approachable for beginners or those without a background in data analysis. While both tools offer a range of integrations, Zoho’s broader suite of business tools, including CRM and HR software, provides a more seamless experience for users already within the Zoho ecosystem.

It democratizes data analysis, making it accessible to users regardless of their technical background.

Our Ratings

Pricing: 3.8/5

General features and interface: 3.6/5

Core features: 4.2/5

Advanced features: 4.3/5

Integration and compatibility: 4/5

UX: 3.5/5

Zoho is, in many ways, the closest to Microsoft of all the competitors on this list, at least in terms of its full range of offerings. Just as Microsoft has Office 365, Zoho has Zoho One, a complete suite of business productivity tools and services. From a CRM platform to HR software and even IT management, Zoho provides quite the buffet of critical business support options.

In particular, its BI software is no slouch. Especially for professionals whose expertise lies elsewhere, Zoho Analytics offers a way for them to leverage the power of data without being data analysts or software developers themselves. Easy to learn, easy to use, and easy to get help when you need it, Zoho is a frontrunner for anyone looking to get started with BI.

Contrasting with Microsoft Power BI, which, while powerful, can be overwhelming for non-analysts due to its complex functionalities and steeper learning curve, Zoho Analytics simplifies data analysis without compromising on capabilities. This makes it more accessible to a wider range of users. For small teams or solopreneurs, Zoho Analytics is a more suitable choice due to its straightforward approach and ease of use. Power BI, while robust, might be better suited for users with a stronger background in data analysis or larger organizations that can leverage its advanced features.

Recent updates, such as enhanced email notifications, improved data visualization options, and the introduction of new connectors like Google Analytics 4 and YouTube Ads, demonstrate Zoho’s commitment to making data analysis accessible to all users. The tool prioritizes a user-centric design, offering a clean and intuitive interface that reduces the learning curve for non-technical users. This approach extends beyond the software’s functionality to its comprehensive support and learning resources.

However, while Zoho Analytics excels in user-friendliness, it could further enhance its capabilities by introducing more advanced analytical features and customizations, which are areas where Microsoft Power BI currently has an edge. This would allow Zoho to cater to a broader spectrum of users, from beginners to more experienced analysts. For more insights on Zoho Analytics’ features and updates, their Release Notes provide valuable information.

Sisense: Best for end-to-end BI

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Pros

• End-to-end BI functionality (from ETL to advanced insights)
• Plentiful customization options for dashboards
• Capable of handling large, complex data sets from disparate sources

Cons

• Visualization functions are robust, but less robust than others on this list
• Interface is less intuitive, with steeper learning curve

Our Rating: 4.1/5

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Key Features

• Unrivaled Data Sourcing: ElastiCube technology enables robust ETL and ingestion of massive data sets from disparate and siloed sources, so you can create a single source of truth for your organization.
• Git Integration: As a platform designed around technical users, Sisense has extensive integration with the tools that developers use the most, making it easier to customize as needed for a given use case.
• Advanced Analytics: Sisense offers AI- and ML-powered advanced analytics, including anomaly detection and predictive modeling.
• Democratized Data: Sisense supports embedded analytics and white labeling, so brands can offer data-driven functionality to those that do business with them.

Pricing

Call for quote: no listed pricing or free trial

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Why We Chose Sisense

Sisense is the tool of choice for teams with plenty of data experience and technical expertise. When what you’re looking for is a force multiplier to get the most out of a capable, knowledgeable team, Sisense can enable analytics unrestricted by more restrictive UIs. And with its capabilities for ingesting massive data sets and advanced prediction models, there’s a lot to leverage for such teams.

It’s tailored for teams that boast considerable data experience and technical expertise, making it a force multiplier for those capable of leveraging its advanced features. This focus on a knowledgeable user base sets Sisense apart from Power BI, which aims to cater to a broader audience.

It excels in processing massive data sets and deploying advanced predictive models. While it might offer slightly fewer visualization options compared to some of its competitors, its strengths lie in the realms of machine learning and data science. This emphasis on technical prowess and flexibility distinguishes it from Power BI, which is more accessible but less customizable.

Our Ratings

Pricing: 3/5

General features and interface: 4.3/5

Core features: 5/5

Advanced features: 4.5/5

Integration and compatibility: 4/5

UX: 3.8/5

Sisense is the tech expert’s BI. Rather than prioritizing end-user convenience, Sisense puts customizability and power front and center. From ETL to predictive analytics, Sisense offers the whole BI package to those who can implement it properly. 

This trade-off means that making the most of the solution takes a fair amount of skill and familiarity with software and data, but the investment is well worth it. Despite having slightly shallower visualization options than some competitors, it’s a tool that brings the best of machine learning and data science to the table.

In its most recent updates, Sisense has made significant strides in enhancing its capabilities and user experience. The Highcharts charting library, a crucial component for data visualization, has been upgraded to version 10.3.3, promising more robust and efficient charting functionalities. On the connectivity front, all Java connectors have been reinstated post-upgrade, ensuring seamless integration with various data sources. In a move to enhance accuracy, Sisense has removed the ‘Hours’ option from Time Frame filtering, streamlining the data analysis process. Additionally, there have been notable improvements in several widgets, including the Calendar Heatmap, Column Charts, and Line Charts, which are pivotal for presenting data in an intuitive and visually appealing manner.

The design choices of Sisense reflect its focus on technical users. It offers a high degree of customizability, allowing users to tailor the tool to their specific needs, a stark contrast to Power BI’s more standardized user experience.

This approach, while advantageous for technically adept users, suggests an area for improvement. Enhancing the user interface to be more intuitive for less technical users could broaden Sisense’s appeal, making it a more versatile tool in the BI landscape.

For further insights and detailed information on Sisense’s capabilities and use cases, their resource library is an invaluable resource.

Qlik Sense: Best for mobile users

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Pros

• Relatively affordable, especially for basic users and smaller teams
• Options for cloud, on-prem, and hybrid hosting
• Easily create custom applications and dashboards, even without extensive technical background

Cons

• Sometimes struggles with larger data sets
• May be cost-prohibitive for larger teams
• Add-ons cost extra

Our Rating: 4/5

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Key Features

• Conversational Queries: Qlik Sense prioritizes ease-of-use, even for less technical professionals, by enabling conversational queries and searches.
• Mobile-First Functionality: With strong mobile feature sets and 24/7 live support, users can make the most of their data wherever they are, whenever they need it.
• Predictive Analytics: Don’t just look to the past; prepare for what’s ahead. Qlik Sense makes it simple with predictive analytics functionality.
• User-Friendly Interface: Qlik Sense is intuitive and simple to use across multiple skill levels, making it just as useful for experts as it is for non-technical staff.

Pricing

• Free Trial
• Business: $30/month/user, billed annually
• Enterprise SaaS: Call for quote

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Why We Chose Qlik Sense

Qlik Sense brings to the table many of the same value propositions as its competitors on this list: convenience, robust functionality, customization, etc. Where it pulls away from the pack is how it prioritizes mobile functionality and provides full technical support. For teams that need access from everywhere and want to talk to a human being when things go wrong, Qlik Sense is a strong choice.

This focus provides a mobile app and responsive design, while also ensuring the full spectrum of Qlik Sense’s capabilities is accessible and fully functional on mobile devices.

Qlik Sense excels in areas crucial for mobile users: ease of use, performance, and support. The interface is designed with a mobile-first mindset, making it intuitive for users who may not have extensive technical expertise. Performance-wise, Qlik Sense efficiently handles large datasets on mobile devices, ensuring that users can access and analyze data quickly, without significant lag or compromise in functionality.

In comparison to Microsoft Power BI, Qlik Sense offers a more balanced approach. While Power BI is known for its deep integration with other Microsoft products and its advanced data modeling capabilities, Qlik Sense prioritizes a seamless mobile experience. This is particularly beneficial for teams that require constant access to data analytics across different locations and time zones.

The product design and user experience (UX) of Qlik Sense also contribute significantly to its appeal. The platform bridges the gap between backend data management and frontend user interaction, offering a cohesive experience that caters to both technical and non-technical users. This balance is crucial in a mobile context, where ease of navigation and clarity of information are paramount.

Our Ratings

Pricing: 3/5

General features and interface: 4/5

Core features: 4.8/5

Advanced features: 4.3/5

Integration and compatibility: 4/5

UX: 3.5/5

Bridging the gap between solutions that prioritize the back end and those that prioritize the front end, Qlik Sense offers a little bit of everything. It’s flexible enough to appeal to those with stronger tech expertise while being intuitive enough to be useful for those who lack it. 

What’s more, Qlik Sense has put anywhere operations at the core of their service, enabling access and usability from nearly anywhere with an internet connection. If teams need to stay connected across time zones and during travel, Qlik Sense should be on their shortlist of BI solution options.

While it excels in these areas, there’s always room for improvement, especially in terms of integrating more advanced AI capabilities and predictive analytics features, which are areas where competitors like Microsoft Power BI are advancing. By continuing to evolve in these aspects, Qlik Sense can further solidify its position as the go-to mobile BI tool.

When to use Microsoft Power BI

Despite the rich offerings of its peers on the market, Microsoft Power BI is still worth considering under certain circumstances. First and foremost, if your organization already relies on the Microsoft family of tools, Power BI makes sense as a solution, if for no other reasons than compatibility and integration.

Similarly, those running on Azure will find it easy to implement and deploy Power BI in Microsoft’s own environment.

Finally, if security is a major concern, Power BI is worth considering. Microsoft has built much of its reputation on security, stability, and reliability for business users. Its tools include extensive features and options for controlling access and permissions and make the work of managing even a distributed team with both business-owned and personal endpoints much easier.

When not to use Microsoft Power BI

Still, Microsoft Power BI has some odd limitations. For one, the interface is somewhat dated in looks, feel, and functionality. What’s more, it can require some time and technical skill to deploy, especially when implementing outside of a Microsoft-centric environment. Finally, despite its less intuitive interface, Power BI is not as powerful for advanced users as some of the other options on this list. 

Ultimately, which product you choose will come down to particulars in the use case and budget limitations. Hopefully, this list has offered some clarity on the matter and made the search a little easier. 

Choosing the right alternative to Microsoft Power BI

Choosing the right business intelligence software for your business is a major decision. Whether the reason is cost or your particular needs, it pays to do your research on the front end. For a more thorough analysis, check out our Business Intelligence Software Buyer’s Guide.

FAQs

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Software solutions can only be counted as such when the software actually addresses the pain points of your use case, and no tool is designed to meet every possible need. 

So, to help you find the PM platform that best meets your organization’s needs, let’s take a closer look at 7 major PM vendors, and how their app stands up to Microsoft’s offering.

• Wrike: Best for newcomers to PM software
• Jira: Best for IT and dev teams
• Smartsheet: Best for simple use cases
• Asana: Best for enterprise users
• Airtable: Best for data visualization
• Hive: Best for build-your-own PM usage
• Todoist: Best for soloprenuers and work-from-anywhere pros

Wrike – Best for newcomers to PM software

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Pros

• Offers multiple view modes, including Kanban and Gantt Chart modes
• “Activity Stream” helps users keep up-to-date on major developments across projects
• AI automation helps streamline task creation and management
• Invoicing and budgeting features

Cons

• Several core features, such as Gantt Chart view and project budgeting, are reserved for higher subscription tiers

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Key Features

Wrike is a cloud-based project management system designed to support collaboration for distributed teams. With a robust free plan that includes unlimited projects, unlimited subtasks and nesting levels, and up to 20 free external collaborator user accounts, it can provide solid functionality for growing teams or those new to PM software.

Paid plans for Wrike are middle-of-the-road, offering something between the low-cost options and the enterprise-focused options elsewhere on this list. For those wondering whether the free plan will cover their needs, or if they should pay for a Team or Business plan, rest easy knowing they offer a 14-day free trial of the Business plan, with no payment info required.

pricing

• Free plan available
• Team: $9.80/user/month
• Business: $24.80/user/month
• Enterprise: by quote
• Pinnacle: by quote

why w chose wrike

Wrike is an excellent mid-grade option for growing teams, organizations with very dynamic and diversified PM needs, or users that are still trying to determine the exact shape of their use case. The free plan and free trial provide ample opportunity for risk-free testing, and the moderate subscription fees keep paid usage from being outright prohibitive for most team budgets.

Wrike is a multi-service platform that’s cloud-based, and built to empower collaboration across decentralized and remote teams. The project management solution is designed with Agile methodology in mind, whether that’s teams of programmers or less technical departments employing a similar productivity strategy. 

PM functionality is just the beginning for Wrike, though. The vendor offers additional applications for marketers, creative services, professional services, and more. Beyond the team-based verticals, the platform also offers numerous add-ons and integrations to make it easier to implement Wrike into existing processes without increasing complexity or tech bloat.

For teams looking for a flexible and adaptive solution to their project management needs, Wrike is a good place to start.

Jira – Best for IT and dev teams

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Pros

• PM tools designed with developers and IT teams in mind
• Extensive options for privacy, security, and role-based permissions
• Flat-rate annual billing favors larger teams

Cons

• Not optimized to facilitate work outside of target demographic disciplines
• Setup and management require technical expertise

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Key Features

Jira is defined primarily by how its functionality prioritizes users in software engineering and related disciplines. All displays are in scrum or kanban board views, to better enable the style of planning and organization most teams running on agile use. 

Automation-powered bug-tracking tools help teams limit tedious busywork when creating or passing assignments back and forth, while cutting down on the risk of those details slipping through the cracks. 

Project managers can even get a high-level view of project timelines, zooming out to see projected estimates across multiple sprints and goalposts.

pricing

• Free
• Standard: $77.50 per month
• Premium: $152.50 per month
• Enterprise: by quote

why we chose jira

Jira is a highly specialized platform, making it less than ideal for use cases outside of development or network administration. But for those who have to deal with bugs, service tickets, and other pain points unique to the work of digital technology experts, Jira is second to none.

Jira is project management by agile developers, for agile developers. Brought to you by the same company behind Trello, Jira is a digital scrum board that equips technical teams with all the features needed to plan, organize, track, optimize, and troubleshoot tasks and projects across every sprint.

If you’re looking for a more casual, even-the-marketing-team-can-use-it project management tool, Jira’s not for you. The solution is heavily tailored to teams that report to CIOs and CTOs, even going so far as to add bug-tracking features, just for starters. 

Dashboard views are strictly scrum and kanban boards; setup and ongoing management both require a minimum level of technical know-how. And advanced controls for user permissions, security, and privacy are likely far more than other departments typically need. 

With a wealth of specialized, dev-centric bells and whistles, though, Jira is perfect for teams that need to make the most of their sprints and minimize process friction for their staff.

Smartsheet – Best for simple use cases

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Pros

• Simple, intuitive UI with a familiar format
• Low cost, minimal setup
• Surprisingly robust and flexible functionality

Cons

• May lack more advanced features
• Larger teams may find it a bit restrictive

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Key Features

Smartsheet comes with a recognizable format and toolset, but also includes a number of pre-built templates, customization options, and analytics features, putting the “smart” in Smartsheet. 

Beyond that, Smartsheet provides a variety of critical integration options and advanced management tools, allowing for calender sharing, data visualization, budget tracking, and more.

Above all else, though, Smartsheet’s greatest feature is its simplicity and ease of use. If you can navigate your way around an Excel sheet, you can easily put Smartsheet to use.

pricing

• Free plan available
• Pro: $9/user/month, billed yearly
• Business: $19/user/month, billed yearly
• Enterprise: by quote

why we chose smartsheet

Nearly every organization has experience dealing with spreadsheets in one form or another. That makes learning Smartsheet easy, since the format and features are built to mimic spreadsheets used elsewhere. With a low subscription cost and minimal setup or onboarding, Smartsheet is an excellent pick for teams with simple PM needs.

Smartsheet is exactly what the name implies: it’s the flexibility, simplicity, and familiarity of a spreadsheet, applied to project management needs. Designed with simplicity and straightforward functionality in mind, it has a more streamlined feature set than more comprehensive platforms. 

But that leaner toolset lends it to smaller, less complex use cases, and allows for speedy setup and onboarding. Paired with some of the lowest subscription fees available among leading solutions, and Smartsheet is perfect for teams that need an easy answer to their project management woes.

Asana – Best for enterprise users

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Pros

• 30-day free trial (twice as long as most competitors)
• Intuitive UI
• Easily adapted to support teams in numerous verticals
• Built to support organizations with large and complex teams and workflows

Cons

• Priced for enterprise users with larger budgets
• Free plans come with strict feature limitations
• Small teams may find it to be more than they need

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Key Features

Asana boasts an easy-to-learn, easy-to-use interface, making it easier to onboard teams and staff. Once they’re up and running, Asana makes it even easier to keep information, updates, and management in a single place. Clean, easy-to-read dashboards make staying up-to-date a breeze, and features like task dependencies and automation can minimize both wasted time and human error.

pricing

• Basic: Free
• Premium: $10.99/user/month, billed yearly
• Business: $24.99/user/month, billed yearly
• Enterprise: by quote

why we chose asana

No list of leading project management tools is complete without mentioning Asana. Most organizations that find other solutions lack critical features or functionality switch to Asana to get what they need. And while not every team needs every toggle and switch Asana can offer, few will find one it fails to provide.

Founded by former Facebook engineers, Asana was built as a direct response to the rapidly scaling growth seen in tech startups. Intended as a solution to the “meetings about meetings” problem, the platform is designed to allow teams to keep all pertinent information in a single location, reducing time spent digging through emails and shared drives.

Thanks to its robust feature set, its user-friendly design, and a wealth of knowledge in the resource library, Asana has quickly grown to be one of the foremost brands in the PM space. As a result, it also boasts one of the largest catalogs of API integration options in the market.

Asana is on the more expensive side, especially considering plans bill annually. And the platform can be overwhelming for smaller, leaner teams that may only need the kind of simple task tracking a kanban board might provide. But for growing teams that need a complete project management solution, Asana is a leading option to consider.

Airtable – Best for data visualization

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Pros

• Extensive data visualization options
• Views can be customized by individual users for personalized dashboards
• Can be either code-free or code-based as needed

Cons

• Solution limits attachments, data storage, records, and API integrations
• Subscription fees are on the higher end, especially for large user bases

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Key Features

Airtable boasts a streamlined, spreadsheet-centric design, with numerous added features that help users make the most of large datasets and extensive quantitative records. The deep analytics and visualization options may be a bit niche for most use cases, but for the kinds of users that are usually already elbow-deep in spreadsheets, it likely provides a wealth of functionality they can put to good use.

pricing

• Free plan available
• Plus: $10/user/month billed annually
  • $12/user when billed monthly
• Pro: $20/user/month billed annually
  • $24/user when billed monthly
• Enterprise: by quote

why we chose airtable

While Airtable does come with a higher price tag than most, and may prove a bit restrictive to teams that need to collaborate on a variety of large files or records, the tool is indispensable for use cases that prioritize data and reporting.

The deep analytics and visualization functionality are a must for any team that needs to crunch numbers and provide at-a-glance evidence of measurable changes to staff and management alike.

A spreadsheet-based PM solution like Smartsheet, Airtable sets itself apart by providing a data-first design scheme for teams that want to focus on the numbers and raw information. The platform comes with many of the simple, easy-to-use controls as its other spreadsheet-based peers, but goes a step further by including extensive options for data visualization and reporting.

Analytics can be customized across teams and by individual users, making it a breeze to focus on the information that’s most immediately relevant, regardless of who’s logging in. And with both code-free and code-based options, complexity can be customized to meet the level of expertise available to your users. 

For any team looking to make the data the start of their project management, Airtable is a solid choice.

Hive – Best for build-your-own PM usage

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Pros

• Low starting cost for subscriptions
• Add-ons can be used individually, allowing users to pay only for what they actually use
• Active, easy-to-reach customer support team
• AI-powered features, including automation and analytics

Cons

• Many “core” PM features are only accessible through add-ons
• Zapier implementation required for most key integration support

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key features

Hive offers a highly customizable project management solution to users. With a low starting cost, users can pick and choose from a variety of add-ons, paying for additional functionality on a case-by-case basis. While this can make full functionality more expensive than strictly necessary, for users that are looking for some but not all of what Hive has on offer, it can be an easy way to reduce subscription fees.

pricing

• Free plan available
• Teams: $12/user/month, with additional fees for add-on packages
• Enterprise: by quote

why we chose hive

No two use cases for project management software are the same, and neither are the budgets. Though its a relative newcomer to the PM market, Hive presents an alternative to the standard pricing models offered by most competitors. Rather than having subscription tiers akin to consumer cell phone plans, Hive offers add-ons for supplemental functionality. Add what you need, leave the rest, and pay only for what you’ll need to use.

One of the oldest frustrations, both for businesses and for consumers, is the issue of paying for features that aren’t necessary. No one likes paying for a cable subscription just to watch live sports, and many businesses likewise don’t want an enterprise PM tool when they only need select digital functions.

Hive provides a method of building your own solution by separating a number of tools into add-ons that would normally come standard on higher subscription tiers with competitors. This pricing model works best for use cases where teams need a limited number of features that aren’t typically combined in free or low-cost subscription tiers.

Todoist – Best for soloprenuers and work-from-anywhere pros

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Pros

• Individual users can get nearly everything they need PM-wise from the free plan
• Doubles as a personal to-do list and wellness app
• Automatic syncing helps keep you up-to-date
• Among the lowest subscription costs available

Cons

• Can prove limited in functionality for larger, more complex teams
• Free plan does lack a select few key features, including reminders, user roles, and automatic backups

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Todoist is an effective, if somewhat simple, project management solution. But it’s also a to-do list, a productivity-boosting wellness app, and more. Branded as a tool for achieving better work/life balance, it’s perfect for professionals who have felt those two aspects of their day-to-day bleeding into each other in the past few years.

Key Features

Todoist is an effective, if somewhat simple, project management solution. But it’s also a to-do list, a productivity-boosting wellness app, and more. Branded as a tool for achieving better work/life balance, it’s perfect for professionals who have felt those two aspects of their day-to-day bleeding into each other in the past few years.

pricing

• Free plan available
• Pro: $4/user/month billed annually
  • $5/user when billed monthly
• Business: $6/user/month billed annually
  • $8/user when billed monthly

Why we chose todoist

Todoist is an effective, if somewhat simple, project management solution. But it’s also a to-do list, a productivity-boosting wellness app, and more. Branded as a tool for achieving better work/life balance, it’s perfect for professionals who have felt those two aspects of their day-to-day bleeding into each other in the past few years.

With more and more professionals making the shift to partial or complete self-employment, tools that can help them balance both work and personal responsibilities are more valuable than ever. That’s where Todoist comes in. It’s a step up for those who have been relying on their personal Google calendar as their default scheduling assistant, without actually costing the equivalent of an employee’s salary.

Microsoft Project advantages

For years, Microsoft Project was an on-premise-only solution, like most of the Microsoft Office suite. Recently, the PM tool has been tweaked to better align with market trends, and their own Office 365 suite of applications. The result is a refreshed Microsoft Project with two variations: Project Online (which is cloud-based), and Project Pro (which is local to the device, and available offline).

While the cloud-based and on-prem variations come with the benefits and drawbacks of either format, just as any other solution would, the big advantage of using Microsoft Project in any form is how it connects to the rest of the Microsoft family of apps. Project Online and Project Pro both integrate seamlessly into Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and everything else your organization is likely using from the O365 suite of tools. 

In other words, if you’re already on the Microsoft bandwagon, using Microsoft Project will likely extend and expand the value you’re getting. 

Microsoft Project disadvantages

Microsoft’s proprietary integrations are both its greatest strength and its greatest weakness. Teams that lean on Microsoft tools for their stability and security will benefit from keeping everything in-house. But those that don’t will likely have little reason to prioritize Microsoft Project over other PM options.

Even those that use some or all of O365’s offerings may find Microsoft Project’s enterprise-level pricing too rich for their current budget, especially if their PM needs are relatively straightforward. 

Finding the right Microsoft Project alternative for you

Which solution is the best for your team? It all depends on circumstance. No software tool has universal application across the board. The only way to find an app that will provide the needed return on investment is to match the needs and budget to the available options. Hopefully this article has helped make that effort a little easier for you and your team. 

Looking for the latest in Project Management solutions? Check out our Project Management Software Buyer’s Guide.

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So you have all of this lead info in your CRM … now what? Having a way to follow up with leads is great, but if it’s inefficient it’s no better than using your email client’s contact list. That’s where CRM customer segmentation comes into play.

By grouping leads based on relevant characteristics and following up based on their interests and buyer stage, you improve the odds that they will find your nurture campaigns and outreach helpful (rather than annoying). But how would one go about doing such a thing?

What is customer segmentation and why is it important?

Let’s talk about socks for a moment. If you’re in the business of selling socks, you can try selling ankle socks to everyone you meet. “Who doesn’t need socks?” you might say. “This product is truly universal.”

But that’s a professional fallacy. The wiser option is to try and identify characteristics that different sock buyers have in common. Do women or men buy more ankle socks? Are athletes more inclined to buy them or less? Does their history of shoe purchases factor into the decision? Is weather or geography a factor?

By breaking the pool of potential customers into groups based on their relationship to the core offering, you can build a profile of attributes that aids in recognizing other leads that likely fall into a given group. 

If you have a good idea of what the lead is looking for and why, the work of meeting that need becomes a lot easier.

The “how” of CRM customer segmentation

Before we go any further, it’s important to know that customer segmentation is a useful business process with or without software tools like CRM. Using applications to automate parts of the process and reduce the workload can facilitate better implementation of the strategy with lower overhead.

Keep in mind that, like segmentation parameters, CRM tools and what they can do will vary by vendor. Interfaces, options, and functions all depend on the tool, subscription tier, integrations being used, and a host of other factors.

In this section we’ll cover general best practices and provide some examples with broad application for a majority of use cases.

1. Define the segments

This whole step could be a dissertation on its own. In fact, the subject has been given that very treatment both in print and online. Rather than try to distill that kind of wisdom into a few hundred words, let’s instead cover some guidelines to get you started.

When defining segments, the primary objectives are quantifying levels of interest and highlighting the factors at play for the decision-makers. Criteria for these distinctions will differ wildly based on brand offerings, ICPs, and a lot of other things. 

They might include details such as:

• Age
• Gender
• Nationality
• Industry
• Education level
• Socioeconomics
• Nationality
• Political, religious, or philosophical leaning

How you get information like this from your audience will depend on what systems and campaigns you have in place already. Ebook downloads, blog visits, newsletter signups, survey answers — all can be used to help gather details that will aid in segmentation.

Finally, never underestimate the value of feedback from the front lines. Sales and customer support agents should be seen as the treasure trove of voice for customer insights. Interview them to learn about the complaints and compliments they hear from leads and customers alike. 

Why are people buying or signing up? Why are they passing on the deal? Why do they stick around or walk away? These are questions that should guide the segmentation and define how different groups are pursued (or in some cases even discouraged from buying). 

It sounds like a lot of work, and it is. But the better you can pin down these details the more effective a sales/marketing follow-up will be with any segment you establish. Once the parameters are in place then and only then can the software do its job. 

2. Leverage the CRM

With the plethora of available CRM options on the market, a comprehensive step-by-step guide for segmenting using every tool would be quite the fool’s errand. Instead we’ll cover some basics and then use the ever-popular Hubspot platform as an example of how a CRM can be used.

Once you’ve determined personas, characteristics, and metrics that can be used to categorize leads you’ll need to do some setup so the app knows how to sort leads automatically. This is done by building lists.

Rather than painstakingly adding each relevant lead to the appropriate segmentation category, you can use smart lists. Set the criteria for who should and shouldn’t be in the list and it will update automatically as contacts meet those criteria. 

Once lists are in place it’s on to building workflows. These automate sales and marketing functions, like sending prebuilt emails. Then you can set enrollment triggers to further track the progress of leads from a list as they move through the sales process. 

You can also add branches to the workflow (e.g. “Did they answer ‘Yes’ to the survey? Then they go on to receive emails A, B, and C.”). This enables further breakdowns and subdividing, allowing you to send increasingly targeted and specific follow-ups. 

Finally, you can set workflows to apply additional actions to contacts that have met various enrollment conditions in a given branch.

In summary, the system is designed to give you the ability to send more meaningful communications to your leads. You can learn more about the details of HubSpot’s segmentation tools below.

An extensive rundown of CRM vendors, their pros and cons, and what use cases match which tool could be helpful at this stage. There’s also this Sales CRM guide.

3. Analyze and iterate

A word of warning: no successful sales or marketing pro ever “sets and forgets” a strategy or process. Long-term sustainable growth is always tied to self-reflection and self-improvement. Most CRMs know this and build their tools specifically to meet this need.

How reporting and analytics work depends on the software in question, but whichever CRM you’ve chosen you should put that data to good use. Look at the numbers and identify patterns of success and failure. Do your segments match buyer intent? Do the characteristics or criteria need tweaking to more accurately separate leads?

Test, review, revise, and iterate. Find what works, ditch what doesn’t, and try again. Failure can be an asset and an effective teacher provided you fail fast and adapt quickly.

The “why” of customer segmentation

The main factor determining what goes into the spam folder and what doesn’t for users is relevance. And low relevance is nearly always a result of low effort. 

In other words, lazy outreach alienates leads. Reactions may range from apathy to annoyance, but there’s no shade of “positive” among them.

Sales and marketing teams that want to find success with their efforts to generate leads and nurture conversations will need to step up their game — and back away from the “reply all” button.

In summary

When you treat the “leads” in your CRM as “people,” everyone wins. The tech can help with that. It is, in fact, uniquely designed to facilitate that kind of endeavor.

Looking for the latest in CRM solutions to get your customer segmentation under way? Check out our CRM Software Buyer’s Guide.

FAQs

The post Best Practices for Customer Segmentation with CRM appeared first on TechnologyAdvice.

Also Read: Asana vs. Basecamp: A Head-to-Head Comparison

If you’re looking for a PM tool, and want to know about alternatives to Basecamp, this is the article for you. For more information on how we make our choices, read our methodology.

Our picks for the top Basecamp alternatives

• Monday—Best for general use
• Smartsheet—Best for IT simplicity
• Wrike—Best for cross-department implementation
• Jira—Best for tech-savvy users
• ClickUp—Best for growing SMB teams
• Trello—Best free option

monday: Best for general users

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Pros

• Robust product scheduling, with native task management
• Customizable by industry
• Facilitates easy coordination with both internal and external contributors
• Free for up to two seats

Cons

• Most advanced features require paid subscriptions, with some (like Gantt charts) only accessible to higher tiers

MONDAY Key features

• Automation options, with plenty of customizability
• Easy to deploy rapidly, both in the system, and among the users
• Features Gantt charts, Kanban boards, timeline views, and more

MONDAY Pricing

• Free — no cost, up to two seats
• Basic — $9 per seat per month, billed annually, or $12 per seat billed monthly
• Standard — $12 per seat per month, billed annually, or $14 per seat billed monthly
• Pro — $19 per seat per month, billed annually, or $24 per seat billed monthly
• Enterprise — Call for quote

Why we chose Monday

Monday is a solid mid-market option for those looking for more features but lower cost. It offers a great deal more functionality than more widely known “free” tools, while keeping costs manageable for small and growing teams. It’s easy to set up quickly, and easy to learn. Plus, with a free version, users can test to their hearts’ content to decide if it’s right for them.

monday.com is a software solution with a brand name that may lead to some confusion at first. It’s not uncommon for teams adjusting to the tool to have to clarify “is it in Monday, or on Monday?” But chronological confusion aside, it’s a platform with a lot to offer teams with straightforward PM needs and tight budgets.

It’s built to boost efficiency, effectiveness, and savings on overhead for numerous departments, including software development, sales, HR, and marketing. Some more advanced features may require the right subscription tier, but even then, most monday.com subscriptions are lower in cost than many of its equivalents in the market.

Smartsheet: Best for IT simplicity

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Pros

• PM features with broad applicability
• Plentiful third-party integrations
• Enhanced IT controls for privileges, security, etc.

Cons

• Limited storage for free and Pro plans
• Advanced automation and customization features restricted to Business and Enterprise plans only

Smartsheet Key features

• Free plan for those with smaller teams or who need to try the solution first
• Numerous integrations with other business productivity apps
• Simplicity and familiarity of a spreadsheet, with much more functionality
• IT teams will find it easy to implement, easy to manage, and easy to leverage for data privacy

Smartsheet Pricing

• Free
• Pro: $9/user/month, billed yearly
• Business: $19/user/month, billed yearly
• Enterprise: by quote

Why we chose Smartsheet

One major component of adopting new software is the burden it places on technical teams to get up and running. Smartsheet is sensitive to this concern, and is designed to meet PM needs while limiting the labor required to get the system up to speed. What’s more, the deep user management controls will help alleviate issues regarding privacy, access rights, and more.

Smartsheet takes a different approach to project management software. While other solutions design their own UIs, attempting to make them intuitive despite being proprietary, Smartsheet leverages the ubiquity of other software to make its own more accessible. 

Smartsheet is, at its core, a supercharged spreadsheet. For teams that have previously tracked finances, work schedules, and other business processes using this old office standby, using Smartsheet will feel natural and instinctive. Much of the skills for using spreadsheets transfer over, and that alone can make it an easy sell for teams that are on the hunt for PM software.

Wrike: Best for cross-department implementation

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Pros

• Generous free functionality, and low-cost plans
• Native task management, and unlimited task nesting
• Free user seats for external collaborators

Cons

• Lacks Gantt chart functionality for free users
• Storage and other features require higher tiers to access/increase

Wrike Key features

• Straightforward, easy-to-use PM and task management
• Reporting features, automation, and options for data security
• Ample free accounts, including external contributors
• Quick to implement, quick to learn

Wrike Pricing

• Free
• Team — $9.80/user/month
• Business — $24.80/user/month
• Enterprise — Call for quote
• Pinnacle — Call for quote

Why we chose Wrike

Few PM solutions support implementation in as many departments as Wrike. With a platform designed to facilitate improved productivity in sales, marketing, HR, IT, software development, data science, legal, and a whole lot more, Wrike offers a uniform solution for teams looking to boost their efficiency while still maintaining a single source of truth for their productivity.

Wrike is a cloud-based project management system designed to support collaboration for distributed teams. Their free plan offers a majority of their key features, with their low-tier plans adding additional key functionality for a moderate cost. And for those looking for every bell and whistle they have to offer, there are two separate tiers for bespoke service and pricing.

Where Wrike really excels is in how it prevents additional bloat to the tech stack. By using a single PM tool for productivity tracking in multiple (if not all) departments, mid-sized organizations can limit overhead and wasted resources, all without subscribing for a dozen new tools.

Jira: Best for tech-savvy users

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Pros

• Purpose-built with IT, DevOps, software development, and other technical teams in mind
• Robust controls for security, privacy, and permissions
• Benefits larger teams with flat-rate annual billing

Cons

• Interface less user-friendly for those without coding experience
• Requires more expertise for both setup and maintenance than most PMs

jira Key features

• Strong scrum and kanban support
• Focused functionality for a core target demographic
• UI is less rigid, more customizable, providing more freedom to tech-savvy users
• Core features include tools for software development, service ticketing, debugging, etc.

jira Pricing

• Free
• Standard — $7.75/user/month
• Premium — $15.25/user/month 
• Enterprise — Call for quote

Why we chose Jira

Jira is built by technical experts for technical experts. Designed for the kind of users who could potentially code their own UI from scratch if needed, Jira offers more customization than potentially any other solution…provided you know how to work the tools on the back end. For teams that are poorly served by the vast majority of out-of-the-box solutions, Jira is a solid choice.

In every market, there are the generalist, and the specialists. There are multitools, and there are precision instruments. And, much as a trade professional often uses tools that the average DIY-er doesn’t even own, so it is with software that caters to very specific use cases.

Jira is a precision instrument for project management in technical teams. IT teams, development teams, and other professionals with extensive experience with computer systems are accustomed to having to build their own solutions to problems. That’s why Jira makes that process easier for them with increased customization and UI controls.

For those who are less familiar with computer code, system configurations, and terms like API and ETL, Jira may be a poor fit. The UI will likely feel somewhat alien and difficult to adopt. But for those in its target market, it’s a toolbox with just about everything the need.

ClickUp: Best for growing SMB teams

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Pros

• Enterprise-level functionality for an affordable price
• Intuitive UI and hassle-free implementation
• Numerous visualization options (including unlimited Gantt charts)

Cons

• Requires time and skill investments to capitalize on advanced features
• Android app users occasionally report buggy experience

Clickup Key features

• Bottomless Gantt charts
• Native chat app functionality
• Customizable  dashboard widgets and other UI elements

Clickup Pricing

• Free
• Unlimited — $9/user/month, or $5/user/month when billed annually
• Business — $19/user/month, or $12/user/month when billed annually
• Business Plus — $29/user/month, or $19/user/month when billed annually
• Enterprise — Call for quote

Why we chose ClickUp

It can be hard to find full feature sets for reduced subscription costs, but ClickUp offers just that. For growing teams trying to scale, teams with complex processes, or teams expecting growing pains to interfere with operations and efficiency, ClickUp offers a platform that can carry them through the ebbs and flows as teams shift and expand.

One of the biggest impediments to adopting new software is the issue of future-proofing. How long with a tool be viable before its limitations result in diminishing returns? Is it worth it to invest in software today, if it will have to be traded out in a few years? What if this results in operations grinding to a halt in the process of upgrading to a new system?

ClickUp can help teams avoid this very issue. The platform brings enterprise-grade functionality to the table, but offers prices more manageable for growing teams and tight budgets (especially if paid for yearly). For any but the most niche of use cases, ClickUp is a compelling option in the space.

Trello: Best free option

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Pros

• The simplicity of sticky notes, in digital form
• Easy to learn, free to use
• Paid tiers offer critical added functionality

Cons

• May lack many features required for more complex use cases
• Integrations and more advanced management tools require paid subscription

trello Key features

• Digital kanban board, with added task management and collaboration features
• Get nearly the entire tool for free
• Paid users can leverage automations, integrations, and other advanced features

trello Pricing

• Free
• Standard — $6/user/month, $5/user/month billed annually
• Premium — $12.50/user/month, $10/user/month billed annually
• Enterprise — Sliding scale based on user base

Why we chose Trello

Trello’s two primary value propositions are its freemium subscription model, and its painfully intuitive interface. Free users get access to all of the most important features at no cost. And anyone who’s ever used computers and sticky notes already knows how to use Trello’s UI.

It’s hard to argue with the power of an elegant solution. Trello is a perfect example. The feature set is slim and focused, built around a core user interface that takes just moments to learn. Best of all, it can be used for free.

When considering the cost of new software, even a free solution comes with a price—that of time. Time is needed to learn how to use it. Time is needed to implement the system. Time is needed to manage, and train, and update, and…the list goes on. 

Trello is different. The entire platform functions using the same drag-and-drop controls that digital devices have depended on for decades. For teams with simple use cases, no time to implement complex tools, and tight budgets, Trello is hard to beat.

Also read: Slack vs. Basecamp

When to use Basecamp

While sharing much in common with many of its peers in the project management space, Basecamp does have a few unique value propositions that help it stand out. First and foremost, it offers free accounts for teachers and students, making it a standout choice for those particular use cases.

Beyond that, it includes native chat and collaboration functionality, as well as seamless calendar syncing for busy, asynchronous, and distributed teams. 

When not to use Basecamp

Because Basecamp shares many of the core features offered by the competitors in the rest of this list, many find other options a better fit in an alternative. Its cost is higher than most, so if budget is a primary factor, there are comparable budget options. 

And without either a free plan (except for education users) or separate tiers for different user levels, it’s often a poor fit for those who don’t need the whole package (or who need to limit user functionality based on roles). 

How we choose our top picks

At TechnologyAdvice, we assess a wide range of factors before selecting our top choices for a given category. To make our selections, we rely on our extensive research, product information, vendor websites, competitor research, and first-hand experience. We then consider what makes a solution best for customer-specific needs. By defining business needs, we can determine the essential features organizations in various sectors require and select platforms that will cover all bases.

Reputable providers known for their ease of use and customer satisfaction are added to our compilation list for further analysis. We then evaluate each solution on the list based on the features it offers, considering the platform’s usability, integration capabilities, customization options, mobile access, and any other relevant functionalities. Price plans, hidden fees, customer reviews, and customer support are also assessed in the selection process.

TechnologyAdvice writers will often take advantage of free trials and demos to get a first-hand user experience of available software. Finally, we curate a comprehensive list based on the previously stated factors, ensuring readers have the necessary tools to make an informed decision.

The post 6 Best Basecamp Alternatives for 2024 appeared first on TechnologyAdvice.

As a rule, the majority of businesses are looking to grow their revenue. Establishing a consistent sales cycle is the first step in transitioning from “spray-and-pray” to dependable payday.

What is a sales cycle, and why are they important?

What “selling” looks like depends heavily on a number of factors: organization type and size, industry, location, target market, etc. This means the process—and how the process can be refined—will also vary across these factors. 

For consumer brands, this may involve digital shopping carts, retargeting efforts, and other less personal tools, and fewer direct touchpoints. On the other hand, B2B brands or large-ticket sales may involve a measure of lead management to limit wasted efforts and reduce overhead.

In a nutshell, though, a “sales cycle” is a model that describes how potential sales become actual sales. This model is used to conceptualize and quantify the very fluid and qualitative nature of the buyer journey, from prospect to purchase.

A sales cycle has seven steps: 

We’ll go into each of these in depth below, but this is the core of the concept. Sales don’t magically happen. There are factors that drive, hinder, and influence the entire journey, which means it can be managed to improve outcomes.

That said, it’s critical to keep in mind one important detail: your sales cycle is like a deer crossing sign. It doesn’t determine where or how things happen. It can only describe what happens naturally. For that “sign” to work as intended, it has to be accurate. The less accurate it is, the less useful the sign will be.

For a quick buffer on sales pipeline terminology, click here to scroll down.

Step 1: Prospecting

Okay, with that annoyingly needful tangent taken care of, let’s jump into the nuts and bolts of the answer you came here for.

Most sales cycles start at the point of discovery for potential leads/customers/clients. In a very real sense, the furthest upstream you can start with a potential customer is the initial moment of brand awareness. Or, in some cases, even the moment they first learn of the kind of solution your brand offers. 

Whatever their initial level of awareness, most sales teams seek to steer that discovery process, to more effectively point leads in the right direction. These efforts, especially when they take the form of outbound efforts, are referred to as “prospecting.” 

Now, there are countless individual tactics that can be used in outreach, from advertising to physical junk mail. But the key to improving the ROI of prospecting activities is applying those efforts with more accurate targeting. Sure, you can mail a catalog to every address in the country, but it’s not necessarily worth the investment. 

Instead, success is easier to find when you can find relevant conversations already happening online, and use those as a way to identify better candidates. Social media actually makes this remarkably easy (at least in comparison to decades past). But manually scouring the internet for the leads you want to chase is an approach that’s nearly impossible to scale. 

So, we recommend leveraging solutions like LinkedIn Sales Navigator to make the process easier.

Step 2: Outreach (and the automation thereof)

Like prospecting, better outreach results in higher conversion rates. And, like prospecting, outreach, nurturing, and follow-up efforts can be hard to scale when done manually. On the other hand, the more spammy, impersonal, and thoughtless, the less likely the outreach will positively influence lead performance.

In other words, it’s a bit of a tightrope walk. You can’t exactly type up and send every email, text, social message, etc. by hand. But people catch on pretty quick to having their buyer’s journey outsourced to bargain brand Skynet (and they’re not typically fond of it). 

Even the most aggressive, intrusive, and salesy outreach or advertisements can be received positively when it speaks directly to a buyer’s need. 

Start your automation with the parts of the process that are already the most transactional. Confirmation emails, appointment reminder texts, sales receipts, and the like. This alone will dramatically reduce the burden on sales, marketing, fulfillment, and pretty much everyone else who deals with leads or customers. 

From there, apply automation to anything you’re already seeing success when done in bulk (but are sinking too much time into by performing manually). Not every communication has to be bespoke, especially if you can craft messaging that’s compelling enough that your prospects feel seen despite automated distribution. 

As for how to implement automation (especially if you want to track its effectiveness so it can be optimized), we recommend using a tool like HubSpot Sales hub.

Step 3: Qualification station

With the right tools and processes in place, there will be minimal effort from sales staff until prospects begin self-selecting and interacting with your brand of their own free will. That may be signing up for a newsletter, or asking to schedule a demo, or any number of markers that can be used to flag them in the system for follow up.

Once they hit this point, though, it’s up to your team to start sifting and sorting based on use case fit. You can, of course, just dump the whole bucket down the rest of the funnel, but that’s a “work harder, not smarter” approach, and there’s a better way.

Put simply: higher quality leads = better results.

So, vet your leads. Take a look at your data and find the attributes that all of your most profitable sales and highest CLV accounts have in common. Then, use those attributes as qualifiers, and prioritize leads according to how well they fit the ICP. 

Remember, the “buyer’s journey” has value as a concept because of how it puts the focus on the customer’s experience. The better their purchase meets their needs and provides a positive return, the happier they will be. So, if you can pin down the predictors tied to your happiest customers, you focus your efforts on the leads who will end up like them.

Those that don’t qualify can still be left with a positive opinion of the brand, provided you point them to a solution that better meets their needs. And, in the case that the buyer might actually just be a “problem child” that no one wants to deal with? Then, you’re doing your team a double favor by letting a competitor try and meet their ridiculous demands. 

The good news is, because most of the qualifying metrics are essentially yes/no questions (they clicked, signed up, agreed to, responded to, opened the link, etc.), they can be used to automate a lot of the sifting. Our programmer friends would call these “logic gates,” and the right software tools can help you set up these true/false tests to sort leads in real time.

A number of solutions facilitate this kind of automation-enhanced approach, though perhaps most famous among them is Salesforce, and it’s a solid place to start your search.

Step 4: Building and nurturing relationships

Ideally, leads only reach the point of talking to a real person after being thoroughly vetted by the previous stages. A non-trivial portion of society now avoids unnecessary human contact where they can (who calls when you can just text?), and this can work in your favor during steps 1–3. At some point, though, you’ll want to start making the most of your sales pros.

This is the stage in the process where you do that.

When the first three steps are working as intended, the leads that reach this point should be prime candidates, and you should see a lot less wasted effort. That said, no matter how effective the prospecting and qualifying systems, no pipeline is free of “cracks,” and there’s no replacement for the human touch.

The problem here, however, is how this step is often the most difficult to quantify, measure, and manage. A lot can be optimized and improved if you have the right data and analytics, but without a way to track success rates, tactics used, touchpoints involved, and so forth, it can be hard to know if success or failure is due to skill or circumstance. 

Again, proper implementation of software tools will be your best friend, here. Solutions like Nimble CRM can, when used correctly, track many of these details and help identify the top performers from those who just got a lucky assignment. With the right optics, you can map out best practices, identify poor product performance, and even inform decisions about future offerings.

Step 5: Pitching

Your team has been hunting for leads, has done outreach, and started vetting and nurturing those leads. Once all of that has been done, it’s time to shoot your shot. Sure, you could go on coaxing and shmoozing leads indefinitely. At some point, though, you’ll need to cut to the chase and invite them to either make the deal or walk away. 

For most teams, if any part of the procedure has already been converted to a standardized, team-wide process, it’s this. And you may very well have done so with positive results. But there’s always something you can tweak or improve to increase success rates or reduce required effort. 

In this case, we recommend using tools that cut back on the time and investment needed to create engaging, visually appealing pitch decks. 

ClearSlide, for example, is a solid solution that can easily be used to create beautiful interactive sales presentations. And while “making it sparkle” won’t necessarily land you the deal, it’s better than a bland spreadsheet, and it certainly doesn’t hurt. 

Step 6: Reassurance

We mentioned above how some prospects, even ideal matches, may need more than just some compelling copy and a gentle “sign here, please” to commit. Unless your a consumer buying holiday gifts online, “buying” tends to involve more than just buttons for “add to cart” and “buy now.” 

Whatever the case, leads that hit this stage should be worth the additional effort (one would hope, at least). So, take this opportunity to make a final evaluation as to whether they, in fact, are not worth the trouble in the long run. After all, problematic leads frequently turn out to be problematic clients, and the last thing your team needs is another demanding, grumpy customer.

Trustpilot, and platforms like it, can be a goldmine for purposes like this. And don’t sweat it too much if you don’t have a perfect score. We all know that things that seem too good to be true usually are, so if a product or brand has a five-star rating from all 10,000 reviews, it looks a little suspicious. Let them see who liked what you offer, and who was dissatisfied with it.

Odds are, if they find someone who makes valid complaints that speak to their unique situation, and they turn down the offer as a result, then they would have been unhappy after the sale no matter what you did. That’s honestly the best possible outcome in those cases.

Step 7: Closing

With any luck, this reaches its conclusion with a “sign on the dotted line” discussion, a hand shake, and the start of a long, positive relationship with your brand. That being said, much of the future depends on the kind of foundation you lay as you kick things off.

All too often, sales teams promise new clients the moon, then pass them off to the fulfillment team, who only has enough rocket fuel to get them to Jersey. 

Now, as for all that “sign on the dotted line” stuff, there are tools for that, too. Pipedrive, for instance, can help with deal management and closing, making it easier to put all those agreements and expectations on paper (well, digital documentation, at the very least).

Sales Pipeline Terminology

If you know anything about business terminology, you know that no matter the industry, someone’s always trying to come up with a new name for a thing that already exists. At this point, finding consensus on a given piece of jargon is like scoring a high-rez photo of Bigfoot.

So before we go any further, let’s clear up some muddled bits of linguistic diversity.

The terms below try to define and give shape to different aspects of sales efforts, from lead/buyer behavior to internal processes and metrics, to tools for aiding in projections and business decisions. At their core, though, all of them are used to try and make success in sales easier to achieve.

• Sales cycle: as mentioned above, the sales cycle is an outline of the path customers commonly take from initial brand awareness to committing to a purchase. The term is similar in usage to “buyer’s journey,” though there are few distinctions (more on that in a bit).

• Sales process: this term refers to internal activities, policies, and best practices. The “process,” as the name would imply, is the established protocol that sales staff use to guide buyers through the cycle.

• Sales pipeline: pipelines consist of a series of metrics, gates, and checkpoints that allow the cycle to be quantified and monitored. Without the pipeline, you might be aware of what a lead has to go through before the sale, but you don’t have an effective way to track where they currently are on that road. 

• Sales methodology: your sales methodology defines your approach to sales efforts. It’s equal parts philosophy and best practice, and serves as a collection of guiding principles for the sales team. 

• Sales model: the model helps translate the methodology into processes. Sales methodology might determine priorities and identify preferred approaches, (e.g. “higher retention before higher sales” or “tackle inbound leads first”), while the model defines how teams should actually make those things happen.

• Sales funnel: the funnel is the high-level, numbers-focused perspective on the entire sales system. It helps anticipate conversion rates, quantify potential profits, and determine appropriate KPIs. When you’re making projections on how many leads will become buyers, and thus how many leads are needed to hit revenue targets, you’re using the funnel to do it. 

• Buyer’s journey: Finally, the buyer’s journey is, in many ways, an alternative to the sales cycle (and possibly other terms in this list). Most of these terms are expressed from the seller’s perspective, while the buyer’s journey flips that around. The sales cycle says “how do we turn a lead into a sale?” while the buyer’s journey asks “what does the buyer need for the sale to be worth it to them?”

Odds are, you’ve heard, read, or even discussed one or more of these terms in your professional career. And odds are also good that you’ve been part of a team that defined these terms differently than what’s described here. The lines here are pretty fuzzy, and it’s not uncommon for terms to be switched around, used interchangeably, or employed as an umbrella that covers multiple areas of focus.

We’re not saying that our definitions are absolute. Quite the opposite, and that’s part of the problem. But in the age of SEO keywords and internet visibility, having a baseline is important when you’re trying to gather information on the topic. Otherwise, you end up digging through dozens of Wikipedia pages and blog articles, only to end up more confused than you started.

Making the right decisions for your business

Navigating the intricacies of the sales cycle is akin to conducting a symphony, where each movement must be executed with precision and harmony. From the initial prospecting to the final closing, understanding and optimizing each stage is crucial for a successful sales journey. Remember, the effectiveness of your sales cycle is not just about pushing a product or service; it’s about creating a seamless, engaging experience for the customer, one that resonates with their needs and expectations. 

By leveraging the right tools and strategies at each stage, businesses can transform their sales cycle from a mere process into a powerful engine driving growth and customer satisfaction. This journey, though complex, is a rewarding one, offering invaluable insights into customer behavior and opportunities for continuous improvement. As we’ve explored, the sales cycle is not just a pathway to revenue; it’s a roadmap to building lasting relationships and a resilient, thriving business.

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