Your mobile CRM app can become a Swiss army knife offering the full scope of varied CRM functions on the go. The current stats show that making your CRM reachable via mobile can not only increase the productivity of sales, marketing, and customer service employees by 15% but also encourage them to use CRM more often. However, mobile CRM should be quick, responsive, stable, and secure to result in these possible benefits. So, to ensure it meets the requirements and expectations, your mobile CRM app should be thoroughly tested.
In this article, we will share our software testing experience to highlight the specifics of mobile CRM testing and point out the complications to watch out for.
Mobile CRM testing specifics
Even if you carried out well-rounded web CRM testing, including acceptance testing (once CRM was implemented), regular regression testing (each time it is customized or additional functionality is purchased), and its performance is swift and smooth, your mobile CRM should be tested to find potential defects, as a new array of challenges may arise when CRM is migrated to mobile.
Each company’s mobile CRM app is different. For example, one company has mobile CRM with just basic CRM functionality (for example, lead and cases assignment, case management and prioritization, automated campaign and event management). While another one intends its mobile CRM to be used by field customer service representatives alongside other customer service, sales, and marketing employees. Thus, GPS location tracking will be helpful to visualize the employees’ whereabouts and mobile CRM integration with a camera can provide field workers with an opportunity to share photos of the real-life state of things with concerned colleagues. In this case, a test team shouldn’t neglect to validate the integration of your mobile CRM app with a GPS chip and a camera. Also, the team should check whether photos are properly uploaded and resized not to exhaust possibly limited internet and memory capacity.
So, mobile CRM testing needs a requirements-driven test strategy and a test plan. It should comprise basic testing types (for example, functionality, usability, performance, security) executed with regard to some CRM- and mobile-driven peculiarities.
Usability testing
The choice of a target mobile operating system (OS) like Android, iOS, Windows Phone, or cross-platform software greatly influences not only the process of usability testing but also the whole test strategy and plan. For example, iOS is designed to be run on a limited number of Apple devices while Android supports a significant variety of mobile devices with different screen sizes, layouts, and resolutions. This means that your Android version of a mobile CRM app should get properly optimized for all the devices. The basic goal of your CRM moving to mobile is to ensure that numerous sales, marketing and customer service employees can handily use it. So, GUI (Graphical User Interface) testing should check whether the design and the layout of mobile CRM comply with your design requirements, general mobile app design guidelines and UI kits provided by mobile OS’s teams (for example, Google’s Material Design for Android and Human Interface Guidelines for iOS).
Functionality testing
Apart from testing basic CRM functions and workflow, this testing type should validate mobile CRM normal functioning under mobile interruptions. For example, whether mobile CRM goes into a background mode in case of such interruptions as incoming calls, SMS, and push notifications. Unstable, limited or lacking internet connection, hard reboot, a dead battery or system crashes come up with even more mobile CRM functional testing challenges. When it comes to these complications, mobile CRM should locally store introduced or amended customer data or any other changes made by users and automatically sync with CRM’s database and back end when the proper connection is available again or a device is rebooted.
Performance testing
Performance testing should be an integral part of a mobile CRM testing strategy because such issues as a maximum number of users, data transfer rate and response time greatly influence user adoption. There is no need in mobile CRM if it only slows down and complicates customer management workflows. A test team should check CRM performance under peak load (for example, holiday shopping) and simulate hundreds or thousands of virtual users working simultaneously. Besides, test engineers should validate mobile CRM hardware requirements as employees using CRM need to be sure that the processing power of their mobile device, random-access memory, and battery capacity are sufficient for adequate CRM usage.
Integration testing
Depending on diverse CRM mobile app functions, it can support integration with various types of external software (web CRM, ERP, a database management system, document management software, email platforms), mobile built-in features (a GPS chip, a camera), basic mobile functions and apps (for example, calls, SMS, a calendar, a gallery). Each integration requires thorough testing, which should foresee all possible complications of the mobile CRM integrations. It’s always relevant to validate the data type and field size being consistent in both a mobile app and an external system or a database. Another thing to check is the adequacy of error messages indicating the integration failure (for example, when there is no internet connection). Also, it’s viable to ensure that the frequency of SQL jobs pulling data from a database is equal to the number of changes introduced to the data. With regard to, for example, CRM integration with a mobile camera, test engineers should test smooth API communication between the CRM app and the camera. Besides, it may be relevant to validate the duplicated storage of the pictures shared via CRM to make them available even if users’ Gallery is cleared and the CRM app is uninstalled, etc.
Security testing
Mobile malware is on its rise, so security is the issue never to be neglected with CRM that contains critical business and customer data. Besides, smartphones get lost much more often than laptops. Thus, apart from basic security testing activities (vulnerability assessment, penetration testing), mobile CRM should be carefully checked against security standards (such as OWASP Mobile Application Security Verification Standard (MASVS) version 1.1.3) and requirements. Mobile security checks dwell on checking how your mobile CRM ensures secure local data storage, communication with other mobile apps, network connection, and usage of cryptographic APIs. Another CRM mobile app security issue a test team should check is multi-factor user authentication able to withstand an automated process of trial and error used to guess a user’s login and password. In case your CRM allows for electronic signatures, the smooth performance of the digital signature technology (based on the public-key cryptography system) should be tested. Besides, different OSs come up with their security specifics. For example, Android’s Play Store doesn’t pre-check an app before it gets available there. As a result, a CRM user can download a malicious app, which may wreak havoc on your mobile CRM. Thus, test engineers need to double-check the security of inter-apps’ communication of an Android-based mobile CRM.
Regression testing
Regular updates received by mobile OSs, CRM customizations and amendments often influence mobile CRM performance and may result in serious and unexpected changes in the existing CRM functionality. Thus, though quite time-consuming, regression testing is needed to ensure the continuously smooth performance of your mobile CRM app. Test engineers should not only check the smooth functioning of the features added to mobile CRM app but also retest the rest of CRM functions that may have been affected. To make regression testing quicker, to ensure that testing covers the whole complex CRM toolbox, and to reduce the spend on regular regression testing, test teams should consider test automation opportunities. Such test automation tools as Appium, Selendroid, Ranorex, and others can make regression testing of your mobile CRM app much quicker.
On a final note
A CRM mobile app is a step towards streamlined customer management and high CRM user adoption rate. A CRM mobile app requires thorough testing that takes into account numerous CRM and mobile specifics. Mobile CRM testing is to foresee possible pitfalls implied by mobile OSs, battery and memory capacity, unstable internet connection, mobile malware, integrations with web CRM, a database, and so on. Knowing these challenges, you are likely to supervise the testing process efficiently.
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