Decision Factors: How to Choose the Right Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Software
How to Choose the Right Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Software for Your Business in 2025
Researching a new software solution can be daunting. Most of the products on your shortlist do largely the same thing, meaning it can be difficult to figure out what sets them apart and how to choose the right product for your organization’s unique needs.
That decision is even more daunting when shopping for business-critical software, like Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems. CRMs are often the source of truth for all customer and prospect communications. They are used by sales, customer support, marketing, and finance teams alike to store data related to customer contacts, sales cycles, and more.
In this article, we’ll dive into the “decision factors” we’ve identified for the CRM category. These are the areas where reviewer sentiment varies widely across the category, meaning similar products may differ in overall functionality or quality in these areas. The areas where these products differ may help guide your evaluation and help you make the best purchase decision for your organization.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Software Specific Features
CRM software are platforms with a wide variety of features. Since these vendors are trying to appeal to as many users as possible, they may have some use-case-specific features that your organization doesn’t need. Or it could be that there are a couple of make-or-break features that are necessary for your organization due to industry-specific requirements, such as HIPAA compliance for the healthcare industry.
Other considerations include whether you want to rely on your CRM for these capabilities, or if you plan to purchase a standalone/point solution, if applicable. If you’re planning on purchasing additional tools, ensure they integrate well with your desired CRM.
Below, we’ll dive into the five most controversial features in the CRM category. These features are the ones with the most variance in score, meaning that reviewer sentiment varies widely on the quality of these features across various CRM products. If any of the features below are must-haves for your organization, evaluate the products on your shortlist carefully to ensure they’ll meet your needs.
Call Center Management
Call center management encompasses call routing, recording, monitoring, call list management, auto dialing, and scripting. For businesses that rely on call centers for customer support or outbound sales, this capability is essential.
Reviewer sentiment varies widely for call center management. The average call center management score is 7.0/10, but the highest-rated product, Oracle Siebel CRM, scores a perfect 10/10.
Email Marketing
Email marketing is the core of most businesses’ customer communications. The ability to segment your database and reach the right customers at the right time is a requirement for email marketers.
Evaluating whether or not a CRM’s email marketing features are sufficient to meet your needs can be vital. Consider whether you want to rely on your CRM for most of your email marketing needs or if you plan to purchase an outside tool.
On average, most users are decently satisfied with their CRM’s email marketing capabilities, and the average score is 7.1/10. Vtiger outperforms the pack, with a 10/10 score for their email marketing feature.
Billing and Invoicing
Everybody wants to get paid, and your CRM tool could be helpful or harmful when it comes to collecting payments from your customers. Many CRM tools include automated invoice creation and billing capabilities. Unsurprisingly, users have strong opinions about this feature and give the average CRM a 6.9/10 rating for billing and invoicing. Based on this number, some CRM tools leave a lot to be desired when it comes to this feature. Method:CRM, however, scores highly with a 10/10 score.
This Verified User listed Method:CRM’s financial features as areas where the product performed particularly well.
“We use Method:CRM to manage our leads and accounts. Method:CRM allows users to synch with QuickBooks. Method:CRM shows our accounts that are past due. By tracking our metrics, we are able to see recurring issues that were overlooked in the past.”
Read this Verified User’s full review here.
Help Desk Management
While it would be amazing if customers never needed help and every customer interaction was perfect, that’s not how life works. Humans make mistakes, and customers have questions, so most businesses need a help desk to keep things running smoothly. In the CRM category, help desk management includes: trouble ticketing, knowledge base, self-service, and service level agreement (SLA) management.
CRM users are generally satisfied with their CRM’s help desk capabilities, giving them an average score of 7.1/10. FollowUp CRM outperforms the rest of the category with a 10/10 score for this feature.
Channel / Partner Relationship Management
In the CRM category, channel/partner relationship management is rated based on how well the product allows for sales, territory, lead, order, and account management for partners or OEM relationships. This feature is likely important for enterprise businesses, or businesses that rely heavily on resellers/partner sales.
Channel/partner relationship management has the highest average score of any feature on this list, with an average of 7.4/10 across the category. Oracle CRM On Demand leads the pack with a 10/10 rating for this feature.
This reviewer, who rated Oracle CRM on Demand 10/10 for channel/partner relationship management sums up their experience with the product by saying:
“Go with Oracle [and] make work life easy.”
Read this Verified User’s full review here.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Software Product Functionality and Vendor Relationship
Category-specific features, like the ones discussed above are not the only decision factors to consider. TrustRadius collects “attribute” ratings across all products. These ratings are category-agnostic and are intended to help buyers determine how users like them really feel about the product, and what they might expect when working with a particular vendor.
Just like with features, we’re highlighting the attributes that have the most mixed user sentiment to help guide your evaluation process.
Implementation
Deciding which product to buy is only step one. Once you’ve made that decision, you need to implement the product to use it. Since CRM tools are often business-critical, implementation must go as smoothly and quickly as possible.
Based on user reviews, implementation can be a pain point for CRM products. Reviewers are generally dissatisfied with the implementation process for their CRM tools, giving an average score of 5.6/10. Hubspot CRM beats that trend, with the category’s highest score at 7.8/10.
This sales manager says that Hubspot was the “best decision we ever made”.
‘We love using HubSpot CRM, we use it for EVERYTHING pre-sales. It’s affordable, easy to learn, and you can do the implementation in house.”
Read Kade’s full review here.
Support
An issue with a CRM can stop sales and customer support teams in their tracks, meaning that you need your CRM’s support team to be available when you need them. Beyond offering support in crisis moments, a quality support team can help you get the most ROI possible out of your investment by ensuring you’re leveraging all appropriate features.
Support scores for CRM products vary widely, but average out to 7.0/10. Nimble’s customers are highly satisfied with the support they receive for the product, with a category-high score of 9.8/10.
When asked about Nimble’s customer support, this user rated it a 10/10 and says:
“Nimble customer service is enjoyable. With great patience, they work tirelessly to help their customers. It was highly beneficial to employees to have access to remote support sessions.”
Read Aononna’s full review here.
Usability
CRMs are highly complex products that are leveraged by several teams across an organization. Because of the breadth of features, it can be difficult to lay out all of the features and functionality logically. CRM vendors and reviewers alike have emphasized the importance of having an easy-to-use interface.
Overall, reviewers are fairly happy with the usability of their CRMs, with an average score of 7.6/10. Less Annoying CRM is in fact less annoying than the rest, with the highest usability score in the category at 10/10.
“It’s very affordable and easy to get started with. If you’re keeping track of your customers and the deals you’re working on using spreadsheets or worse – just your memory – spend the small monthly fee and get Less Annoying CRM. You can be up and running very quickly, and track your customers and your deals in a super easy to use manner.”
Read Paul’s full review here.
Ease of Integration
CRMs are often the center of sales, customer support, marketing and finance operations because the system is a central source of data. Needless to say, it’s also critical for these teams to be able to easily get data in and out of their CRM platform. While evaluating CRMs, be sure check whether or not the CRM integrates easily with your existing tech stack.
Most CRMs are built with integration in mind, receiving an average score of 7/10 for ease of integration. Insightly leads the pack with a score of 9/10.
Integrating Insightly and QuickBooks eliminated user error for this user.
“The App Connect feature is a game changer for us. It opened up so many options for how we could make things happen across different applications. Integrating our invoicing and having live updated between Insightly and QBO saved time and eliminated user error.”
Read this Verified User’s full review here.
Online Training
An easy-to-use interface is always a plus, but for products as complex as a CRM, the quality of a vendor’s online training resource can make a big difference. Online training resources can help users to self serve to answer questions, or teach them to unlock new features or use cases.
Vendors in the CRM category have clearly dedicated significant resources to developing their training materials, as the average score for the category is an 8.0/10. Salesforce Sales Cloud scored an average of 9.1/10 for this factor.
This user appreciates Salesforce Sales Cloud’s free training resources.
“The platform is powerful and flexible. It can be tailored to your business needs. It is a great way to track data and processes. Salesforce Sales Cloud provides a great deal of free training resources.”
Read this Verified User’s full review here.
Key Takeaways
Reviewer sentiment varies widely when it comes to some CRM features. Notably, the features listed here are ones that may be better served by a standalone product. In that case, you should carefully consider the integrations your chosen CRM offers, as well as the ease of integrating it into your existing tech stack. Learn more about CRM software, and others related to the features discussed here by exploring the following categories.
- Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Software
- Help Desk Software
- Invoicing Software
- Contact Center Software
Looking for an industry-specific solution? Explore industry-specific CRMs at the links below.
Methodology
The data in this article comes from vetted user feedback on TrustRadius. Features and attributes were selected based on score variance in TrustRadius reviews. By highlighting the areas where there is mixed customer sentiment, we hope to help buyers make informed purchase decisions. To learn more about our commitment to helping software buyers, read our Promise to Buyers.
