Every market in the world we live in has two sides to it, the Businessman and the Customer. There are several words by which the latter side is known, like Consumer, Audience, etc. Both of these sides need to work mutually and dynamically to keep the market stable and ever-growing.

In the field of technology, CRM i.e. Customer Relationship Management is a term used to describe how the business side of the situation should deal and manage their customer relationships. It is a very prominent aspect of the whole scene and should not be ignored by the techno-giants.

CRM is a software-driven marketing platform and its testing at regular intervals is a significant step a software development company should take.

In this article, we will explore various elements of CRM Testing, starting from its meaning to what should be done and how it should be done.

CRM – Meaning

To explain it more simply, CRM (Customer Relationship Management) is a category of data-driven software solutions that are integrated in such a way that it helps the company progress and improve its customer interaction and related policy.

To build-up and analyse prominent customer information for its usage in performing focused marketing and sales process, a database application is used.

It’s the core of many big companies in the industry today. CRM can be said as the heartbeat of any software development company as if any beat goes wrong, the whole company could collapse. Because as we all know, customers keep the company alive.

But if all the pieces fit perfectly in CRM, the company is not only alive but growing in a rejuvenating way. The customer relationship gets stronger and thus helps in building more consumer count and trust. As CRM is this important, it’s testing significantly for any software development company.

CRM Testing – Goals

Managing and assimilating a CRM system for your own different and unique framework can be tough. It is hard because you have to do it with guaranteeing Big data integrity, Omnichannel sales, and support-office segments. This is the very reason why many of the CRM projects does not go a long way.

By testing the CRM structure, you are enhancing your customer relations. You are authenticating CRM’s documentation, reporting, and examining data. It works fine over all the channels, and even encourages by developing various channels and integrating systems.

This whole thing makes CRM Testing the backbone of your company and a decisive factor in the success of your company.

Note that you are not testing the product here. CRM testing is not about that. It’s about testing a customer’s ability to use the product. This must be understood while going into the process of CRM testing.

In this step, the aim is for the users to conform themselves to the management and themselves.

When this is done for all the users, the proclamation of a new CRM platform and its process becomes productive.

The testing is supposed to include some common scenarios. A list of them. They should be scenarios where an employee is supposed to use the framework to learn data that another person has left for him/her. Else, He/she is supposed to add additional data for someone else to discover.

Below are some examples:

• A salesperson should decide his/her open opportunities.
• A customer relations representative should characterize possible scenarios before making a customer call.
• An external salesperson leaving an assignment for an internal salesperson to make a customer call after a consumer visit.

CRM Testing – Rules to be considered before beginning

1. Creation of a testing team At a basic level, you must have:

• Application analyst
• QA test engineer
• Application developer
• Project manager

Also, communication is key in such situations. Feedback from the team and users is a very important aspect of the qualitative development of a CRM. Always know that CRM strategizing and planning is all about human relationships.

2. Determination of a Budget plan

Any small misunderstanding can cost you a fortune. The whole CRM manifesto should be comprehended finely. If not, problems like excessive payment, wasted team efforts and time can occur which are irreversible in such scenarios.

The Project manager should keep the above chain of thought in mind and draft an efficient and considerate budget. It must include the budget of all the things including:

• Training
• Data backup and storage
• Review the payoff
• Consultancy Fees
• Phone costs
• Reduced productivity
• Handle a risk assessment

3. Scheduling testing deadlines

Ensuring that a specific deadline is set and the whole team knows it is a must. If not, then the work ethic gets affected as everyone lets themselves loose and the completion of the project gets extended.

Drafting a weekly schedule for yourself can also be helpful in these kinds of situations.

4. Change Management

As said earlier, the customer is the prime focus of the whole process of Business. Change management should be approached to support individuals working in the team to increase efficiency.

While in the testing stage, you can note the individuals who are making your workers cope. By tracking these certain individuals’ zones, you can build them into training persons for the other team once theprojectis released.

In the testing process, the representatives can try anything, and even if they fail, they don’t have to risk anything. This makes them take more risks and lets the fear factor out of their minds.

By doing this, the adoption rate and compliance of users will see a significant increase in its prominence.

Even if you can release the most efficient and great technical platform, if those certain groups of individuals don’t use it, it can be a disappointment.

CRM System – What to test

The testing process is normal for most of the prominent software systems. It’s the same case even with the CRM software usage. Testing helps in various ways such as detecting errors and improving the utility of the system. CRM testing is a necessity for the success of CRM projects.

Data Quality,Data Conversion, and Functionality are the two main components to test in a CRM project. There are several other components to it. Let’s dig deeper into them.

Data Quality & Data Conversion

The first routine in the testing process involves the identification of errors with data conversion and data quality.At every step, one should confirm that the CRM is serving in a good manner in both cases. With information and without Information. Check out the following pointers:

1. No data duplication : Guaranteeing that no replication of information took place. It is intolerable if anything like this happens.

2. Hidden data remains hidden : Testing of proper and right information which is supposed to be apparent for various consumer roles.

3. No wrong fields populated : Verify that the details of one exchange are not showing up under the historical backdrop of another.

4. New and updated data saves well : Verification of Card and Customer data should be done regularly.

5. No missing data : Check that the necessarydata is accessible to the right user levels or not.

6. Right mapping of the Data: Verification of the chosen fields to be showing up in the correct gridlines.

7. Accurate depiction by graphs : Test the data which is critical to be exact, like sales prizes.

8. Perfect data sorting : Testing of every sortable field to make function smoothly.

Functionality

Functionality, the second routine of the CRM testing process mainly focuses on the testing of functionality and features related to it on a certain CRM platform.

Below are some of the common scenarios concerning functionality testing of CRM platforms:

1. Access level : User permissions are going as expected. Specifically, Non-admin users should not be allowed to accessany admin roles.

2. Connection dropped : If in an Enterprise-grade CRM system, the connection between provisions drops then cards should not operate and the correct error message pops up.

3. Transaction upload : When the integration of CRM and POS takes place, each customer’s purchase data should be correctly updated at the POS i.e. Point of Sale in a second or two.

4. Inadequate card balance : If a situation arrives where the shopper does not have sufficient balance in his or her card, he/she must be capable of pre-authorizing for the value equal balance which is available on the account. He/she should be able to choose another option for payment for the remaining balance of the transaction.

5. Card data : Any given consumer’s card type or card number must not bedisturbed after the transaction is complete.

6. Transaction type : The uses should be able to switch to any transaction class before the completion of the transaction. Also, after the change, the transactions must be settled accurately.

7. Pre-authorization : When a card is pre-authorized, if a transaction fails in the process, the bills of the payments should not be printed falsely.

8. Data mismatch : If any of the customers are having similar last and first names, it must not create any issues of data mismatching.

9. Department particular events : If any business is accepting gifts and loyalty cards on any conditions, those are running as wanted.

10. Tax : On pre-authorizing and completing transactions involving canceled transactions, all tax-related scenarios must work fine.

11. Store-specific deals : Verification of information printed on the receipts like store label and address etc. If it is right or not.

Other than these, there are several tests to be performed during the CRM testing round. They are as follows:

Performance Testing

As you know, Performance testing focuses on the working of the system under pressure, stress, or load. This verifies some consequences of some user experiences following the performance of the system. Some of the features are as follows:

• The highest number of users
• Server usage
• Error with some integrated applications
• Peak hours testing
• Response time
• Loading speed

Regression testing

Regression testing is a must when you are performing CRM testing. The demand to test Pre-migration and Post-migration is also there.

Verification of the values in a way that they are populated into the right fields and validations meeting with the data comes under Post-migration. No other area should be disturbed due to this.

This will verify the functional accurateness and wholeness of the CRM system. The performance and authenticity of the system can be assured finely by doing regression testing. Following is a list of features that must be tested:

• Confidentiality
• Scalability
• Functional completeness and accuracy
• Reliability

Security Testing

A CRM system contains a major amount of private and confidential data about customers. Their privacy should be maintained.

A good security testing strategy ensures a secure and closed system containing all the important data safely. If a good security testing has proceeded, then the data can be saved from unauthorized external and internal access. In conclusion,

As mentioned earlier, Customer Relationship is the core component of any business. Preserving it and maintaining good communication with the respective customer base is essential for any company to run its long course.

How VTEST can help

At VTEST, we work tirelessly to satisfy our customer’s demands by working with the motto, ‘Customer is God’. As it is integrated into our work culture, we understand the importance of CRM testing for a software development company. Work with us and you will experience a great service. VTEST it!

About VTEST

VTEST is an independent software testing company catering to product and service teams across the globe. We are a team of software testers who are passionate about quality and love to test. We develop an in-depth understanding of the applications under test and include software testing services strategies that deliver quantifiable results.

In short, we help in building incredible software.