Learn how a
charity overcame CRM challenges and administrative burdens with the help of Bitrix24.
Addiction Family Support was founded in 2006, formally known as DrugFAM. Addiction Family support ensures those who are affected or bereaved by a loved one’s addiction to drugs, alcohol or gambling have the support they need. Their staff and volunteers provide a range of support services, including a National accredited Helpline and email support 365 days a year.
Chris Kemble, Operations and Services Manager at Addiction Family Support (formerly DrugFAM), outlined several challenges that ultimately led to the discovery of Bitrix24:
- We needed a CRM that could interact with our Helpline telecoms system. The previous CRM was unable to bring up a client's record when they called the helpline as the CRM did not have the functionality to interact with other systems.
- The helpline relies on a large number of volunteers who, on average, volunteer for just 8 hours a month. A CRM was needed that didn’t penalise the charity for having a high number of volunteers and therefore didn’t charge us a monthly fee per volunteer.
- We wanted to cut down on time-consuming, repetitive admin tasks and needed a CRM that could provide automations. Before using Bitrix24, a lot of staff and volunteer time was lost on administrative tasks that were taking away time that would be better spent on supporting our clients.
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Finally, with a growing need for our services, we needed a CRM that offered additional functionality. We wanted a CRM that we were confident could grow with us, rather than needing to consider changing CRM again at a later date.
Bitrix24 has resolved all the challenges we faced and has provided new, improved ways of working that we hadn’t previously considered.
Firstly, Bitrix24 had the capacity to have our telephone system Call Handling embedded within it. This has ensured that when clients call, their records show up on Bitrix24. This resolved the issue of needing to open our old CRM separately and search for a client record. This is of huge benefit to clients who don’t need to wait whilst we search for their record.
Secondly, we now have 40 volunteers who all have their own account with Bitrix24, making it possible to support and manage their workload better. In addition to this, we have been able to set up different views for volunteers and staff, ensuring they only need to see information relevant to them. It keeps Bitrix24 looking clean and easy to navigate.
Thirdly, through using automations and pathways within Bitrix24, we have heavily cut down on administrative tasks. Bitrix24 automatically sends out emails based on criteria we set. The use of automations, pathways and deals have exceeded our expectations. Examples of which include adding someone to our newsletter list at the touch of a button, or using scripts to send a safeguarding alert immediately to our Safeguarding Lead.
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