Fanhub’s CRM Inspired by Social Media
Florida-based Fanhub has rolled out a social CRM system that introduces follows, comments, @mentions and notifications into sales, support and case management, promising enhanced collaboration among coworkers.
According to the company's website, the software was designed by employees of parent company BeQuick Software, a provider of cloud-based billing applications. According to the site: “In 2009, we set out to create a way so that all teams within our small business could connect and collaborate to better serve our customers. We wanted it to be a pleasure to use (since we would be using it all day) and something that would allow us to work more closely together. No CRM that we tried quenched our collaborative thirst. It was clear to us very quickly that we would have to build it ourselves.”
Fanhub's software, which is geared toward small businesses, falls under the broader social CRM category. One of the hottest areas of social CRM is social customer service software, a topic Enterprise Apps Today addresses in a social customer service software buying guide.
Fanhub users can create records for Leads, Prospects, Deals, Cases (Workflow and Task Management) or Spaces (shared collections of related cases, company initiatives and workflows), and then other team members can “follow” the records to receive real-time updates.
Similar to social media, within each record team members can post comments and loop in coworkers or customers with @mentions to create conversations that don’t fill inboxes or end when someone clicks “reply” instead of “reply all.” On the central Fanwall, team members can view and contribute to a running thread of announcements, accomplishments, problems and tasks.
Fanhub’s notification center can alert users when someone @mentions them or updates a record they follow. With one click, users can go directly from the notification to the case, deal or other record that triggered it.
Also according to the company, Fanhub's interface allows users to work on multiple records at the same time by dividing items into “cards.” Users can pull up as many as 16 cards at once and switch between them with a click. This gives employees the ability to view customer information alongside a sales history, for example, or review all of the related workspaces and support cases associated with one customer.
Because Fanhub is designed to store all information about customers — including contact information, logged emails, documents, cases, notes, sales potential and more — the solution concentrates communication into a centralized space. This helps ensure that customer data, leads, support issues and other items are never lost or abandoned.
Administrators can tailor Fanhub to their specifications, and then invite coworkers to join the system. Every user can choose which notifications they want to receive. The collaborative CRM is also available on the Fanhub iPhone app, which lets users access information anywhere and FaceTime contacts using an integrated link. The app’s real-time cloud sync and push notifications ensure that mobile users receive up-to-date information.
“We created Fanhub because we wanted to do more than just ‘manage' our customers,” said Steve McIntosh, co-founder of Fanhub. “We saw an opportunity to connect all of our prospects and brand advocates — including our employees — while providing a venue for truly collaborative service.”
Fanhub offers a free 30-day trial of the product on its website.
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