For us, yes. We spend about as much per month on Salesforce as a developer's salary. Might as well devote 2 or 3 months of developer time and come up with something that actually fits our needs.
We evaluated SugarCRM and i have heard at least 20+ reccomendtations to use it.
In the end we went with salesforce.com and our guys love it... The outlook integration has made it easy to bake into everyday processes (along with xobni for search etc).
That said ideally we would like to see something more holistic from CRM.
It seems most "CRM" products are really just great at sales pipeline management, and dont really cover the end to end business efficiency features we really need...
Eg Cross Channel Marketing Conversion linked into the sales pipeline management as well Project management, Timesheets, Invoicing, Profitability Reporting, Customer satisfaction surveys etc
Solving the problem of how to best acquire customers is a great problem fix, but it creates a whole new bunch of problems around making sure you actually have really happy customers that are profitable to you (which is just as important to success and may be even harder to get right)
What you're asking for doesn't seem like a something a CRM should do. It seems more like a managerial accounting question.
First off, for every new customer, you should have built in metrics to figure out where they came from. For instance, use a different number on your direct mail pieces, use trackable order links in your e-mails and PPC campaigns.
Secondly, place a system to automatically follow up with existing customers. E-mail power user tips after 15 days, Phone call after 45 days of use to gauge satisfaction, etc. For gauging customer satisfaction, you get more useful feedback from someone on the phone than filling out a survey.
