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September 8, 2020
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10 min
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The Most Annoying Problems of CRM Programs and How to Deal with Them

If by some divine miracle, you landed on this article and expected to read an extended essay of how CRM sucks. Then let me stop you right now and spare you some valuable time.

If by some divine miracle, you landed on this article and expected to read an extended essay of how CRM sucks. Then let me stop you right now and spare you some valuable time. Customer Relation Management software is essential and a cornerstone of any business dealing with, selling to, and servicing humans. There are only a few exceptions where you won’t need them.

A. You are a robot from the future and has a super AI agent installed in you.

B. You are actively seeking to close your company, and you want it to go down in a spectacular show of failure and tears- soaked despair. At this point, I suspect you kept reading because you are, like many around the globe, struggling with your CRM, and you are not getting the best value out of your buck. If that’s the case, then don’t look any further. Close all the other tabs you opened in your browser, focus here, and clear up your mind, I wrote this article with you in mind.

Before I start mumbling around, I feel the violent urge to remind you of the real bottom-line value of good CRM software. A CRM in its the purest and most effective form is: a digital translation of all your practices, strategies, and procedures you use throughout the customer lifecycle. It has three main components:

  1. a database of all your customer information,
  2. a workflow that details the steps that compose your customer lifecycle,
  3. a log of all your interactions with your customer.

Many CRMs provide more functionalities, including calls, recorders, alerts, automation, tasks management, and other “cool” features (that’s actually a problem of its own, but I will get to that later). Nonetheless, anyone can tell you that you won’t go far without these three main components adequately implemented in your CRM. They are the building blocks of success.

There are five reasons why business struggles with CRM:

First, employees hate them! It doesn’t matter how much time, effort, and training hours you put in, your sale team doesn’t like it. It is restraining, time-consuming, complicated, demands loads of unuseful information, too generic or too specific, and above all, it is damn annoying. You can always find the right incentives to push them to use it or convince them of its utility. But, at the end of the day, only one thing matters to them and you, closing deals and happy customers. If CRMs are standing in the face your happiness, then why bother with them?

Second, CRM customization costs an arm, a leg, and you know what. Don’t get fooled with the cheap hourly rates, the smiles, and the reassuring guarantees of your CRM solution sale representative. Customizing and onboarding a generic CRM software is a continuous project that could drain you financially and emotionally. How familiar are you with disputes between your sales and technical team? Painfull and exhausting aren’t they? Now imagine them at a10X magnitude and brace yourself for a sh*t load of sh*t hitting the fan every time a new feature is requested.

Third, it is easier to grow a new limb than adding a new sales procedure. Sales is not an exact science, your clients and business change, and you continuously improve your sale pitch and processes. Hence, it is only natural for your sales team to conduct small tests before rolling out any new procedures. In most cases, this is a task only your CRM service provider can assume. Remember how stressful it was to ask for a new feature to be implemented? Multiply that with another 10 fold, math has never been this “fun.”

Fourth, integration with third tools is a b*tch with a capital B. Which company doesn’t use a multitude of programs in their day-to-day operations? Whether it is email, messaging, ticketing, online marketing or ads platforms, teams use a multitude of cloud services to get their business done! The problem doesn’t lie in their usage as much as the effect they create. A. Your company data is scattered all over the cloud, with no central view. B. Information is often lost and forgotten in isolated islands of data. C. You are literally losing money with the potential loss in connecting related data as it should be in real life. There is a direct and straightforward solution for this problem, data integration, and most Class A CRMs offer them but with a hick. They provide it with their choice of tools, and in most cases with a beautiful fat price tag next to it.

Fifth, support for RTL languages is available in a utopian world only. I am very much aware that this problem is not a common one. However, if you are running a business in MENA or Asia, or planning to expand over there, believe me, support for RTL languages is more than a nice-thing-to-have. Unfortunately, most available CRMs are snubbing this market, and no one is paying enough attention to this promising business.

You have been through this process before. You are convinced of the necessity of using a CRM, and you identified your inherent problems. But you are still looking for a solution. Ok, no more abusing your patience. Remember the three main building blocks of any useful CRM? Good, stick to them and make them work before adding any more features. Start simple, and move up the ladder one step in time in a gradual and lean manner. Using a CRM application should:

  • save you time and money,
  • preserve your customer data,
  • link them in meaningful and robust workflows,
  • and allow you to follow up with deals in a timely and secure fashion.

And that’s precisely what we promise you to achieve with Workiom. Using our easy yet powerful CRM template, you will gain access to these essential features:


First, fast onboarding. Forget the long development cycles, the extra hours and costs, and continuously pushed deadlines. Workiom is a cloud-based non-code cloud platform. You can be up and running, fully onboarded, and ready to conquer the world in a few minutes only. Your sales team will have at its disposal all the three blocks from the get-go. No hustle, no development, no extra buck.

Second, cheap and progressive billing expenditure. Workiom doesn’t require any setup fees or payment for unnecessary features. It is free for as many users as you need for your first 500 records. And you only have to pay for each active member you are adding to the team if you grow bigger.

Third, testing, testing, and testing. Workiom believes in agile management and understands the needs of a business to evolve gradually and test its new ideas before rolling them out. For that purpose, all you can add, edit, and check any sales procedure without the need for a developer. It is as easy as a child game, all you need to start is a mouse and a screen.

Fourth, integration with your tool of choice. Through Zapier, Workiom integrates with more than 1500 online applications, including your favorite email clients, form builders, marketing platform, and pretty much all the tools your sales team is addicted to. Not only it is easy to integrate, but it also allows you to migrate data from and to your CRM seamlessly and effortlessly.

Fifth Arabic language support. Workiom comfortably hosts your Arabic language content and also offers intuitive English and Arabic interfaces to your diverse team of sales representatives.

Stop wasting your valuable time and money and migrate to Workiom super-efficient CRM template today. It’s free, and it doesn’t require any credit cards to test it.