Every business needs to understand their customer and their needs, as well as to be able to communicate in an efficient yet friendly way. These apps are designed to help you stay relevant and in contact.

Customer research

These apps are human-friendly! They have been designed to allow the questioner and the customer to use the forms easily.

Survey Monkey

Sample survey templates make it quick and easy for you to start collecting customer feedback. Explore hundreds of questions across different survey types, all designed to get accurate data you can rely on. Find out more here.

Typeform

Create forms, surveys, and quizzes that people find easy to answer. Find out more here.

Email

Email is still the most widely used business communication tool. While it’s not ideal for quick discussions or decisions, it establishes a helpful thread when communicating with multiple internal or external stakeholders. This can also be useful from a legal standpoint as evidence of what was agreed upon. It’s vital for small businesses to have a professional email address that represents their business and their brand.

Gmail

A commitment-free email host with modern, intuitive productivity and collaboration tools. Month-to-month plans are available. Find out more here.

Cool features

• Smart Compose (intuitively completes your sentences).
• Automatic language translation.
• Built-in follow-up reminders.
• Automatic email notifications when you’re tagged in a Workspace app, making it easy for teams to work collaboratively on projects and presentations.

Outlook
Best suited for businesses that rely heavily on email and want advanced tools, message organisation, and automation capabilities. It has advanced security and message encryption, plus generous storage. Find out more here.

Cool features

• Advanced tools for email management and organisation.
• Built-in appointment booking tool.
• Ability to manage multiple calendars and set up automations.

Titan

A professional all-in-one service that offers advanced email building and attachment tools. Excellent for sales drives and collaboration. Find out more here.

Cool features

• Rich formatting, hyper-linking, and drop ‘n drag tools.
• Advanced security and anti-virus.
• Large storage.

 

Thunderbird

A free email application that’s easy to set up and customise - and it’s loaded with great features! Find out more here.

Cool features

• Tabbed email lets you load emails in separate tabs so you can quickly jump between them.
• The Quick Filter Toolbar lets you filter your email faster.
• One-click Address Book is a quick and easy way to add people to your address book.

Scheduling appointments

Calendly

Calendly helps small businesses schedule meetings without the back-and-forth of emails. It works with existing Google, Outlook, Office 365, and iCloud calendars and automates tasks. Set buffer times between sessions using seamless time zone detection, so everyone’s on the same page. Find out more here.

Cool features

• Streamline the scheduling experience by allowing customers and prospects to schedule an appointment directly from your website or via email.
• Install Calendly’s app for iOS or Android on your mobile device and share your scheduling links on the go.
• Customers can pay for your services the moment they book time with you.

CRM and customer service

 

Zendesk

It is a cloud-based customer service platform designed to improve communication between the company and its customers. The whole suite is made up of four products: Support, Guide, Chat, and Talk. When used together to the best of their potential, these products provide a total solution to help firms improve their customer service performance. Find out more here.

Cool features

• The unified workspace is clean and intuitive, allowing for multi-agent support on one ticket.
• Omnichannel support - customers can connect with you using mobile, web, email, Twitter, or Facebook.
• Tickets can be made visible to agents and customers, allowing for greater transparency and trust.

Help Scout

A robust yet simple help desk software. It offers a shared inbox for users and their teams. This allows them to collaborate whenever an email is sent, or a support request comes in. Find out more here.

Cool features

• Integrates with numerous business systems and apps.
• Streamlines agent/customer communication.
• Easy to learn and collaborate as agents.

BaseCloud

BaseCloud CRM is simple and intuitive to use. You will never lose out on potential revenue with an efficient CRM and lead management system. Find out more here.

Cool features

• Phone calls (with recordings), emails and form submissions from your website, LinkedIn, and Facebook.
• Instantly know if your sales team has been missing calls/notifications or if they aren't getting back to leads quickly enough.

Salesforce

The No. 1 Customer Relationship Management tool for small, medium, and enterprise businesses. Find out more here

Cool features

• Improve, centralise, and automate your sales process with Sales Cloud.
• Increase customer satisfaction, retention, and lifetime value with Service Cloud.
• Use Marketing Cloud to create personalised experiences for every customer and build your pipeline with cross-channel campaigns.
• Create the seamless commerce experience your customers expect with our eCommerce solution.

 

Contract management

Paper Trail

Never worry about keeping track of your documents that need signatures. Find out more here

Cool features

• Send documents for signature signing online, anywhere, anytime.
• Say goodbye to faxing, printing, and filing.
• Get legally binding signatures without ever seeing a piece of paper.
• Signatures compliant with the ECT Act and South African Common Law.
• Ideal for small and medium enterprise businesses.

DocuSign

Signing documents has just got a whole lot easier and more secure. Find out more here.

Cool features

• Sign documents anywhere from any device.
• Email documents for instant signature and return in the order required.
• Documents are encrypted, and a complete audit trail is maintained. 

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