Overview
CRM is one component of vcita’s unified business management portal. It allows business owners to store all their contacts in one place easily and provides clients with an easy-to-access portal where they can conduct self-service operations, thus saving business owners time. Although the CRM comes quite ready out of the box, users can also add customizations such as crafting condition-dependent workflows and follow-up intervals to maximize client engagement and response. The tool also provides lead generation widgets and email and SMS marketing campaign builders to help drive inbound leads and then track nurturing directly through the CRM.
Additionally, the CRM also integrates with vcita’s automated client messaging tools which make scheduling reminders and follow-ups quick and easy. The company’s research shows that timely reminders reduce no-shows by half; as no-shows are a major cause of lost revenue for small business owners, this makes vcita a game changer.
vcita CRM At a Glance
Best For: Small business owners. Particularly those running service-based businesses, such as management consultants and other independently employed professionals.
Key Use: vcita specializes in managing relationships with existing clients.
Price: $19-$99 per month
Free Trial: 14 days
Tools for Sales Teams
Shared Calendars
vcita makes collaboration easy among members of sales teams. The CRM’s internal calendar sharing functionality enables SDRs and other sales team members to configure calendar sharing options according to function, location, and other criteria.
Follow Up Workflows
If your sales team is losing business because follow-ups are not being sent often enough—or at the right time—then vcita’s follow-up automation sequence builder is something that your team will appreciate. Users can edit follow-ups according to pre-configured variables, such as a time-lapse since the last inbound contact received.
Tools for Customer Support Teams
Unlike many CRMs, vcita includes an entire list of customer support and success functionalities to help retain customers as well as acquire new ones. These features include:
Self-Service Center
vcita makes it easy for team members to encourage clients to resolve their own problems. Users can create logins to client portals where clients can receive documentation, deliverables, and notifications from a member of the team.
Billing and Invoicing System
Customer support staff can directly create and issue estimates, invoices, and receipts from the CRM. Having these features on hand in the CRM—rather than in a separate accounting program—is a great advantage for the company’s target market of small business owners who prefer to use as few tools as possible to run their businesses.
Tools for Marketing Teams
Marketing teams can tap into a few useful resources to assist them with creating inbound leads for the sales team to nurture through the other components of the CRM.
Automated Campaign Builder
The automated campaign builder provides a library of sequences with which marketing teams can create workflows. Additionally, users can also create their own campaigns from scratch. If they opt to use one of the template campaigns, however, users can preview the communication the end-user will see and also reconfigure variables from the CRM. A statistics overview page for each template lets users assess how each campaign is performing.
Announcements
In addition to building workflows, users can also create and send one-off emails (called “announcements”) from directly within the CRM. These can be scheduled to occur in the future.
Delivery History
Marketers are able to access a comprehensive delivery history that shows all campaigns that have been sent out via vcita irrespective of whether they were delivered as workflows or campaigns. The “filter campaigns” sidebar makes it easy to filter the log according to which communication was dispatched.
Customization and Integrations
Users can customize a few key components of vcita, to lend an individualized feel to client communications sent through it.
- The entire library of marketing workflow templates can be customized, allowing users to create automated emails from scratch or tweak a pre-populated template to perfection.
- Client portals can be customized to allow clients to receive only certain pieces of information from the team according to business needs.
On the downside, vcita doesn’t yet have an extensive native integration library.
However, it is a supported Zapier app, which means that users can use the marketing automation tool to create “Zaps” between vcita and other platforms.
At present, there are more than 250 available Zaps between vcita and major providers that straddle the realms of sales, marketing, and website analytics. Supported tools include Salesforce, Mailchimp, Constant Contact, and more.
Reporting and Dashboards
vcita users have access to a central dashboard that includes key action items for the day and provides a birds-eye view of business health. Components include:
- Today’s calendar with any upcoming meetings.
- Payments, divided into current open estimates/quotes, unpaid invoices, and all invoices that are past their due date.
- A sidebar showing client activity as well as recently active users from within the organization.
Additionally, users can extract an Appointments and Events report in both Excel and CSV format. This provides a detailed overview of all calendar appointments created through the CRM including creation and appointment times and the origin of the activity.
Ease of Implementation and Use
vcita is designed to be easy to set up and use. It is intended to allow its predominantly small business customer base to get online and functioning within one business day. After creating an account, users are prompted to disclose which features they are interested in. Prompts then guide them through the setup process. Customizing key aspects of the CRM, such as automated workflows, is also extremely easy thanks to the what you see is what you get (WYSIWYG) email editor.
vcita App
vcita has mobile apps for both Android and iOS. The Android app enjoys a 4-star rating with 197 reviewers and packages all of the features contained in the web UI. TheiOS app has a 3.6 star rating with 71 reviewers. The most common complaint is that the iPad app needs work.
Using the mobile app, users can:
- Create, edit, and view client records on the go.
- Manage the internal CRM calendar.
- Share and upload files from other apps on the phone.
vcita Customer Support
The online vcita Help Center provides a full library of text and video-based resources to assist users with both onboarding and troubleshooting problems. Support is predominantly provided via an email/ticket-based system. Business and Platinum users have access to email and phone support. Platinum users have priority support as well.
vcita Pricing
vcita is priced for both solo users and teams. The pricing structure is currently as follows for yearly subscribers.
Solo
2-4 Users
5-10 Users
11-20 Users
For solo users, upgrading from Essentials to Business allows users to send automated campaigns to up to 5,000 recipients—or 10,000 on the Platinum tier. In addition, the 2 premium tiers support coupon creation, removal of the “powered by vcita” branding, and allow users to create SMS notifications and reminders. The limit for the latter is 500 on the Platinum tier. Platinum also allows users to send and automize custom campaigns.
Teams with between 2-20 users must choose between the Business plan and the Platinum plan. The capability of accommodating up to 20 seats makes these plans suitable for scaling small service businesses.
From the Platinum plan and upwards, users are able to configure staff roles and permissions and automatically route inbound client requests to the appropriate internal resources. The campaign recipient limit for automated marketing campaigns is progressively raised through the tiers. The top (Platinum 20) tier allows 25,000, while Platinum 10 is capped at 20,000. Finally, platinum users have access to priority support and free setup sessions. Teams with more than 20 members can contact the sales team to see if vcita can work for their needs.
Bottom Line
vcita is a CRM custom-built for the needs of small business owners. It provides a wide-ranging library of automated workflow emails and allows users to create rich login portals for clients—allowing them to self-serve and cutting down on no-shows. For the right customer, it can be a powerful solution.
