11 Feb The 5 most frustrating things that sales reps can’t stand on a CRM mobile app

Thanks to our 20-year experience in CRMs and video games, our company can focus on users’ needs in the field and user experience on mobile devices.
In this article, we will share our expertise with you by identifying the 5 most frustrating things sales reps can’t stand on a CRM mobile app (it’s slow, not intuitive, incomplete, doesn’t work offline and is embarrassing) and how we manage to solve these pains on our mobile app.

1. IT IS SLOW

Whether you are using a mobile app for a personal or professional purpose, slowness is one of your biggest frustrations.
Can you imagine playing Candy Crush with latency? 45 millions of people wouldn’t be playing it almost daily if it were slow.
As a matter of fact, people are more and more impatient.  So are the sales reps on the go!
Most of the time, they use a CRM mobile app in a rush: walking on the street, parking their car, meeting a customer, etc.
Consequently, if the app is slow, they feel they are wasting their time or worse they are ashamed of using it in front of their customer. If that’s the case, they are going to use it less and less until they completely forget it.

Nomalys answer:

Sales reps need quick access to information in order to be responsive to customers’ questions and needs. And we all know that HTML5 mobile apps are slower than native apps.
That’s why we decided to develop our mobile app in the native languages of mobile devices (iOS, Android, Blackberry and Windows Phone) like in the video gaming industry (one of our cofounder’s background). In addition, we developed unique technology for fast data transfer between servers and mobile devices to provide our end users with the most powerful and fastest mobile experience.

2. IT IS NOT INTUITIVE

One of the major mistakes that companies make when building and deploying an app is compromising user experience.
Indeed, employees are expecting the same user experiences they get out of their B2C apps and  most of the time that’s not what CRM software vendors are proposing to their end users.

As a matter of fact, we noticed that CRM mobile apps’ user interfaces are more or less the same as the computers’ ones.

Nomalys answer:

User experience is our top priority. We are a user-centric company; it’s in our roots. The team of founders includes one specialist in CRMs and one specialist in video games & user experience. The combination of their 20 years of experience enabled Nomalys to create a simple and powerful mobile app using mind-mapping technology. Sales reps can actually use it without training. Have you been trained to use Candy Crush?!

3. IT IS INCOMPLETE

At the office, sales people need to jump in and out of multiple applications to get a global view of their clients’ activity: tasks from the CRM, invoices from the ERP, documents from the EDM, etc. In the best scenario, sales reps have one mobile app connected to only one of those data sources (which is mostly CRM), which is also frustrating. What if a customer asks about the last bill? “Hum, sorry Sir, I’ll check this out when I’m back at my office…” and in the meantime the customer has the time to meet competitors for better or cheaper services. Having a CRM mobile app is a good start but it’s insufficient to enable sales reps on the go to enhance customer relationships, increase customer loyalty and boost revenue generation.

Nomalys answer:

One of Nomalys’ key strengths is to be able to offer a unified and 360° view of customer information by connecting the app to several databases. Sales reps have access to their entire IT system through only one, simple and efficient mobile application.

4. IT DOESN’T WORK OFFLINE

Applications that continue to work while offline have been important since laptops first became common. It is the same story with smartphones and tablets. A classic example is a sales rep that wants to edit or add data while travelling, and then have that data automatically synchronize with the CRM when he gets back to the office.
Even with Wi-Fi and cellular broadband, there are many scenarios where sales people still need to work without a connection: airplanes, Wi-Fi only devices, remote areas and even unreliable mobile data network.

Nomalys answer:

Most CRM mobile apps are developed in HTML5 which doesn’t manage the offline mode in a native/standard way. In order to provide a powerful and fast offline mode, we chose to develop our mobile app using the native languages of mobile devices (iOS, Android, Blackberry & Windows Phone). It means that we can take advantage of all the mobile devices’ functions, which includes providing the offline mode as a standard and native feature. Sales people are now able to access their relevant information wherever they are without wondering if it will work. It definitely will!

5. IT IS EMBARRASSING

Blackberry devices are becoming more and more embarassing for sales people.
What happened to Blackberry is actually happening every day to mobile apps – whether they are for BtoC or BtoB – it’s all about trend and self-image.

Indeed, shame is one of the biggest frustrations for sales reps and it is the one they’ll never share with their manager. Sales people like to use tools that help them to look smart in front of their customer.

Nomalys answer:

Our mobile app is intuitive, fast and powerful. Sales people don’t have to struggle to get the information they are looking for. They don’t have to click 10 times, they don’t need to constantly be connected (online) or carry a big tablet to actually be able to access and read the information.
Nomalys gives them assurance, reliability and pleasure to constantly manage their information even in front of a client.

You are looking for a solution that answers all these frustrations? Contact us!