Integrates with Xero and Google Apps.
Capsule CRM is a popular cloud customer database which wins over users for its simple interface and integration with Google Apps and Xero. I’ve been playing around with it for a couple of months and have generally been impressed – it’s the first CRM I’ve used and a big step up from the humble address book and paper to-do list.
At $12 a month per user the program is well priced. However, I’ve started to discover its shortcomings and thought I’d keep an updated list here of workarounds for other Capsule users.
The list should also help prospective buyers understand the program’s strengths and weaknesses so they can decide whether they are showstoppers.
Capsule CRM is a cloud-based customer database (the CRM stands for customer relationship management) with a very quiet black and grey colour scheme. The program is divided into four main sections; people and organisations (contacts), calendar and tasks, sales pipeline and cases.
The contact screen shows personal or company details in the right hand column and large billboards across the top show how many days since last contact, the total value of sales opportunities with that person or company, and the number of cases open.
Notes, tasks and emails are displayed in the large centre column.
Capsule recently added social media integration which works really well. Once activated the program searches through social networks to show their latest tweets and add their photo to their profile from LinkedIn. It also adds social media buttons to their profile which jump straight to their LinkedIn and Twitter page.
I rarely look at the calendar because Capsule pushes events to Google Calendar in Google Apps. It’s a straightforward calendar, no surprises.
The sales pipeline has two views, a dashboard and a list. The dashboard has several widgets. Pipeline Forecast shows the total dollar value of sales in the pipeline over a calendar year in an adjustable column graph. Pipeline by Milestone is a bar graph that lists opportunities by their stage in the sales process, i.e. suspect, prospect, champion, opportunity, and so on.
There’s some basic analysis with the conversion rate widget which shows the percentage of opportunities won in the past month, quarter and year.
The last two widgets show a task list related to opportunities and a tag cloud for finding related opportunities.
The cases screen is a simple list. I didn’t know the purpose of a cases category when I started using Capsule. The answer is you can use it for pretty much anything. HighRise CRM has some good demonstrations of uses including staging an event or hiring an employee.
So that’s a quick overview of the application. Below are some shortcomings. Nothing so serious that would force me to change, but they are important enough to know how to remedy them.
Split recording
The biggest flaw in Capsule CRM is that a note or email can only be added to a contact or a case or opportunity, not both at the same time. This means that if you send an email to a contact as part of an opportunity you must choose whether to log that email under the contact or under the opportunity.
If you save the email under the opportunity then you will have a clear trail of the interactions leading up to the sale. But once the opportunity has ended, the interaction with that contact is not maintained under the contact itself. So if you look up your sales contact and check the notes you won’t see any previous emails unless you look through the old opportunities.
The same works in reverse. If you save an email under a contact you will have a record of your interactions with that contact. But when you open the opportunity you won’t see the conversations you’ve had with that contact. If another employee logs in to see how the opportunity has progressed they won’t know when you had last spoken to the potential customer nor what was said.
Workaround: You have to copy the entries (emails or notes) from opportunity or case to contact. There’s no way around it. Big pain.
Integration with Xero
Capsule CRM can link contacts to Xero and the totals of invoices generated within Xero can be displayed within Capsule CRM. It’s a handy function to have as it shows a sales person how often and how much the customer is paying with their invoices. It would be nice to have a little more crossover between the two programs such as being able to drill down into the details of the invoices.
Workaround: A button within Capsule CRM will open Xero for you which I guess is the next best thing.
Integration with Google Apps
This is done through a gadget on the bottom of each email. It lets you attach the email to contacts, cases or sales opportunities or you can create a new case or opportunity from within Gmail.
However, the gadget is limited. Copying emails to a case or sales opportunity will only show the people listed in the TO field. And emails can only be added to contacts who appear in the TO field. It isn’t possible to add an email to a recipient whose name is in the CC field.
You can add a contact to Capsule from within Gmail but can’t then assign that contact to an existing task, case or opportunity. You can create new ones, though.
The gadget is also unreliable. Sometimes it just doesn’t work.
Workaround: The only solution is to copy and paste emails recorded in a Capsule CRM contact to contacts CC’d on the email.
Limited options in Contact screen
You can’t easily attach a contact from the contact screen to existing cases and opportunities. You can only add contacts from within a case or opportunity.
Workaround: No choice but to navigate to case list or opportunity list, open the one you want and add the contact to the internal contact list. It’s a small thing but does waste time.
Sucky search
The search function is very limited. It will only search for words in the names of contacts or opportunities but not within the opportunity or contact itself. If you search for a marketing manager at Google by name it will bring up his contact details but not the company, opportunities and cases attached to him.
Workaround: Use tags to link related people, cases and opportunities.