Although it can often be fluid, maintaining a relationship with your customers can also sometimes get very complicated. For example, if you only have a few employees trying to deal with a growing number of customers, how are you supposed to keep track of all the dialogue and that’s exchanged? Or what those same customers are saying about you online? Or even something as simple as how much money they still owe on their account?

Streamlining your business to avoid costly mistakes is certainly the way to go, as any slowdowns can make the difference between success and failure in the high stakes world of small business ownership. Because CRM is one of the most vital, yet most complex, parts of your business, we would like to help you make the most of it. Thus we looked up the existing solutions and selected the best apps to create the most efficient CRM strategy for your business, at the lowest cost possible and with the highest results.

1. Establish the First Contact with SnapEngage

Whether people visit your website to learn about your product or to get a problem resolved, they have questions they need you to answer. If you are not easily reachable on your website, or if your visitors can’t find what they are looking for easily, they are likely to leave within a minute. According to an informal survey, the average bounce rate for a website is around 40%. Instead of letting customers wander around trying to find the info they need and then leave, why not pop up immediately and get to work?

SnapEngage is one of the more efficient Live Chat Tool available on the market. It lets you give immediate customer assistance to anyone who visits your website. Being available for your customer translates to higher customer retention and more sales. Plus, knowing you are simply a click away to help with anything they need means customers feel safe using your product.

2. Convert with OpenCal

Tired of playing phone tag with customers or clients? Wish there was an online option, one where everyone could see a central calendar and schedule meetings according to availability? How about one that lets you import this calendar directly onto your company website? Even better, customers can also schedule their meetings without registration! Did you know a tourism group in Germany saw an 8.5% increase in conversion when they eliminated their registration form?

Well, that option is here, and it’s called OpenCal. With OpenCal, clients can book online appointments with you in less than 30 seconds. If you don’t have a company website, it comes with a free search engine optimized website that displays everything your customers and clients need to know about your company. It’s accessible from any computer with an Internet connection and even features drag-and-drop scheduling options!

3. Engage with TimetoNote

When a company forgets important details about a customer’s life span, nobody wins. The customer certainly doesn’t as they’re forced to either constantly repeat the same information or go with another company. Your employees don’t as they spend precious time deciphering the exact problem instead of solving it.

This is exactly why TimetoNote was invented. It’s a terrific app to keep full track of every single detail of a customer’s history. Whether it’s a crucial phone call or a small update to their profile, your employees will have everything at their disposal to quickly resolve every issue that comes up with every customer. Never again embarrassingly send the same apology email twice, or miss an important fact – such as that the customer is hearing impaired and needs special arrangements when calling in.

4. Invoice with Yendo

Everyone is looking for the best accounting software for their small business. Unless they have a full time accountant working for them, handling the books in-house is a time consuming chore. One accounting app that’s getting a lot of positive buzz is Yendo. It allows you to share your accounts with your advisors in real time, create reports in an instant, send and manage invoices online, manage taxes and much more! It’s a full business accounting app and not just invoicing software. It’s also far less limited than many accounting apps, as it is available in 17 countries.

5. Follow with UberVU

What are people saying about you on the Internet? Is the feedback positive or negative? Never before have businesses had as much insight into their customer’s minds. Now there’s a way to organize all the chatter with the uberVU app. It scours the ‘net for you and finds what people really think of your business. Is an angry customer trashing you on a forum? Or did a blogger write a glowing review about you – one that should be rewarded with a free month of service or perhaps a free branded t-shirt?

With uberVU, you can find and track these sentiments, all the while better understanding your customers… and what you can improve! Customers are almost always willing to stick with a company that listens to them and adapts to match their expectations. Studies have shown companies with loyal customers have 60% higher profits, and one way to increase loyalty is through encouraging and listening closely to customer feedback.

Customer relationship management is integral to any business. After all, a business won’t stay in business very long without customers. If your CRM is getting out of hand, get a handle on it with these handy apps from AppDirect.

Further, signing up with these apps through AppDirect makes your job even easier. When you manage these apps through your AppDirect account, you can pay for all of them at one time, assign the right users from your team to each app, and manage all of your apps with a single sign-on. And no credit card is required to get it started! Almost all of the AppDirect apps offer a free trial to let you find the solution that works best for your business. The suggested bundle above is only one of the many bundle of apps you can create on AppDirect. Register now for free and make your own!