This website uses cookies to better the user experience of its visitors. Where applicable, this website uses a cookie control system, allowing users to allow or disallow the use of cookies on their computer/device on their first visit to the website. This complies with recent legislative requirements for websites to obtain explicit consent from users before leaving behind or reading files such as cookies on a user’s computer/device. To learn more click Cookie Policy.

Privacy preference center

Cookies are small files saved to a user’s computer/device hard drive that track, save, and store information about the user’s interactions and website use. They allow a website, through its server, to provide users with a tailored experience within the site. Users are advised to take necessary steps within their web browser security settings to block all cookies from this website and its external serving vendors if they wish to deny the use and saving of cookies from this website to their computer’s/device’s hard drive. To learn more click Cookie Policy.

Manage consent preferences

These cookies are necessary for the website to function and cannot be switched off in our systems. They are usually only set in response to actions made by you which amount to a request for services, such as setting your privacy preferences, logging in or filling in forms. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not then work. These cookies do not store any personally identifiable information.
These cookies allow us to count visits and traffic sources so we can measure and improve the performance of our site. They help us to know which pages are the most and least popular and see how visitors move around the site. If you do not allow these cookies we will not know when you have visited our site, and will not be able to monitor its performance.
Cookies list
Name _rg_session
Provider rubygarage.org
Retention period 2 days
Type First party
Category Necessary
Description The website session cookie is set by the server to maintain the user's session state across different pages of the website. This cookie is essential for functionalities such as login persistence, ensuring a seamless and consistent user experience. The session cookie does not store personal data and is typically deleted when the browser is closed, enhancing privacy and security.
Name m
Provider m.stripe.com
Retention period 1 year 1 month
Type Third party
Category Necessary
Description The m cookie is set by Stripe and is used to help assess the risk associated with attempted transactions on the website. This cookie plays a critical role in fraud detection by identifying and analyzing patterns of behavior to distinguish between legitimate users and potentially fraudulent activity. It enhances the security of online transactions, ensuring that only authorized payments are processed while minimizing the risk of fraud.
Name __cf_bm
Provider .pipedrive.com
Retention period 1 hour
Type Third party
Category Necessary
Description The __cf_bm cookie is set by Cloudflare to support Cloudflare Bot Management. This cookie helps to identify and filter requests from bots, enhancing the security and performance of the website. By distinguishing between legitimate users and automated traffic, it ensures that the site remains protected from malicious bots and potential attacks. This functionality is crucial for maintaining the integrity and reliability of the site's operations.
Name _GRECAPTCHA
Provider .recaptcha.net
Retention period 6 months
Type Third party
Category Necessary
Description The _GRECAPTCHA cookie is set by Google reCAPTCHA to ensure that interactions with the website are from legitimate human users and not automated bots. This cookie helps protect forms, login pages, and other interactive elements from spam and abuse by analyzing user behavior. It is essential for the proper functioning of reCAPTCHA, providing a critical layer of security to maintain the integrity and reliability of the site's interactive features.
Name __cf_bm
Provider .calendly.com
Retention period 30 minutes
Type Third party
Category Necessary
Description The __cf_bm cookie is set by Cloudflare to distinguish between humans and bots. This cookie is beneficial for the website as it helps in making valid reports on the use of the website. By identifying and managing automated traffic, it ensures that analytics and performance metrics accurately reflect human user interactions, thereby enhancing site security and performance.
Name __cfruid
Provider .calendly.com
Retention period During session
Type Third party
Category Necessary
Description The __cfruid cookie is associated with websites using Cloudflare services. This cookie is used to identify trusted web traffic and enhance security. It helps Cloudflare manage and filter legitimate traffic from potentially harmful requests, thereby protecting the website from malicious activities such as DDoS attacks and ensuring reliable performance for genuine users.
Name OptanonConsent
Provider .calendly.com
Retention period 1 year
Type Third party
Category Necessary
Description The OptanonConsent cookie determines whether the visitor has accepted the cookie consent box, ensuring that the consent box will not be presented again upon re-entry to the site. This cookie helps maintain the user's consent preferences and compliance with privacy regulations by storing information about the categories of cookies the user has consented to and preventing unnecessary repetition of consent requests.
Name OptanonAlertBoxClosed
Provider .calendly.com
Retention period 1 year
Type Third party
Category Necessary
Description The OptanonAlertBoxClosed cookie is set after visitors have seen a cookie information notice and, in some cases, only when they actively close the notice. It ensures that the cookie consent message is not shown again to the user, enhancing the user experience by preventing repetitive notifications. This cookie helps manage user preferences and ensures compliance with privacy regulations by recording when the notice has been acknowledged.
Name referrer_user_id
Provider .calendly.com
Retention period 14 days
Type Third party
Category Necessary
Description The referrer_user_id cookie is set by Calendly to support the booking functionality on the website. This cookie helps track the source of referrals to the booking page, enabling Calendly to attribute bookings accurately and enhance the user experience by streamlining the scheduling process. It assists in managing user sessions and preferences during the booking workflow, ensuring efficient and reliable operation.
Name _calendly_session
Provider .calendly.com
Retention period 21 days
Type Third party
Category Necessary
Description The _calendly_session cookie is set by Calendly, a meeting scheduling tool, to enable the meeting scheduler to function within the website. This cookie facilitates the scheduling process by maintaining session information, allowing visitors to book meetings and add events to their calendars seamlessly. It ensures that the scheduling workflow operates smoothly, providing a consistent and reliable user experience.
Name _gat_UA-*
Provider rubygarage.org
Retention period 1 minute
Type First party
Category Analytics
Description The _gat_UA-* cookie is a pattern type cookie set by Google Analytics, where the pattern element in the name contains the unique identity number of the Google Analytics account or website it relates to. This cookie is a variation of the _gat cookie and is used to throttle the request rate, limiting the amount of data collected by Google Analytics on high traffic websites. It helps manage the volume of data recorded, ensuring efficient performance and accurate analytics reporting.
Name _ga
Provider rubygarage.org
Retention period 1 year 1 month 4 days
Type First party
Category Analytics
Description The _ga cookie is set by Google Analytics to calculate visitor, session, and campaign data for the site's analytics reports. It helps track how users interact with the website, providing insights into site usage and performance.
Name _ga_*
Provider rubygarage.org
Retention period 1 year 1 month 4 days
Type First party
Category Analytics
Description The _ga_* cookie is set by Google Analytics to store and count page views on the website. This cookie helps track the number of visits and interactions with the website, providing valuable data for performance and user behavior analysis. It belongs to the analytics category and plays a crucial role in generating detailed usage reports for site optimization.
Name _gid
Provider rubygarage.org
Retention period 1 day
Type First party
Category Analytics
Description The _gid cookie is set by Google Analytics to store information about how visitors use a website and to create an analytics report on the website's performance. This cookie collects data on visitor behavior, including pages visited, duration of the visit, and interactions with the website, helping site owners understand and improve user experience. It is part of the analytics category and typically expires after 24 hours.
Name _dc_gtm_UA-*
Provider rubygarage.org
Retention period 1 minute
Type First party
Category Analytics
Description The _dc_gtm_UA-* cookie is set by Google Analytics to help load the Google Analytics script tag via Google Tag Manager. This cookie facilitates the efficient loading of analytics tools, ensuring that data on user behavior and website performance is accurately collected and reported. It is categorized under analytics and assists in the seamless integration and functioning of Google Analytics on the website.

CRM Quality Assurance Deep Dive: Success Criteria, Tips, and Testing Checklist

  • 13121 views
  • 12 min
  • Apr 30, 2020
Yana S.

Yana S.

Copywriter

Elena K.

Elena K.

Head of Quality Assurance office

Share

A well-tuned customer relationship management (CRM) system shortens the sales cycle and increases sales by up to 29%. However, if a CRM is prone to bugs or has functional or performance issues, it may actually slow down progress and repel customers. To help you eliminate CRM issues and improve your company’s workflow, we’ll show you whom to hire to check the quality of your CRM system, guide you through the main criteria for successful CRM testing, and provide you with a CRM testing checklist. 

Main criteria for successful CRM testing 

A CRM system is complex and has numerous hidden pitfalls. No matter who you hire to check the quality of your CRM, it’s essential to know what to include in the CRM quality assurance process to make sure your system works properly. We review the elements that must be present in your CRM quality assurance check to make it efficient.

At least four types of testing conducted

To check all constituent parts of your CRM system and detect the majority of issues, your quality assurance specialists need to conduct the following types of testing. 

Functional testing 

Functional testing makes sure that your CRM corresponds to functional requirements. During functional testing, QA engineers simulate use of the CRM system to check if all its features are working the way they should. 

Usability testing 

One of the main requirements for CRM systems is user-friendliness. With the help of usability testing, QA engineers mimic the actions of real users to identify obstacles users may face. 

Security testing 

This type of testing allows engineers to identify security bottlenecks and vulnerabilities in your CRM. Security is critical for protecting your customers’ information, and your task is to keep that information safe by preventing data breaches and cyber attacks.

Performance testing

The performance of a CRM is vital. Performance testing helps you determine the speed of your CRM and check its responsiveness and stability.

Both manual and automation testing used

Applying both manual and automation testing allows testing engineers to view the CRM from different perspectives and assess the quality of various components. 

Manual testing is performed to check the user interface (the UI, or the way the app looks) and to thoroughly investigate parts of the system that cannot be checked with the help of automated testing. Automated testing, in turn, is used to handle time-consuming and repetitive tasks and to perform advanced UI testing, load testing, and performance testing. 

A combination of these approaches allows quality assurance engineers to achieve better results, detect most issues, and make sure your CRM works seamlessly. 

High level of test coverage provided

Test coverage is one of the metrics that measure the quality of testing. It estimates how much of a system’s functionality is covered with tests. The higher the test coverage, the more tests will be used. Make sure your CRM quality assurance team provides between 80% and 100% test coverage. This degree of coverage will reveal gaps in your CRM system’s functionality, prevent data leaks, and facilitate regression testing and test case prioritization. 

Clear expectations and requirements set

To be on the same page with your QA engineers, it’s crucial to clarify your main requirements for and expectations of testing before the quality assurance checks start. This is essential, as you and your team may have a different idea of the way the CRM should work, especially if you’re hiring a freelance QA engineer or an external QA team. Below, we list the most vital things you need to discuss and agree on with your QA team. 

General testing expectations

At the beginning of your communication with a QA team, you need to specify the issues with your CRM that you want to resolve. The QA team will analyze these issues and see how testing may help to resolve them. 

The results of testing often do not meet the expectations of product owners. That’s why it’s vital to share your vision with your QA team. As experienced quality assurance experts, your team should evaluate if your goal is attainable in the given time and define the steps to reach it. 

In addition, you need to set precise time frames for testing and outline the resources you’re providing your QA team. This will help QA engineers plan their time accordingly.

Testing priorities

It’s essential to define the full list of CRM functionalities to be tested and prioritize those that are the most important and have to be checked first. 

Expected results

For a successful bug fixing process, QA engineers should provide bug reports in a format that’s comprehensible and suitable for your developers. Specify the way you want bugs and test results to be reported. For instance, specify the format for reports and the information they should contain. 

Communication process

If you’re working with a remote team or a freelancer, it’s essential that you establish communication channels. Discuss the means of communication you’ll be using, days and time you’re available for calls, and the frequency of reporting and communication. 

Recap

CRM quality assurance requires specific skills and experience not every QA engineer has. That’s why choosing a testing specialist for your CRM system may be challenging. The criteria we’ve provided can help you establish an efficient and fast quality assurance process, establish your priorities for CRM testing, and avoid miscommunication with your team of QA engineers.

CRM testing checklist 

When testing your CRM system, it’s important to know what bottlenecks are common for this type of software. Here’s a list of typical issues you need to pay attention to. 

CRM Quality Assurance Check

Functional bugs

During a CRM quality assurance check, all of a system’s functionality should be tested. However, we will list only the most critical functional bugs that can make your CRM an obstacle for your employees rather than an efficient tool to increase sales. 

Issues with role-based access control

Having different user roles in your CRM allows you to determine the set of actions an individual may perform in your system and the information users can access. Make sure that user permissions work as they’re supposed to. Users with specific access levels should have access only to the information and actions that correspond to their user roles. 

Search issues

To ensure that your salespeople can find all the information they need, your CRM quality assurance team should check if the search feature works correctly. For example, they should see if it’s possible to search for a lead by various criteria such as country, phone number, or type of request. Also, they need to make sure that the CRM supports partial search, when the system manages to find information even if only part of a query is entered. 

Issues with data records

Losing contact information of leads may result in losing leads themselves along with potential revenue. Your CRM must correctly record and save all customer-related information. In addition, issues with recording data may lead to faulty CRM reports with incorrect information. 

A series of test cases should be used to identify if your CRM is prone to data mismatch or duplication. Also, ensure that your customers’ data is well protected. 

Integration issues

Quality assurance engineers need to check if your CRM is appropriately integrated with other services you’re using in your workflow such as email, help desk, calendar, and enterprise resource planning (ERP) software. It’s critical that your QA team conducts a set of tests to check if all third-party integrations are working correctly. Even small bugs can result in email delivery faults, email address mismatches, delays in receiving clients’ messages sent via the help desk, data corruption or data loss during transfer between services, and so on. 

Issues with communication channels

CRM issues connected to your company’s communication with customers are the most harmful, as they may lead to loss of leads and deterioration of your company’s image. That’s why the testing team needs to ensure that communication with customers is flawless. The most severe issues that may appear are unseen or delayed IP telephony calls and social media messages not being shown in the CRM. 

Issues with process automation

A CRM helps to automate a lot of your company’s processes, allowing more time for essential tasks. However, in the event of system faults or bugs, your employees will be obliged to perform these tasks manually, losing time. The goal of your quality assurance team is to examine the automated processes in your CRM to check for any defects that could hobble or slow down your team’s workflow. 

Test everything

Accurate testing ensures that your CRM can improve your company’s processes instead of harming them before your employees actually start working in the system. To avoid any setbacks in your workflow, don’t neglect CRM testing. 

Whom to hire to test your CRM

To successfully test your CRM, you need to choose the right people to perform a quality assurance check. Let’s look through your options.

CRM testing

Freelancer

A freelancer works flexibly for different companies instead of being employed by a single company. If you work with freelancers, you can search for individual specialists you need for your projects on platforms such as Upwork, PeoplePerHour, and Fiverr. You can find freelance QA engineers from all over the world, check out their portfolios, and read client reviews. There’s also flexibility in the way you pay a freelancer: you may find a freelancer with a suitable hourly rate or agree on a fixed price for your project. 

Freelancing is getting more popular, and many people prefer a flexible schedule and remote work. The freelance labor market provides a wide variety of highly skilled testing engineers to choose from. 

When hiring a freelancer is a good idea

Hiring a freelancer is a great option if you’re seeking a contractor with a flexible schedule for a relatively small project that requires only one testing engineer or if the workload is not steady enough to hire a full-time QA engineer. 

Choosing the freelance route may help a startup stay within a limited budget by providing a wide range of specialists from countries with affordable hourly rates. Besides, hiring a freelancer allows you to cut down on training-related costs and save time by avoiding the onboarding period that’s usually needed when hiring an in-house testing specialist.

It may seem risky to hire someone you’ve never met. To avoid this, the best option is to hire someone you or your colleagues are familiar with or to hire a freelancer with proven experience in CRM testing. 

In-house QA engineers

Having QA engineers on your team makes communication between departments more efficient. An in-house QA team should be familiar with your project from the start and know its specifics. This helps them start working on the project right away, skipping the exploratory testing stage that’s often necessary for freelancers and outsourcing teams to get acquainted with the product. The fact that the development and QA teams are familiar with each other facilitates communication. 

When should you have an in-house QA team?

Creating an in-house QA team is a good option if you already have an in-house development team at your company and you have enough resources to hire and maintain a team of quality assurance engineers. Such a team will be helpful if you have one large project or a set of projects, allowing you to provide all team members with a steady flow of tasks. Your ability to provide new members with enough office space, equipment, and good working conditions is also essential. 

Creating an in-house team of testing engineers is vital if your company has a unique corporate culture with a set of principles and beliefs every team member respects and follows. If you strive to work with specialists that fit your company’s main criteria and have the same outlook as your existing employees, it’s best to create a QA team from scratch. 

External QA team 

Outsourcing is a type of cooperation when work is done by another company under the terms of a contract. An outsourced team is composed of specialists who have typically worked together on past projects and therefore have established workflows. Each member of this team has their own tasks and responsibilities. Outsourced QA teams put much effort into improving their testing skills and learning the newest testing techniques and tools to provide customers with high-quality testing services. This makes the workflow of an outsourced QA team clear and straightforward.

When is it best to hire an external QA team?

Hiring an external QA team is the best solution if you don’t want to spend resources to maintain a constant QA team in your company but your project is too large and complex to be tested by one freelance QA specialist. An external team of quality assurance engineers allows you to work with highly skilled professionals and avoid the expenses of forming your own team.

Another benefit of hiring an external QA team is that such a team can help you shorten the time to market by providing you with multiple QA engineers.

It’s all up to you

The decision on whom to hire for your CRM quality assurance check depends on how big your project is, the resources you possess, and the number of tasks to be completed during the testing process. 

Wrapping up

Creating your own CRM system without a proper quality assurance check may bring your company more problems and monetary losses than benefits and profit. To make sure your CRM is an efficient tool for improving relationships with customers, it needs to be thoroughly tested by skilled professionals. 

CONTENTS

FAQ

    • Use at least four types of testing: functional, usability, security, and performance
    • Apply both manual and automated testing approaches
    • Make sure your QA team provides 80–100% test coverage
    • Set clear expectations and requirements for testing
    • Functional bugs: issues with role-based access control, search, data records, etc. 
    • Issues connected with integrating third-party services
    • Problems with communication channels
    • Process automation issues
  1. Choosing the right specialists to test your CRM is crucial for successful testing. You have three options:

    • Hire a freelancer
    • Create your own QA team
    • Hire an outsourced team of QA specialists

    If you want to hire a team of highly skilled QA engineers, check out the testing services the RubyGarage QA team can provide.

Authors:

Yana S.

Yana S.

Copywriter

Elena K.

Elena K.

Head of Quality Assurance office

Rate this article!

Nay
So-so
Not bad
Good
Wow
13 rating, average 5 out of 5

Share article with

Comments (0)

There are no comments yet

Leave a comment

Subscribe via email and know it all first!