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The most economically efficient way to improve any product is by listening to exactly what your customers want in a new version of it. This is the case with popular industry CRM Contactually.
Contactually content strategist Katharina Cavano shared the news about a totally revamped Android app, admittedly expressing in an email to us that the company’s first take was “a swing and a miss.”
Reviews in the Google Play store support that stance.
Prior to the new release, I averaged the star rating of 20 reviews, starting in June of this year with the last user submission before the new release. The average rating was 1.95.
And this isn’t the first time Contactually has goofed on mobile — in February 2016, the company poured $8M into overhauling its iOS app.
According to CEO Zvi Band, 40 percent of the Contactually user base has an Android device, which meant the need for a do-over for this segment was obvious.
Band noted users reporting problems with slow performance and reliability, which is often experienced when an app is very slow to load or instantly shuts down.
“Given that the first application was built in 2012, the reliability wasn’t what it should be on later phones,” he explained in an emailed statement.
So far, it appears Band’s team got it right this time.
While the new launch is still very recent, the 11 reviews submitted since its release average 4.4 stars.
The users have clearly spoken.
A highlight of the new app is its ability to work with the Android application program interface (API) to monitor all communication in and out of the phone directly within the app, allowing users to quickly track and measure customer outreach and communication frequency.
This feature eliminates the need to record or notate a call as a separate action after hanging up. The app does it for you; however, users will need to enter their own specific notes as they pertain to sales and lead activity.
Since the revamp, the software is now more stable and built to handle much heavier user loads. Sync speed has also been amped up.
Push notifications for tasks, follow-up reminders and other Contactually activities arrive at 9:00 a.m. every day; this feature is meant to encourage healthy follow-up habits.
The software fits comfortably in the mobile screen, offering an attractive design with bold visuals and no clutter. Users have quick and easy access to the array of native features, which are now comparable to the iPhone’s version.
Fans of Contactually’s “Buckets” feature will be happy with its prominence and desktop ease-of-use, as will those who frequent the email template library.
(I’ve always been a fan of the practical nomenclature within the Contactually lexicon; dumping contacts into “buckets” has always made sense to me.)
User-driven updates are critical for any form of business software, and Contactually can obviously relate quite well.
Despite every beneficial feature, no software company can be everything to everybody; but we need to rely on the creator’s expertise to combine everything important to the spirit of the product into a sleek, compelling user experience.
That seems to be the case with Contactually’s totally new Android app.
Have a technology product you would like to discuss? Email Craig Rowe.
