Users Facing Problems with Act!

Act! CRM Reports Problems

“The reports section is very slow. The terminology is not explained. The reports don’t tell you which campaign it’s about.”

One thing that most programmers and developers try to make sure is that there is no use of any such specific terminology that will cause users to require online help to understand. These terminologies are often translated into simpler words that are understood by even new users or people that are not familiar the different customer relationship management programs.

While Act! is one of the better customer relationship management providers out there, its interface does in fact contain lots of different terminologies that can not only prove to be daunting and difficult to understand for any newcomer, but also be very difficult to memorize for even experienced users. Thus, this issue should be addressed as soon as possible to make the program much more suitable for beginners and friendly for people that aren’t well-versed with the different terms that these programs usually come with.

Another thing that most users have complained about is the issue that the program has with its speed, especially on the reports section. The reports section is very slow and difficult to load, making the overall experience really frustrating and tedious. A program needs to be quick, so that it remains as useful and efficient as possible. Imagine being in the middle of a very important business endeavor, and needing urgent assistance from Act!, just to have it lag and provide slow performance. Act! CRM pricing will certainly be a very difficult thing to manage and handle, especially after the price that is paid for the program.

Customers prefer the program that they buy is working well out-of-the-box, and has very few bugs or issues. However, due to the heavy lack of bugs and various problems that are found in Act! really make it a difficult product to buy for someone who is starting out in the field. Most newcomers in the field are thus switching to other and better options, and regarding Act! is an option for those who do not want to invest too much money, or want to go for the cheaper, but worse option.

The fact that the reports section is highly incomplete, to the point that the reports do not even mention which campaign it is about, and works very slowly without constant lags makes Act! a very difficult program to get by.

On G2Crowd Reviews, a user stated:

“I love my mobile device and at the time, you couldn’t do anything with the Act! mobile app. I kind of remember a lot of upgrades too, that got irritating. It didn’t work well with Outlook, well, it kind of worked. The bottom line, it had the basics but you had to buy additional modules to for everything and it just didn’t feel like a solid and cohesive product. There are a ton of better options.”

This review shows that the user was not happy with the program’s functionality, as it had the basics provided, but needed the help of other modules to be considered a full product. In the end, they just stated that there are better options than Act! available for use in the market. They also disliked having to constantly upgrade to a new system, which is something that Act! requires its users to do quite often.

Another user reviewed:

“Having to buy a new version every year puts a bad taste in one’s mouth – in particular as XP comes to the end of its life and older office applications need to be replaced, it neccessitates a lot of cascading budget issues, and Act!’s price, while reasonable – is non-trivial.

The integration with Outlook is… Insufficient. I would also complain about the calendar – except that I can’t find a better calendar anywhere – it’s very comparable to outlook’s – but since every user has had a different (but largely bad) experience trying to synch their calendars – I’ve got people throughout the company that simply use one or the other, or have abandoned electronic type calendars altogether.

There are many add-ons that can make Act! snap and be a lot better than it is out of the box, but some of these features should really be included. It’s inexpensive to find a contact-numbering add-on for instance – but heaven help you if you try to decode Act!’s super-secret SQL tables and try.”

According to this review, much like the previous one, the constant issue of upgrading it quite frequent in Act!. This user also took issue with the lack of functionality provided in the Outlook integration. They also stated that while many of the add-ons that are available for Act! make it better than it is normally, these products are often quite expensive and should just be made part of the actual program, rather than needing to be bought individually to use.