The number that lives in one colleague's phone
One person knows the contact at that customer. When they are away, everybody else
digs through old emails looking for a phone number while the customer waits.
Internal system for SMEs
Customers & partners
Most inquiries are not lost because nobody cared. They are lost because they arrived in one person's inbox on a day that person was doing something else. This page is about how an incoming enquiry becomes an item with a date and an owner.
What it actually solves
The callback with no date on it
"We will get back to you in a couple of weeks." In a couple of weeks nothing prompts
anyone, because the whole thing rested on someone remembering. The customer does
remember.
The history that sits in three places
An email thread, a group chat and a shared folder. When the customer asks where
things stand, somebody has to read all three before they can answer.
Every customer has one central record
A customer record is not an address list. Underneath it sit the contacts, the notes, the attached files, the calendar events, the tickets and the projects that belong to that customer. Nobody has to collect them, because that is where they were created.
You do not have to say goodbye to the spreadsheet
Your existing customer list imports in one click, and exports just as easily. Day one
does not start with an empty system, and if you ever do leave, your data leaves with
you.
The contents of a file are searchable too
Uploaded documents are read for their text, not just their file name. So the contract
turns up even though nobody gave it a sensible name at the time.
Public and private notes
What you write for the team is visible to the team; what you write for yourself is
not. You do not need a private notebook running alongside the company's records.
Entered once, not again
Customer details go in once, and from then on tasks, events and tickets all attach to
that one record. Time spent searching for information, and entering the same thing
twice, is where the hours go fastest.
An incoming enquiry is a job of its own, not a forwarded email
An enquiry is an item in its own right: it has a name, a value, a deadline, an owner, a status and a source, and it can be linked to the partner it came from. From then on you can ask where it stands, instead of asking who opened it first.
Sources you named yourself
You are not picking from preset categories. If referral, trade show and returning
customer are your three real sources, then those are the three. Six months later that
is what tells you which one brought actual work, and which one you overspent on.
Statuses that match your process
You create the statuses, with names and colours of your own. One look at the list
then shows which enquiries are waiting on you and which are waiting on the customer.
Every contact is written down
Email, call, meeting: what happened, what the next step is, and when. The time spent
can be logged here too, because selling is work, even though it rarely gets counted
as work.
Files stay attached to the enquiry
Documents you received sit next to the enquiry, not in somebody's inbox. When it
comes up again months later, nobody has to be asked to dig it out.
“We'll be in touch” is a date, not just a promise
A follow-up is a separate item: when, with whom, about what, and whose job it is. It is not a private calendar entry in one person's calendar, it sits on the customer record where colleagues can see it.
The next step has an owner
It is not a question of whether somebody remembers. It carries a date and a name, and
if that person is off sick, the next colleague does not have to do detective work to
find out what the plan was.
Time spent on a customer is time
Callbacks, meetings and site visits can be logged here. At the end of the month you
will not have a feeling that one customer took a lot of time, you will know how much.
The history stays put
Six months later you can still read back how many times you called and what they said
last. That is what makes the fourth call different from the first three: it does not
start with you introducing yourself again.
Contact details should not live in one person's phone
Every contact at every customer sits on that customer's record, along with what each of them is responsible for. The person who decides the technical question and the person who signs the order are usually not the same person.
A fragment is enough to find them
You do not have to remember which company they work at, or exactly how their name is
spelled. Part of the name or part of the email address will do.
You decide who sees what
Permissions control which colleagues and subcontractors can see contact details.
Someone working on a single project does not receive your entire customer base along
with it.
The role sits next to the name
What matters is not only the number, but who to take the question to. In a new
colleague's first week, that is the difference between working and interrupting
somebody else.
Every report has a route to a resolution
A ticket has a status, a type, a priority, an owner and a department, and it can be followed from the first report to the close. It is linked to the customer, so their record shows that they have something open.
Incoming mail lands on the ticket by itself
Incoming email is read and attached to the ticket it belongs to, together with its
attachments. It does not depend on somebody forwarding it to the right person.
Internal notes that stay internal
A note on a ticket can be yours alone or visible company-wide, and it is kept
separate from the correspondence with the customer. The internal sentence does not
slip out by accident.
If it becomes work, it becomes a task
A ticket turns into a kanban task in a few clicks, and the link between them
survives. Whoever works on it sees the original report, not a summary of it.
Departments and types instead of triage
A ticket goes to a department, support or development, and its type says whether it
is a bug, a request, a suggestion or a question. So it is not a shared inbox that
somebody hands out from every morning.
Not five separate lists, but one working system
If you run five to ten separate subscriptions today, that is not a system, because none of them knows about the others. The three things below are not features. They are the only reason this page is not a feature list.
An enquiry becomes a customer, the history stays
When an enquiry turns into work, no new file is opened. Same record, same history,
with the projects appearing next to it.
Open issues show up on the customer
You do not have to ask a colleague whether anything is outstanding. The customer
record shows the open ticket, the last call and the next appointment, before you pick
up the phone.
Time lands where the work happened
Hours logged on follow-ups and tickets appear in the same report as project hours.
That is what reveals which customer costs more than they bring in, and it is worth
finding that out during the year.
Being the owner is not a visibility limit
Access here is decided by the role, and it is better to be clear about that up front:
- Three roles come built in, you can create your own, and the rights are set per area. Anyone given access to customers sees the whole customer base, not only their own.
- An enquiry and a customer both have an owner, but that is responsibility, not a visibility boundary. You filter by it yourself; the system does not hide the rest from your colleagues.
- In a company of three to fifty people this is usually the right way round, because the more common problem is not that somebody sees too much. It is that while one person is on holiday, nobody can get at what they were carrying.
- If what you need is for a salesperson to see only their own customers, we cannot do that today. Better to say so now than in month three.
What is on the screen before you dial
Most uncomfortable customer conversations start because one side remembers something and the other does not. These three things sit on the customer record before you dial.
When you last spoke, and about what
The date of the last call, meeting and email, with what was agreed next to it. You do
not have to open by asking them where you left off.
Whether they have something open
If they reported something and it is still open, that is better known before the
first sentence. An open ticket shows on the customer record, not only with the person
handling it.
How much work they have taken
The hours logged against them are totalled on the record. A conversation about price
goes differently when you are not saying from memory that they were a lot of work.
What people usually ask at this point
These are not our questions, they are the ones we get most often. None of the answers is that you will get used to it.
“We keep our customers in our heads”
Up to about fifty customers that is true, and that is exactly the problem with it.
The one who drops out is the one nothing has happened with for six months, and that
is usually the one where the least effort would turn into work.
“The team will not use it anyway”
This is the most common question, and a fair one. That is why there is a manual and a
built-in walkthrough inside the app: if someone does not understand something, they
do not have to ask you. There is no training day, because there is nothing to train.
“What happens to the data we have”
Your customer list can be imported at the start, so day one does not begin with an
empty system. Data can be exported too, so starting does not lock you in.
“How long before it works”
Automated setup takes about half an hour and then you are live. There is no
implementation project and no consultancy day rate. If you want help, our specialists are glad to give it.
Specialist tools are deep, and most of that depth sits unused
A dedicated sales system does hundreds of things. Most of that depth is neither understood nor used by most people. So the value is not depth, it is breadth and clarity. IntrApp is not a CRM and not an ERP: it is the base your company runs on. If you are looking for a CRM, you will find a better one, and that is as it should be.
What you will not find here
There is no campaign management, no lead scoring and no sales forecasting. If your
work is built on those, you are better off with a specialist tool, and it is better
to know that now than in month three.
If something is missing, ask for it
If roughly three quarters of our customers would also get use out of it, we build it
for free and everyone gets it. What really is specific to you gets built on its own
branch, as paid work, and it keeps receiving the shared updates. Exactly where the
line runs is set out on the custom development page.
No training required
There is a manual and a built-in walkthrough inside the app: if you do not understand
something, the app explains it. Automated setup takes about half an hour, and there is
no implementation fee. If you want help, our specialists are glad to give it.
The demo is for looking, the trial is for deciding
They are not the same thing, and it matters which one you start with. Look around in the demo; decide in the trial.
The demo
A shared environment anyone can open, with no sign-up. It runs on the full sample
data of a fictional company, so you see real customer records and tickets rather than
empty screens. Some functions are switched off in it, and every night it is wiped
back to its base state: whatever you do there is gone by morning.
The trial
Your own instance, with full functionality and your own customers. This is where it
is decided whether it works for you, because you see it on your own customer base
rather than a sample company's. If it is not right, you cancel it like a streaming
subscription.