Close CRM: Enhancing Sales with Integrated Communication

Close Overview

Close, a dynamic player in the customer relationship management (CRM) software market, focuses on streamlining the sales process for businesses of all sizes. Founded to empower sales teams, they offer a user-friendly platform tailored to the needs of startups, small businesses, and mid-sized enterprises across various industries. Their services extend globally, supporting clients in multiple countries and ensuring businesses worldwide benefit from their innovative solutions. Established in 2013 and headquartered in San Francisco, California, Close has quickly built a solid track record, positioning themselves as a reliable and efficient CRM provider.

The Close CRM software has various features to enhance productivity and sales effectiveness. Their platform includes robust lead generation tools, comprehensive reporting options, and seamless integrations with other essential business applications. Unique selling points include an intuitive interface, powerful automation capabilities, and real-time analytics. 

Close has garnered a positive reputation in the industry and is recognized for their innovative approach and effective solutions, including G2’s Top 50 Sales Products of 2024. Additionally, they are SOC 2 Type 2 compliant, GDPR compliant, and CCPA compliant, showcasing their commitment to data protection. The company implements strong data protection controls and industry-standard security practices and conducts annual security tests. These credentials underscore their commitment to delivering high-quality services and maintaining customer trust.

Features & Services

• Lead management: This tool allows you to manage leads effectively, whether they’re companies or individual consumers. Close keeps all your potential sales targets organized, ensuring a streamlined approach to managing prospects
• Contact management: With Close, you can store detailed records of individuals within an organization and link them to their respective leads. This integration makes it easy to tailor your sales approach to the right people, enhancing your ability to connect with key decision-makers
• Opportunity management: Close enables you to track up to 300 opportunities per lead. You can view your deals' total and expected values, helping you stay on top of your sales pipeline and prioritize your efforts. This comprehensive tracking system ensures that no opportunity is overlooked
• Task management: The platform allows customers to assign tasks to themselves and their team members, ensuring everyone knows their responsibilities and deadlines. This keeps your sales process on track and ensures all team members are aligned and accountable
• Deal pipeline management: Close offers a Pipeline View that helps sales teams forecast and prioritize deals. You can drag and drop opportunities from one stage to another and customize your view with filters and sorting options. Additionally, they allow you to create multiple opportunity pipelines to track different teams, products, or sales processes. This flexibility helps you manage various aspects of your business operations effectively
• Data import and export: Easily import and export data to and from Close. This feature ensures smooth integration with other tools you use, simplifies data management, and allows for seamless transitions between different platforms
• Customization options: You can customize and store data unique to your business on leads, contacts, and opportunities. Create templates to record activities specific to your sales process and create unique CRM objects to store and associate with leads, tailoring the platform to fit your business needs perfectly
• Email management: Close offers two-way email sync, allowing you to see emails in Close and your external email client and ensuring complete communication records. Create private and shared email templates to save time and ensure consistency. Track email opens to gauge interest, schedule and set follow-up reminders, send bulk templated emails to multiple recipients, and create and share snippets for efficiency and consistent messaging across your team
• Calling and SMS: Close provides global communication solutions, allowing calls and text messages worldwide. This includes call forwarding, call recording, group numbers, call coaching, voicemail drop, and call assistance for easy record-keeping and follow-up
• Sales automation: Close automates your outreach by enrolling contacts into emails and calls, ensuring consistent and timely follow-ups; the power dialer feature lets you call through lists of leads without touching your keyboard or mouse, significantly boosting your calling efficiency; and the predictive dialer dials multiple numbers at once and automatically connects you when someone answers, maximizing your call productivity
• Integration capabilities: Close integrates with 100+ third-party apps, including Google and Office 365 calendars, Zoom, Segment, Zapier, Calendly, and more. These integrations streamline scheduling, meeting management, and data synchronization, greatly extending the CRM's functionality. Additionally, you can build your integrations with the Close API
• Reporting: Close provides comprehensive reporting with real-time activity reports, dashboards, opportunity funnel reports, email template performance reports, workflow performance reports, and custom graphs for visualizing sales data
• AI-enhanced features: Close integrates AI tools to enhance productivity, including Close GPT for generating prospecting lists and summarizing customer relationships, Call Assistant for automatic transcription and summarization of phone calls, AI Rewrite Assistant for drafting and perfecting emails, a Cold Email Generator to increase response rates, a Subject Line Generator to improve email open rates, and an AI Email Writer to automate outreach
• Mobile device accessibility: Close offers a mobile application that makes their CRM portable, allowing employees and managers to communicate with prospects and customers regardless of location. This mobile accessibility ensures that important sales activities and customer interactions can be managed on the go, providing greater flexibility and efficiency for the entire sales team. Their application is available on iOS and Android devices

Plans & Pricing

Close offers three pricing plans for different business needs, each with annual and monthly billing options. Additionally, all plans come with a 14-day free trial.

Startup Plan

This basic plan is designed for startups and small businesses looking to keep their deals organized and manage all communications on one platform. Priced at $49 per user per month if billed annually or $59 if billed monthly, it offers essential features to get your sales process up and running. Core functionalities include managing accounts, contacts, and opportunities in one place, built-in calling, texting, and email solutions, a centralized inbox to execute tasks, and pipeline reporting to stay on top of your deal funnel.

Professional Plan

Ideal for small to medium-sized sales teams seeking increased automation and collaboration tools, the Professional plan is priced at $99 per user per month when billed annually or $109 if billed monthly. This plan includes all Startup features and adds significant enhancements such as automating follow-ups and reminders with up to 25 workflows, creating multiple pipeline views, tracking unique steps in your sales process with custom activities, and storing call recordings for up to 30 days.

Enterprise Plan

Designed for fast-growing teams requiring enhanced customization and advanced collaboration tools, the Enterprise plan costs $139 per user per month if billed annually or $149 monthly. This comprehensive plan encompasses all the features of the Professional plan and further includes personalized call coaching to improve sales success, a predictive dialer for faster lead calling, advanced customization options like custom objects and reports, and comprehensive visibility settings to keep your team focused and efficient.

All Close plans include built-in calling, email, and SMS functionality, with call and SMS usage charged separately. Additionally, you can add the Call Assistant to any plan for $50 per month plus $0.02 per minute. These plans are tailored to meet the varying needs of businesses, providing essential tools for startups and advanced features for growing and large teams.

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Benefits & Drawbacks

Benefits

• Comprehensive integration capabilities: Close CRM integrates seamlessly with popular tools like Google and Office 365 Calendars, Zoom, Segment, and Zapier. This extensive integration ensures all your schedules, meetings, and data are centralized, simplifying workflows and enhancing productivity. By streamlining communication and data management, users can focus more on closing deals and less on administrative tasks
• Advanced reporting tools: The platform offers real-time activity reports, detailed opportunity funnel reports, and custom graphs through their Explorer feature. These reporting tools provide in-depth insights into your sales pipeline and team performance, helping you make informed decisions and optimize your sales strategies. The ability to visualize data in various formats enhances analytical capabilities
• Enhanced sales automation: With features like automated workflows, power dialers, and predictive dialers, Close CRM significantly boosts sales efficiency. Automated workflows ensure consistent follow-ups, while dialers streamline the calling process, allowing sales teams to connect with more leads in less time. This automation leads to increased productivity and higher conversion rates
• Built-in communication solutions: Close CRM includes built-in calling, texting, and email, providing a centralized communication hub. This feature ensures that all interactions with leads and customers are logged and accessible, improving collaboration and follow-up consistency. The centralized communication hub also saves time by eliminating the need to switch between different tools
• Customization options: The platform allows extensive customization, including custom fields, activity types, and CRM objects. These options enable businesses to tailor the CRM to their needs, ensuring all relevant data is captured and managed effectively. Customization enhances the user experience by aligning CRM functionalities with unique business processes
• Free trial: Close CRM offers a free trial, allowing potential users to explore the platform’s features and determine its suitability for their business before committing financially. This trial period provides an opportunity to assess the platform’s ease of use, especially for email sequences, data entry, and managing lists of leads
• Robust AI features: Close CRM includes advanced AI capabilities that enhance the efficiency of sales processes. The AI tools automate data entry, suggest next actions, and provide deeper insights into sales pipelines, which help sales reps save time and make more informed decisions, ultimately resulting in boosted productivity

Drawbacks

• Additional fees for certain features: Close CRM charges extra, such as call and SMS usage and the Call Assistant feature. These additional fees can increase the overall cost, which might be a significant disadvantage for businesses with tight budgets. This complexity in pricing can be seen as a con for some users
• No free plan: Close CRM does not offer a free plan. This absence can be a drawback for startups and small businesses looking for cost-effective CRM solutions. Users must commit to a paid subscription without a free plan to access the platform’s capabilities
• Sales-focused solution: Close CRM is highly specialized for sales-focused activities, which might not suit all types of businesses. This specialization means they excel at supporting salespeople but may lack the versatility required by organizations needing a more generalized CRM with marketing services. The platform’s focus on VoIP and sales automation features is excellent for sales teams but could be less beneficial for other departments

User Experience

Although Close does not have a Better Business Bureau profile, they maintain impressive ratings across other platforms: a 3.7 out of 5 on Trustpilot, a 4.7 out of 5 on G2, a 4.7 out of 5 on Capterra, and an 8.1 out of 10 on TrustRadius, reflecting strong customer satisfaction and reliability.

Positive reviews

Customers have praised Close CRM's exceptional ability to enhance sales automation and streamline processes. Users have highlighted the automated dialing feature, which makes reaching clients more efficient and enjoyable and significantly boosts their sales efforts. The intuitive interface and powerful features, such as email management, task tracking, and setting reminders, have been lauded for making sales management effortless and productive.

Advanced reporting and analytics capabilities have also received positive feedback, particularly from team leaders who rely on these tools to supervise their team's KPIs effectively. Customers have also commended the platform for their seamless integration with different apps and software, making it easy to link with other tools and enhancing overall workflow efficiency. The AI-enhanced features, including Close GPT, Call Assistant, and AI Rewrite Assistant, have been especially valued for saving time and improving productivity by automating key tasks and communications.

Customer support has been frequently mentioned as a standout aspect, with users noting the quick and helpful responses they receive. Customers also stated that the platform's ease of use and logical structure make it accessible for new employees, requiring minimal training. The centralized hub for all client communication, including calls, texts, and emails, has benefited teams, allowing them to manage their interactions efficiently in one place. Overall, Close CRM has been highly recommended for their comprehensive features, user-friendly design, and outstanding support, making it a valuable tool for sales teams aiming to boost their efficiency and achieve their goals.

Critical reviews

While Close has many strengths, some customers have pointed out areas for improvement. Users noted that Close is not as flexible as other CRMs, and exporting leads can be challenging initially. Additionally, many clients prefer using iMessage for a more personal connection, and some feel the triggers for workflows are limited and require integration with other services.

Some customers reported issues such as duplicate leads, call quality problems, and minor glitches in task notifications. Customers also stated that the inbox feature should be more efficient, especially with emails from services like Calendly. There have also been suggestions to improve hours tracking and reporting, with requests for more detailed reports and integrating third-party services directly into Close's feature set.

Some users have highlighted the need for improved reporting and predictive dialer features, which are available only on the more expensive plans. There are calls for better integration with other platforms, as some find the current options lacking, necessitating third-party tools. Mobile interface limitations have also been noted, with users seeking a more user-friendly mobile version to accommodate their on-the-go work style. Despite these challenges, some customers have found value in Close CRM, recognizing their strong features and customer support. However, improvements in flexibility, integrations, and automation capabilities would significantly enhance their overall satisfaction.

Customer Support & Service

Close offers several customer support options to assist users. You can call them directly at +1-833-462-5673, email them at [email protected], or book a call through their website for personalized support. Additionally, they provide an on-demand demo to help users understand the platform's features at their own pace.

Close offers a comprehensive help center, blog page, webinars, sales resources, and sales tools for self-service support. These resources cover a wide range of topics, from getting started with the CRM to advanced features and best practices, ensuring users have access to the information they need whenever they need it.

Final Thoughts

Close CRM offers unique features to enhance sales productivity and streamline operations for businesses of all sizes. From robust lead generation tools and comprehensive reporting options to seamless integrations with essential business applications, Close provides a flexible and efficient platform that meets the diverse needs of startups, small businesses, and mid-sized enterprises. The platform’s intuitive interface and powerful automation capabilities ensure that users can manage their sales processes effectively across various platforms, making them a versatile solution in the CRM market.

One of Close's standout advantages is their built-in communication tools, including calling, texting, and email functionalities, which centralize all client interactions and improve collaboration. Their AI-enhanced features elevate productivity by automating routine tasks and providing deeper insights. These features and extensive integration capabilities set Close apart from competitors, ensuring operational efficiency and high customer satisfaction. However, some users have noted limitations in flexibility, the need for more advanced workflow triggers, and occasional issues with call quality and duplicate leads.

Overall, Close is a reliable and effective CRM provider, but there are areas for improvement. To get a comprehensive view of all CRM solutions and how they compare, check out our detailed reviews of the top providers, explore our comparisons, and read our blogs for more background information on the industry. These resources will provide valuable insights to help you decide on the best solution for your business.

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