CRM companies have their websites loaded with pictures, quotes, videos, demos and other features to support their CRM and convince the website visitors into buying their product. No company holds back from making the claim of being the best as well so for an end user it becomes hard to distinguish between the best ones and the so-called best ones.Longer trial periods are being offered these days as another marketing technique to convince the customers into buying the product. One of the many techniques that companies use is CRM demo, which offers a quick view of the CRM right on the website.
You don’t even have to download a product or in many cases sign up to try the CRM demo. You can simply go on the official website of the CRM company and start exploring the CRM through the demo. However, it still remains a mystery whether a demo can help you choose the right CRM or not. In reality, there is no one worded answer to this question because you can’t say “yes” or “no”straight away. The actual answer is that it offers a great view of the CRM and its functions but many other important aspects are missing in a demo.
You could see how well-arranged the data is in a particular CRM through its CRM demo but you cannot measure the time it takes for that data to get updated and to move from one field to another. You can definitely enter customers’ information in the demo version and have a look at how it is presented but you can never know how slow the CRM might get when there are hundreds of people working on it at the same time. It cannot tell you how many downtimes, delays and glitches the company may encounter on a weekly or monthly basis either.
Furthermore, you can always create dummy records and send emails to them through the demo version but you cannot know how well the CRM will integrate with your current emailing applications. Are you going to have a hard time in getting your Gmail emails imported into the CRM or integrating Microsoft Outlook? You don’t get answers to those questions in a CRM demo but you can always take advantage of the trial version for that. But once again, this requires a lot of work because you actually have to integrate the CRM into your system for the length of the trial period.
The best way to gauge a CRM’s functionality, scalability, user-friendliness and usability is to use all the available resources. To see how easy it is to use the CRM and how well the formats for displaying the information have been designed in it, you can use the CRM demo. However, when it comes to knowing the downtimes, delays, slowing and halting of the CRM, you have to rely on the expert reviews or simply take the trial.You can’t see the level of customer support, especially in technical matters, in a demo version either.