Manage Customer Relationships
Keep customer work in Sistava's built-in CRM, or connect the CRM your team already uses.
TL;DR
When an employee finds a potential customer, Sistava creates or links one contact straight away. The contact carries an AI research label so you can see its source and whether anyone has reviewed it. Review is a quick quality signal, not a second queue that decides whether the person exists. You can select many contacts, mark them reviewed together, remove the ones you do not want, prepare outreach, and follow the real email history from that same contact.
How It Works
A contact is the durable record for one person. It can be a researched prospect, an active lead, a customer, a partner, or someone your team simply needs to remember. A deal is only for a commercial opportunity worth tracking, not every person who might receive an email.
Research does not create a second kind of person. It adds evidence to the contact that it found or created: the source, role, company, confidence, and current relationship state. The AI research label tells you where a contact came from. A dedicated Review column gives new research an immediate Keep or Remove decision.
Your employees do the day-to-day work: research people, keep the contact current, prepare outreach, log notes, open a deal, and move the deal forward. You stay in control of consequential actions. A contact existing never sends an email, and a paid prospect search still asks before spending credits.
The contact drawer is the relationship view. It shows research provenance, review state, outreach state, the latest reply, and real message receipts from Company Inbox. Sistava does not invent an email open or delivery event. Email-open tracking is not currently shown as a CRM metric.
What It Can Do
| Need | Built-in CRM | Connected CRM |
|---|---|---|
| Find new people | Research creates or links a contact with an AI research label | Use the prospecting and import flow in your connected provider |
| Control new research | Keep or remove from chat or Contacts, filter pending review, or keep a batch together | Review or qualify records in the connected provider |
| Keep the relationship visible | One contact shows source, review, outreach, replies, notes, and activity | Keep the relationship in your existing system of record |
| Prepare outreach | Ask an employee to draft the next email from the contact | Use the connected CRM's email and sequence tools |
| Track sales work | Set relationship status, create a deal when qualified, and move it through the pipeline | Keep sales work inside your existing sales stack |
| Find the right record | Search, filter, sort, share, and export contacts | Connect the provider your team already knows |
| Share customer context | Give the right Sistava users access to a saved record | Give the right employees access to the connected CRM tool |
Use Sistava's Built-in CRM
- Open the company workspace and select CRM.
- Tell an employee who you want to reach. For example: "Find 100 founders of European B2B SaaS companies and prepare outreach." Large requests arrive in controlled batches, and every batch creates or links Contacts without an individual admission step. It researches public sources first and asks before it runs a paid People Data Labs search.
- Each result appears in chat and is added or linked in Contacts with an AI research label. Use Keep or Remove directly on the chat result, or use Review in contacts for a batch.
- In Contacts, the Review column gives every new research contact a Keep and Remove control. Use Needs review to narrow the list, then select several rows and choose Keep to confirm them together. Removing a research-created contact removes it from your CRM.
- Open a contact to check the source, current relationship status, and Communication history. Choose Prepare outreach to continue the conversation with an employee. A draft is not a send, and the employee asks for approval again before it sends through your connected mailbox.
- Set the relationship status to Open, Interested, Needs follow-up, Not interested, or No response as the conversation develops.
- Create a deal only after the opportunity is commercially qualified. Open Deals to see the pipeline stage, value, company, and main contact.
- Open Companies to see the businesses your contacts work at. Search, filter, sort, share, or export Contacts whenever you need a working list outside Sistava.
Communication and Follow-up
Company Inbox is the source of truth for messages sent and received through a connected employee mailbox. The contact's relationship panel shows linked outbound receipts and inbound replies, so you can see whether the employee queued a message, the provider accepted it, or the person replied.
This is deliberately more precise than a guessed tracking dashboard. A provider receipt is not proof a person read the email, and Sistava does not show an open event unless a mail provider supplies that event. Use the actual reply, the relationship status, and a follow-up plan as the operational signal today.
Share a Sensitive CRM Record
Open a saved contact, company, or deal and choose Share. You can keep it at the workspace default or restrict it to named people. Companies and deals offer Read-only shares today because their human screens have no comments or direct edit action. A shared deal does not automatically reveal its linked company or contact; those labels and links remain hidden until the recipient separately has access to that record. An external Sistava account gets a protected read-only view, not access to your workspace.
This applies to people using the CRM workspace and its API. It does not yet give an AI employee permission to retrieve, remember, or act on a shared CRM record; that employee-data boundary is being designed separately.
Connect Your Existing CRM
- Open CRM in the company workspace.
- Select Use your existing CRM.
- Choose HubSpot, Salesforce, Pipedrive, Close, or Browse other CRM apps.
- Connect or configure the app when prompted, then assign the CRM tool to the employees who need it.
- Give the employee work that needs customer context, such as researching an account, preparing a follow-up, or moving a deal forward.
Tips & Tricks
- Use the built-in CRM when you want a shared customer record without another CRM subscription.
- Connect your existing CRM when it is already the source of truth for your sales team.
- Treat review, drafting, and sending as separate decisions. That lets you retain control without forcing a record-by-record admission step.
- Give an employee the relevant contact or deal context with its task. It can make the follow-up specific instead of starting from a blank prompt.
- Select multiple contacts and use Share selected to give a teammate's Sistava account access to just those records.
- Open a contact's Activity tab to see its change history: who added or edited what, and when.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I have to move from my current CRM to Sistava?
No. Open CRM, choose Use your existing CRM, and connect the provider your team already uses. The built-in CRM remains available if you also want a native company record in Sistava.
Which CRMs can I connect?
The CRM workspace presents HubSpot, Salesforce, Pipedrive, and Close first. Use Browse other CRM apps to find additional supported CRM and sales tools.
What is included in the built-in CRM?
Contacts, companies, notes, a deal pipeline, and source-backed research are included. You can filter research, review it in bulk, remove selected records, then search, sort, edit, share, and export contacts. Your employees update companies and deals as part of their work.
Does finding a prospect add them to CRM or send an email?
Research creates or links a contact and marks its AI provenance. It never sends an email. Your employee still prepares a draft, and you approve the outbound send separately.
Can I create a deal or a company myself?
Yes. Open Create in the workspace and select Company or Deal. Afterward, your employees keep those records and deal stages current as they do the underlying work.
Can an employee maintain CRM records?
Yes. Give an employee customer or deal context together with its task. It creates and updates contacts, companies, deals, and notes as part of that work.