CRM stands for customer relationship management. In practice it answers four questions that a spreadsheet and a group chat cannot answer quickly: who is this customer, who owns them, what was said, and what happens next.

What Socianet replaces

• The spreadsheet where leads are typed in by hand and nobody is sure which copy is current.
• The shared inbox and personal WhatsApp chats where enquiries wait for someone to notice them.
• Reminder notes, diary entries and memory for follow-ups.

What it does instead

1. Pipeline. Every deal sits on one board with an owner, a value and a next step.
2. Inbox. WhatsApp, email, SMS and social messages arrive in one place the whole team can answer from.
3. Follow-up. New enquiries get an instant reply, and chasers go out on a timetable.
4. Reports. The manager sees the pipeline, the stalled deals and each rep's activity on one dashboard.

Do you need one?

If more than one person sells, if enquiries arrive on more than one channel, or if you have ever lost a deal because nobody followed up, the answer is usually yes. Sheets versus Socianet shows the difference with the same five leads.

Spreadsheets are a fine place to start. They stop working when the team grows, enquiries arrive on WhatsApp at 7pm, and the person who knows which row is which is on holiday.

See it for yourself

The interactive Sheet1 versus Socianet demo follows one late enquiry through both, step by step. Everything in it is sample data.

You do not install or configure anything. We do the setup and you spend about two hours with us across the week.

What we need from you

• Your current sheet or export, in whatever shape it is in.
• The names and email addresses of everyone who needs a login.
• The stages a deal goes through in your business, roughly. We will refine them with you.
• Access to the channels you want connected: your business email, WhatsApp Business number, website forms and calendars.

After go-live

Your first dashboard review is part of the week. After that, use the weekly review to keep the pipeline honest.

At the start of the day

1. Open Conversations and clear anything unread or assigned to you.
2. Open your tasks due today and work through them in order.
3. Open Opportunities, filter to your own deals and look for any without a next step. Give each one a task with a date.

During the day

• Reply to new enquiries within minutes, not hours. The instant reply has already acknowledged them; your job is the real answer.
• After every call, add a note and the next step before you pick up the phone again.
• Move a deal the moment its stage changes, so the board stays true.

At the end of the day

Check tomorrow's tasks and anything still unread. If a deal is going nowhere, say so: mark it lost with a reason rather than leaving it to drift.

Deals can come in with the contacts. Tell us which column holds the stage and the owner, and we will create the deals on the right stage of your pipeline.

You rarely need to do this. Anyone who fills in one of your forms, messages your WhatsApp number or uses your website chat is added automatically, with the source recorded.

Tags

Keep tags short and agreed across the team. They drive lists and some automations, so a typo creates a second group. We set up your core tags during setup.

Notes

After a call, add a note in one or two lines: what they need, what you promised, when you will speak again. Then add the next step as a task.

The timeline

Every message, email, call, booking, form and stage change is listed on the contact, newest first. When someone new picks up the account, this is where they start.

Each column is a stage, such as New enquiry, Quote sent and Won. The number at the top of each column is how many deals it holds and what they are worth.

The three things every deal needs

1. An owner. One person, so nobody wonders whose it is.
2. A value. Even a rough one, so the totals mean something.
3. A next step. A task with a date. A deal without one is a deal nobody is working.

Deals from your website forms and some WhatsApp enquiries are created for you on the first stage, with an owner chosen by the rules set up for your team.

A deal stalls quietly. Nobody decides to stop working it; it just slips down the list. Flagging it after a set number of days brings it back in front of the owner.

What to do with a stalled deal

• Still alive: add a next step with a date, today.
• Waiting on them: set a reminder for when you will chase, and say so in a note.
• Gone: mark it lost with the reason. A clean pipeline is more useful than a full one.

Won deals can start an onboarding or thank-you message if one was set up for you. Lost reasons appear in reports, which is where patterns such as "price, every time" show up.

Finding what needs an answer

• Unread shows everything nobody has opened.
• Assigned to me shows what is yours.
• Filter by channel to see, for example, only WhatsApp.

Replying

Open the conversation, choose the channel at the bottom if the person uses more than one, and reply. The message is sent from the business number or address, not your personal one, and it is saved on the contact.

When a rep leaves, their WhatsApp chats do not leave with their phone. The new owner sees every message on the contact's timeline.

The first reply matters most. An enquiry that hears back in seconds is still in the conversation; one that waits until the next morning has often moved on. Our guide Lead response time statistics has the research.

Changing it

Message us with the new wording and we will update it. On the Managed plan we review it with you each month.

How they work

• Each follow-up starts from something that happened: a form, a stage change, a missed call.
• A reply stops it, so nobody gets chased after they have answered.
• Every message sent is saved on the contact's timeline.

Stopping one for one person

Open the contact. The automations panel shows which follow-ups they are in. Remove them there, or message us and we will do it.

Some tasks are created for you, for example a call task when a quote has had no reply for three days.

What it knows

Only what we give it during setup: your services, areas, prices if you want them shared, opening hours and the questions you always ask. It does not make things up about your business; if it does not know, it hands over.

What it does not do

• Agree prices, contracts or refunds.
• Carry on when someone asks for a person.
• Reply to people it has not been switched on for.

1. The agent sends a short message saying a member of the team will reply.
2. The conversation is flagged and the team is alerted.
3. The agent stays paused for that person while you handle it.

Your availability, meeting length and reminders are set up with you. Bookings appear on the contact's timeline and can move a deal to the next stage automatically.

Nobody copies form entries into a sheet any more. The source of each enquiry is recorded, so reports can show which forms and adverts bring in deals.

Reps can have their own version showing only their deals. Ask us if you want one set up.

Reading it

• Value by stage shows where money is waiting.
• Stalled shows deals nobody is working.
• Activity shows calls, messages and tasks completed per person.

Lost the link? Message us and we will send it again.

Current prices are on socianet.co.uk/plans. Messaging and AI are billed on usage. No VAT is added.

Not an admin? Message us with their name and email and we will add them.

Exporting

Admins can select contacts on the Contacts page and export them as a CSV file. For anything more, message us.

When someone leaves

Switch their login off and give their deals a new owner. Their conversations, notes and tasks stay on each contact.

How we handle personal data is set out in our privacy notice.

• Chat: the assistant on this site answers most questions from these guides and passes you to a person when it should.
• WhatsApp: +44 7459 953477.
• Email: [email protected].