Zoho CRM Overview

Zoho CRM Overview

What is Zoho CRM?

Zoho CRM is an award-winning customer relationship manager launched back in 2005. It is used by over 250,000 businesses in over 180 countries. Zoho CRM accounts for approximately 6.95% of the total CRM market. 

CRM stands for "Customer Relationship Manager" and is a commonly used tool to help businesses convert more leads and engage with customers, resulting in a higher ROI.

Zoho CRM provides an all-in-one platform that can be used to bring your sales, marketing, and customer support activities together, increasing productivity across the board.

Table of Contents

1. User Interface and Design
2. Platform Availability
3. Features \ a. Multichannel Engagement \ b. Users and Contacts \ c. Zia Artificial Intelligence \ d. Performance and Analytics \ e. Reports
4. Pricing \ a. Free \ b. Professional - $35 per user, per month \ c. Enterprise - $50 per user, per month \ d. Ultimate - $65 per user, per month
5. Pros and Cons
6. Is Zoho CRM Suitable for My Business?

User Interface and Design

Zoho CRM's design is modern and intuitive. Overall, the platform is easy to use; however, you might find that it takes a while for you to fully understand the software due to the range of features that it has to offer.

Accessing the dashboard, you will see the default view is Home. Here you can see open tasks, track your leads, and see a brief overview of your business finances for the month.

The platform does well in giving you an overview of your customer relations without going over the top with information or fancy design.

Other areas of the dashboard can be accessed through the menu, which is customizable, making it easy to navigate to the areas you find most useful.

Platform Availability

Zoho is available in browser or as a mobile app.

The mobile app provides access to essential tools such as analytics, dashboards, team collaboration, map integration, voice notes, and call logging. Overall the mobile app is pretty extensive and delivers a lot more than the app versions of some other CRM platforms.

Zoho's artificial intelligence, Zia, also works very well on mobile and can assist in completing tasks such as updating records, adding notes, and managing the sales pipeline. Zia responds to simple text-based, natural-language commands.

Features

Multichannel Engagement

Zoho CRM provides an excellent way to connect all of your communication channels into one platform. Streamlining the communication process between business and client can give you more time to deliver more personalized communication and offers to prospective clients.

Notable features include:

• Personalized email campaigns
• Detailed analysis of email campaigns
• Insights into which platform is most suitable to connect with prospective clients.
• Advanced live chat function - This allows you to communicate with website visitors and start building a relationship with them as soon as they visit your site.
• Ability to send prospects personalized SMS messages
• Analyze how and when potential clients are interacting with your business - Provides insight into how you can drive conversions 
• Track revenue based on specific strategies in order to maximize ROI
• Analyze the demographics of your social media followers
• Keyword analysis

Users and Contacts

When you log in to Zoho for the first time, the platform displays a landing page that helps you get familiarized with the platform. The Getting Started section will show you how to define leads, contacts, accounts, and activities. 

Easy Setup lets you add more users and customize the platform to your liking. The platform also displays your recent activity and upcoming tasks, increasing productivity and helping you stay on track. 

The Page Layouts feature makes it straightforward to manage multiple products with a single CRM account. 

Zoho CRM's Sandbox feature allows for streamlined testing of custom-built modules and layouts. Small to midsize enterprises (SME) and larger businesses will find this feature extremely useful as it can be used to test custom-built CRM software.

Zoho allows you to set up individual accounts for each customer and assign multiple contacts to each account. It's pretty easy to organize contacts into active leads and assign different classifications to each connection. The platform also allows you to attach documents to individual contacts; any documents that you upload can be found in the documents library. 

The Contacts module has an excellent interface; it features an easy-to-read list of all of your contacts, complete with the option to add photos and multiple different types of contact information.

Zia Artificial Intelligence

Zia is Zohos chatbot interface that can assist prospecting customers' with text and voice chat. The advanced AI can predict leads, sales directions, and deals. 

Performance and Analytics

Performance and Analytics allows you to forecast profits and assign targets based on this data. Forecasting is very detailed, with options to view sales estimates per salesperson, territory, or team. In addition, forecasting helps to track the productions of the sales department and spot any employees that are performing well.

Overall, you will find that analytics provides a more visual way of analyzing your sales, making it easier to forecast trends and gather insight into your customer's behavior.

Reports

Real-time reporting gives you an up-to-date overview of sales, marketing, and activities; things you will find here are:

• In-depth sales reports
• Performance reports for individual sales representatives
• Information on deals closing/closed in the last 30 days
• Revenue reports

Pricing

Zoho offers a range of packages suitable for different-sized businesses. A brief outline of each package is shown below.

It's worth noting that all prices shown are for monthly subscriptions; users can also benefit from a 30-40% discount when paying annually.

Free

Features include:

• Up to 3 users
• Lead management
• Contact management
• Account management
• Standard reports
• Analytics
• Basic support

Standard - $20 per user per month

Everything in the free version, plus:

• Scoring rules
• Email insights
• Increased customizability
• Workflows
• Multiple Pipelines
• Mass Email

Professional - $35 per user, per month

This plan provides everything in the standard version, plus:

• Inventory management
• Google Ads integration
• Process management capabilities.
• SalesSignals
• Blueprint
• Web-to-Case Forms
• Validation Rules

Enterprise - $50 per user, per month

This tier includes everything in the professional plan, plus:

• Zia AI
• CommandCenter
• Canvas
• Multi-user Portals
• Advanced Customization
• Mobile SDK & MDM

Ultimate - $65 per user, per month

This tier includes everything in the enterprise tier, plus:

• Advanced BI - bundled with Zoho Analytics
• Enhanced Feature Limits
• 30-day Trial

Pros and Cons

Advantages of Zoho CRM

• Great for customization
• Great for email marketing and automation
• In-depth reporting
• Intuitive user interface
• Transparent and affordable pricing

Disadvantages of Zoho CRM

• It takes a while to set up and customize
• Limited customer support
• Functionality may be limited as your demands increase

Is Zoho CRM Suitable for My Business?

This really depends on what you are looking to get out of using Zoho CRM. As the platform has so much to offer, it can provide value to businesses of any size. It will depend on which features you plan on using and how they will add to your business model. The range of pricing tiers along with free trials on offer for each tier makes it easy to find the right balance between pricing and features. 

Why not try Zoho CRM for yourself? 

If you do decide to test out Zoho CRM and are looking for guidance on how to get the most out of the platform, reach out to us by filling in the contact form below!