folk vs Clarify: Which CRM for agencies wins?

In the fast-paced world of agency work, managing relationships and tracking deals can often feel like a juggling act. Agencies don’t just need a tool to manage their contacts; they require a comprehensive solution that ensures pipeline execution remains consistent while delivering exceptional service. When crucial context gets lost across emails, calendars, and various communication channels, it leads to missed follow-ups, breakdowns in handoffs, and unreliable forecasting. A well-implemented CRM for agencies is essential for keeping new business flowing, while also maintaining detailed account histories critical for renewals, upsells, and referrals.

In this article, we’ll explore two innovative CRM solutions—folk and Clarify—that tackle these challenges from their unique perspectives. folk emphasizes a streamlined approach to managing contacts, conversations, and deal context, making it easier for agencies to stay organized and responsive. On the other hand, Clarify leverages AI technology to automate updates and maintain an agile pipeline, ideal for teams looking to minimize manual entry and enhance communication.

Choosing the right CRM solution hinges on the specific needs of your agency, including the complexity of your processes, the level of customization required, and the resources available for ongoing management and maintenance.

What is folk?

folk is an AI-driven CRM that streamlines the management of contacts, conversations, and deal context without the burden of extensive setup. Tailored for agencies juggling multiple relationships with clients, partners, and prospects, it consolidates context spread across emails, calendars, and messaging platforms. Features like contact enrichment and deduplication ensure that records remain accurate, even when sourced from various inputs. Its pipelines and task tracking enable organized management of new business, renewals, and referrals, catering to agencies seeking a CRM solution that promotes coordination and follow-up without the complexity of a robust operational stack.

What is Clarify?

Clarify is a modern, AI-native CRM designed to keep records up-to-date through ongoing communications and meetings. It appeals to agencies seeking to minimize manual data entry while ensuring a functional pipeline, contact history, and clarity on next steps. The messaging emphasizes the importance of capturing meeting context, follow-up actions, and deal updates as they occur. With various integrations and automation capabilities, it supports seamless updates within the broader operational stack, making it ideal for teams looking to implement contemporary CRM workflows centered around conversational context and automated maintenance.

Feature comparison of folk and Clarify

Multi-pipeline and custom stages

Folk empowers agencies to tailor pipelines for various revenue streams, including retainers, projects, partnerships, and hiring. Stages can be customized to align with actual handoffs and qualification criteria, ensuring the pipeline accurately reflects the movement of deals. Separate pipelines maintain clear reporting by service line, preventing one process from forcing compromises across the entire team. Updates remain lightweight, allowing the CRM to evolve alongside the agency.

Deal tracking in Clarify is centered around Deals, with the product designed to identify opportunities and keep deal stages current as activities unfold. Clarify emphasizes a streamlined pipeline, mapping stages to genuine progress and incorporating probability assessments for more accurate forecasting. Maintaining pipeline hygiene is integral to how Clarify ensures records are usable without the need for constant manual updates.

Client and Deal Activity Tracking

folk ensures that relationship context is seamlessly attached to the appropriate contact and deal by consolidating communication history and activities into a unified timeline. Notes, tasks, reminders, and past interactions remain accessible where the team collaborates, minimizing “where is the context” moments during handoffs. This approach enhances agency workflows, allowing multiple team members to engage with the same account throughout sales, onboarding, delivery, and renewals. The objective is to provide quick access to past events, key information, and upcoming steps.

The record experience in Clarify aggregates emails, meetings, notes, and record details all in one location, allowing activity context to be easily viewed alongside the contact and deal. The platform also features meeting capture capabilities, including recordings and summaries linked back to records. Recent changelog notes on record pages and Deals updates highlight the ongoing efforts to improve how activities and deal context are presented together.

Automation and Workflows

folk offers pipeline visibility to monitor deal progression, stage health, and overall momentum, allowing leaders to identify risks early. Agencies can analyze conversion patterns and cycle lengths at a high level, then investigate specific bottlenecks. Reporting facilitates discussions on forecasting, capacity planning, and performance by source or service line, with an emphasis on clarity and informed decision-making rather than cluttered dashboards.

In Clarify, follow-ups and updates are automated by an agent, which includes drafting follow-ups, capturing tasks, and updating records based on interactions from calls or emails. Clarify’s writing approach integrates workflow automation as a key element of modern CRM operations, with a dedicated product post detailing automatic meeting notes and follow-up reminders embedded in CRM workflows. This ultimately minimizes manual data entry and routine “next step” administration, based on the enabled workflows.

Reporting and Analytics

folk offers pipeline visibility that allows leaders to monitor deal progression, stage health, and overall momentum, enabling early identification of risks. Agencies can analyze conversion patterns and cycle lengths broadly, before diving deeper to uncover specific bottlenecks and their causes. This reporting facilitates discussions about forecasting, capacity planning, and performance evaluation by source or service line, prioritizing clarity and informed decision-making over cluttered dashboards.

In Clarify, pipeline visibility is characterized by real-time tracking of deals, with dashboards and forecasts updating seamlessly as records are modified. Additionally, Clarify provides resources on CRM analytics dashboards and reporting concepts, emphasizing the importance of using CRM data to assess pipeline health and track trends over time. The availability of specific reports varies based on the reporting layer and configuration detailed in product updates and documentation.

Integrations and Data Hygiene

folk prioritizes clean records by facilitating enrichment, deduplication, and structured fields that minimize manual data entry. Our integrations link common agency tools, ensuring that contact and activity data remains consistent across all channels. This approach effectively combats the usual CRM decay caused by duplicates, outdated information, and missing context that can compromise reporting. A cleaner database not only enhances automation reliability but also maintains a scalable pipeline.

The integrations catalog for Clarify outlines various categories and integrations, with dedicated pages detailing Slack notifications for pipeline updates and a Zapier connector for extended automation capabilities. Zapier’s listing further highlights Clarify's compatibility with thousands of apps, enabling seamless workflow triggers and data movement. Additionally, Clarify’s product messaging underscores the importance of pipeline hygiene and record maintenance, ensuring the system stays up-to-date with incoming activity.

Conclusion

In summary, while both folk and Clarify offer innovative solutions, folk stands out as the ultimate choice for agencies. Its streamlined approach enhances organization by consolidating contact history, tasks, and deal context without excessive setup, making it ideal for dynamic agency environments. Clarify excels in automating updates and maintaining pipeline clarity, but may introduce complexity in customization. Ultimately, folk combines user-friendliness with robust functionality, ensuring teams stay connected and productive, making it the best CRM alternative for agencies.

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