Customer Management: #4 Enhance Customer Journey

When Neha started DefineOps, a growing IT support and consulting firm, most of her work was straightforward. A client would sign up for a free version, decide whether the service works for them, and then either continue or discontinue. Billing was simple, and subscriptions were rare.

As the business grew, so did the variety of customer needs.

Some clients wanted to try the service first. Others preferred a monthly plan, which is priced at a minimum. A few customers requested usage-based billing for support hours, while the enterprise sought greater flexibility to modify contracts mid-term.

"Can we try this for a month before we commit?"

"This monthly plan is working- can we upgrade to a higher tier later?"

"Businesses slow down. Can we downgrade or pause the subscription?"

"We cancelled earlier, but can we restart without setting everything up again?"

Neha began to hear these questions almost every week. And that's when she realised something important.

Customers weren't just signing up and paying. They move through a lifecycle, trying, upgrading, changing plans, leaving, and sometimes returning.

The challenge here is not acquiring customers anymore; it's managing their journey over time without losing control or customer trust.

That's where Zoho Billing helped her bring structure, flexibility and clarity to every stage of the customer journey.

Enhancing Customer Lifecycle in Zoho Billing 

Customer relationships don't follow a straight line. Some customers need time to explore. Others commit quickly but expect flexibility later. Zoho Billing is designed to support this reality, helping businesses manage every stage of customer lifecycle smoothly.

Supporting Trials & First-time Exploration 

For many businesses, offering a trial is the first step in building customer trust. A trial allows customers to explore features, understand value and decide whether the service fits their needs.

Zoho Billing makes it easy to offer time-bound trials for subscription plans. During the trial period, Customers can access premium features, giving them a complete experience before making a purchase decision.

Extending the Journey with Free Plans 

Trials don't always convert immediately, and that's normal. Neha had the same question:

"What happens when the trial ends, and the customer isn't ready to upgrade yet?"

Automatically cancelling access felt too harsh. Manual follow-up wasn't as effective and scalable.

Instead of forcing a choice between upgrading or losing access entirely, Zoho Billing allows businesses to create a free plan with zero value and limited access. When a trial ends, the subscription automatically moves to the free plan.

This approach delivers two key benefits:

• Customers stay engaged, even after the trial expires.

• The sales or finance team don't need to intervene manually.

Businesses could allow basic features on the free plan, keeping customers connected to the product while encouraging them to upgrade when they are ready.

Throughout the process, the subscription remains active, and all customer data remains intact.

Supporting Different Billing Models 

Not all customers follow the same billing path, and Zoho Billing reflects that reality.

For Neha's business:

• One-time projects (such as infrastructure setup or audits) were billed and completed in a single payment.

• Subscriptions (monthly IT support or maintenance) represented long-term relationships.

• Usage-based charges covered extra support hours or on-demand services.

One-time customers typically enter and exit quickly. Subscriptions, however, evolve, and Zoho Billing is designed to support this journey without disrupting continuity.

Managing Subscription Changes with Ease 

Customer needs rarely stay static. Plan to expand, shrink, or change as businesses grow or slow down.

With Zoho Billing, Neha could confidently respond when customers said:

"Can we upgrade to a higher tier?"

"Can we reduce our plan for the next few months?"

Zoho Billing supports:

• Expansion: Plan upgrade, add-ons, increased quantities.

• Contraction: Downgrades or reduced usage.

• Renewals: Continuing subscriptions without disruption.

 All changes are reflected automatically in billing, ensuring accuracy and transparency without manual recalculations.

Handling Payment Failure without Customer Drop-off 

Another challenge Neha faced was failed payments. Sometimes a card expires. Sometimes a bank issue occurs. These failures weren't intentional, but they can lead to immediate subscription cancellation, resulting in the loss of customers who still wanted the service.

Zoho Billing helps reduce payment failure through dunning management. But what if the final retry still fails?

Once again, the Free plan feature becomes the smart fallback.

Instead of cancelling the subscription outright or allowing unpaid access indefinitely. Zoho Billing can automatically move the subscription to a limited-access free plan when the final payment attempt fails.

Here's what happens:

• The subscription automatically moves to the free plan.

• Unpaid invoice is voided.

• Customer retains basic access.

They're encouraged to upgrade and resume the earlier paid access.

This approach preserves the relationship and keeps the door open, rather than ending the journey midway.

Allowing Customers to Amend and Adapt Subscriptions 

As businesses evolve, customer needs change, and Zoho Billing supports that flexibility.

Customer may want to:

• Upgrade or downgrade plans

• Add or remove a usage-based component.

• Adjust billing frequency

• Pause services temporarily.

Zoho Billing enables these subscription amendments while maintaining billing accuracy and continuity. Instead of creating a new subscription or restarting the billing cycle, changes happen seamlessly within the existing subscription.

This gives customers confidence that their billing adapts with them rather than working against them.

Bringing Customers Back with In-term Reactivation 

Sometimes, despite best efforts, a subscription gets cancelled, often due to payment failures.

In the past, bringing customers back meant recreating subscriptions, issuing new invoices, and manually adjusting billing dates. Zoho Billing simplifies this with In-Term reactivation.

​

Here's what it offers:

• Reactivate subscription mid-term without changing the original billing or renewal date.

• No new invoice created, preventing duplicate or incorrect charges.

• Customer Portal reactivation, allowing customers to resume service on their own.

• Configurable rules, such as requiring successful payment before reactivation.

 Customers don't feel like they are starting over, and businesses avoid operational complexity.

​
What Does Effective Customer Life Cycle Management Do for Business? 

A strong customer lifecycle isn't about rigid contracts or one-time transactions. It's about supporting customers as their needs evolve, giving them room to explore, upgrade, pause and come back when the time is right.

When businesses manage these transitions smoothly, customers feel supported rather than restricted. Zoho Billing enables this flexibility, helping companies to turn everyday billing moments into long-term, trust-driven relationships.

Up Next: Never let the customer slip. 

• Topic Participants

• Hari Hara Sudhan. S

  

• Sticky Posts

• Community Learning Series | Digest #5 — September 2020

  Dear customers, We're happy to bring you the September edition of our #CommunityDigest! Keep track of your subscription KPIs right from your smartphone: Last month, we enhanced our Android mobile app to help our customers get daily updates on their business health. We got to know from a lot of customers that this has made their job much more easier because they no longer have to keep a reminder to manually check on the previous day's revenue or activations. If you have not downloaded it yet, here's

• Community Learning Series | Digest #4 - August 2020

  Dear customers, We hope you're staying safe and healthy. I'm happy to bring you the fourth edition of our #CommunityDigest with some brand-new updates from us. 1. Daily Business Updates (for Android users) The Zoho Subscriptions Android app has got a cool new update: You can now get a push notification to your smartphone that lets you know how many activations and cancellations have taken place, and what's the net revenue for the previous day. The best part is, you can tell the app when exactly you

• Community Learning Series | Digest #3 - July 2020

  Dear customers, We hope you're staying safe and healthy. We're glad to bring you the July edition of our #CommunityDigest. New community members can view our previous newsletters here. This time, we have two major updates and three interesting topics for you: 1. Zoho Subscriptions Developer Community Since the inception of Zoho Subscriptions, our team believed that the recurring billing platform we provide should be able to offer an extensive API library that empowers businesses to automate most

• Introducing: Community Learning Series | Digest #1 - May 2020

  Dear customers, We hope you are staying safe and healthy. Helping businesses manage their customer subscriptions more efficiently has always been, and always will be, our goal at Zoho Subscriptions. We strongly believe this is possible if we grow together as a community and share what we know with each other. To nurture this shared learning experience, here is our brand-new Community Learning Series! ​ Welcome to the first edition of our digest! Each edition of our community digest includes guides

• Recent Topics

• Links not functioning in Zoho mail

  Links that are included in emails I receive are not activating. Nothing at all happens when I click on them. I have researched FAQs and this forum to no avail. Any suggestions?

• Zoho Mail iOS app update: Manage folders and tags

  Hello everyone! In the most recent version of the Zoho Mail iOS app, we have brought in support to manage(create, edit and delete) the folders and tags. Create folders Create Tags Edit/ Delete folder In addition to this, we have also brought in support

• [Important announcement] Zoho Writer will mandate DKIM configuration for automation users

  Hi all, Effective Dec. 31, 2024, configuring DKIM for From addresses will be mandatory to send emails via Zoho Writer. DKIM configuration allows recipient email servers to identify your emails as valid and not spam. Emails sent from domains without DKIM

• Zoho CRM Feature Requests - SMS and Emails to Custom Modules & Time Zone Form Field

  TLDR: Add Date/Time/Timezone form field, and be able to turn off auto timezone feature. Allow for Zoho Voices CRM SMS Extension to be able to be added to custom modules, and cases. Create a feature that tracks emails by tracking the email chain, rather

• Our Review Of Zoho CRM after 60 Days

  The purpose of this is to just share with Zoho why I love their product, but ultimately why I could not choose Zoho CRM for our next CRM. About two months ago we begun a CRM exploration process for our financial planning firm, based in Texas. We already

• Link Purchase Order to Deal

  Zoho Books directly syncs with contacts, vendors and products in Zoho CRM including field mapping. Is there any way to associate vendor purchase orders with deals, so that we can calculate our profit margin for each deal with connected sales invoices

• Extend the Image Choice Field

  Hi, The New Yes/No field is great for what it does, and the Image Choice Field is good but could be better with some functions from the Yes/No field. Take an example, rather than just Yes/No you want Yes/No/Maybe (Or more than 3 choices), but unlike the

• Zoho Desk: Macro to assign Ticket to self

  Hello, We are using macros in Zoho Desk to set some fields and send a response. I would also like to assign the ticket to myself (or whoever applies the macro). I can only set a fixed agent in the macro, so I would have to create one for every agent.

• Turn off Knowlege Base Follow options and Follower lists

  Is there a way to hide or turn off the option in the Knowledge Base for users to follow specific departments/categories/sections/articles? If not, is there a way to turn off the public list of followers for each of those things? Otherwise, customer names

• Enterprise Data management solutions

  I'm on the hunt for the perfect Data management solution for my organization. I've been doing a ton of research across different websites, but honestly, it's just left me more confused! A friend suggested I check here, so I'm hoping someone can point

• New Feature: Audit Log in Zoho Bookings

  Greetings from the Zoho Bookings team! We’re excited to introduce Audit Log, a new feature designed to help you track all key actions related to your appointments. With Audit Log, you can maintain transparency, strengthen security, and ensure accountability.

• Automated Task reminder

  First question: If a task does not have a reminder set, will it still send an email notification that the task is due today? If not, how can I set up an automated reminder to send the task owner an email that it is due on a certain date?

• Zoho Support - contract notifications

  Hi, I have a few questions about using Zoho support. Is there a way to add custom contract notifications like (90 days before expiry send notification e-mail to agent and customer, then another 60 days before expiry and another 30 days.). And is it possible

• Kaizen #230 - Smart Discount-Based Quote Approvals Using CRM Functions and Approval Process

  Hello everyone! Welcome back to the Kaizen series! Discount approvals are a standard part of sales governance. Most organizations need something like this: Discount % Required Action < 10% Auto-approve 10–19.99% Sales Manager approval ≥ 20% VP Sales approval

• How to create a new Batch and update Stock via Inventory?

  Hi everyone, We are building an automation where a user enters batch details (Batch Number, Mfg Date, Expiry, and Quantity) into a Custom Module. I need this to trigger an API call to Zoho Inventory to: Create the new batch for the item. Increase the

• OAuth2 Scope Error - Incorrectly defaulting to CRM instead of Analytics.

  Hello Zoho Team, I am trying to connect n8n to Zoho Analytics API V2 for a simple automation project. Despite using the correct Analytics-specific scopes, my OAuth handshake is failing with a CRM-related error. The Problem: The authorization screen shows:

• Archive Option in Conversation View

  Hello, I have a suggestion\request to add an "Archive Thread" button in conversation view of Zoho Mail. The best suggestion I have is to put an "Archive Thread" button next to the "Label Entire Thread" button in conversation view. Most users don't just

• Is it possible to create a meeting in Zoho Crm which automatically creates a Google Meet link?

  We are using Google's own "Zoho CRM for Google" integration and also Zoho's "Google Apps Sync" tools, but none of them provide us with the ability to create a meeting in Zoho CRM that then adds a Google Meet link into the meeting. Is this something that

• Trigger a Workflow Function if an Attachment (Related List) has been added

  Hello, I have a Case Module with a related list which is Attachment. I want to trigger a workflow if I added an attachment. I've seen some topics about this in zoho community that was posted few months ago and based on the answers, there is no trigger

• How can I link Products in a Deal Subform to the Products Module

  Hello, I have a pricing subform on our Deals page and use a lookup field to associate a product with each line. I want to be able to look at a product page within the Products module and see a list of the deals connected to that product. I have this working

• Email Field Validation Incorrectly Rejects RFC-Compliant Addresses (Forward Slashes)

  I've encountered a validation issue with Zoho Creator's Email field that rejects RFC-compliant email addresses containing forward slashes, and I'm hoping the Zoho team can address this in a future update. The Issue When entering an email address containing

• Call result pop up on call when call ends

  I’d like to be able to create a pop up that appears after a call has finished that allows me to select the Call Result. I'm using RingCentral. I have seen from a previous, now locked, thread on Zoho Cares that this capability has been implemented, but

• ZOHO.CRM.UI.Record.open not working properly

  I have a Zoho CRM Widget and in it I have a block where it will open the blocks Meeting like below block.addEventListener("click", () => { ZOHO.CRM.UI.Record.open({ Entity: "Events", RecordID: meeting.id }).catch(err => { console.error("Open record failed:",

• Payment system for donations management

  I manage an organization where we receive donations from payers. Hence, there is no need to first create invoices and then create payments received against the invoices. What are the recommended best practices to do this in ZohoBooks?

• Recording the deducted TDS on advance received from Customer (Zoho Books India)

  Hi, How can we record the tds that has been deducted by my customer for the advance that he has paid to me. 1) My customer has paid Rs 10000 to me as advance (Rs 9800 as cash and deducted Rs 200 as TDS). I am not able to record the tds that has been deducted

• Changing Account Type in Chart of Accounts

  Does anyone know how to change/edit the account type for an Account name in Chart of Accounts. Zoho will not let me do this for some reason

• Bulk bank rule creatioin

  Hi team, I am exploring Option to create a multiple bank rule. Could please suggest the option to implement this?

• Zoho books aide

  Bonjour, je rencontre un problème avec Zoho Books. J’ai effectué une demande de support via l’interface prévue à cet effet, mais je n’ai jamais de retour. Je ne reçois ni email de confirmation, ni information concernant la prise en charge de ma demande,

• Smart Data, Smarter Contracts — Ensuring Consistency Between Metadata and Documents

  In contract management, data accuracy is not just a nice-to-have—it is essential. A single mismatch between what your system shows and what is written in the contract can ripple into approval delays, compliance risks, and broken trust in your data. Imagine

• Join Zoho Meeting only via Web browser and not with Zoho Meeting App

  Dear Zoho team, according to the documentation [1], Zoho Meeting only offers web view for Chrome and Firefox on a desktop. For other browsers and devices, participants can only join a Zoho Meaning with the Zoho Meeting App installed. This is a big hurdle

• CRM gets location smart with the all new Map View: visualize records, locate records within any radius, and more

  Hello all, We've introduced a new way to work with location data in Zoho CRM: the Map View. Instead of scrolling through endless lists, your records now appear as pins on a map. Built on top of the all-new address field and powered by Mappls (MapMyIndia),

• Manage control over Microsoft Office 365 integrations with profile-based sync permissions

  Greetings all, Previously, all users in Zoho CRM had access to enable Microsoft integrations (Calendar, Contacts, and Tasks) in their accounts, regardless of their profile type. Users with administrator profiles can now manage profile-based permissions

• inability to use different primary address on invoice per location

  my company operates in two different locations with different email address. The problems then is the inability to edit the primary to suite the invoice for the second location.

• AI Search and Record Retrieval Inside Zoho Creator – Is This Possible?

  Is it possible to integrate an AI assistant into Zoho Creator that can intelligently search, retrieve, and analyze records within the application’s forms and reports? Can AI access and query existing Creator data securely using Deluge or APIs to provide

• I have a requirement to integrate Zoho Books with Zoho Projects at both project and task levels.

  Currently, when i create transactions in Zoho Books (Expenses, Invoices, Bills), we can only map them at the project level. However, our requirement is to: Map records at both project and task levels Sync these transactions back to Zoho Projects under

• Scheduled AU Data Center Database Version Upgrade for Zoho Forms

  Dear Zoho Forms' users, We would like to update you on a scheduled AU Data Center database version upgrade for Zoho Forms. Find the schedule below: Migration window: Sunday, 22nd February 2026 12.00 AM to 12.30 AM AEDT This migration is a part of our

• Cannot get code to work with v2.mergeAndStore!

  Please can someone help me pass subform items into a repeating mail merge table row using v2.mergeAndStore? I have a mail merge template created in Writer and stored in Workdrive. This template is referenced by a custom CRM function which merges all of

• Hotmail is blocking the zoho mail IP

  Greetings, Since last Tuesday (5 days ago today) I wrote to Zoho support and I still haven't received a single response (Ticket ID: 2056917). Is this how you treat people who pay for your email service? I am making this public so that those who want to

• Zoho Bookings and Survey Integration through Flow

  I am trying to set up flows where once an appointment is marked as completed in Zoho Bookings, the applicable survey form would be sent to the customer. Problem is, I cannot customise flows wherein if Consultation A is completed, Survey Form A would be

• Zoho CRM Community Digest - December 2025 | Part 2

  Hello Everyone! During the final weeks of December, Zoho CRM introduced updates that not only enhanced product capabilities but also offered deeper guidance through Kaizen posts. This section highlights what was released and shared in the last two weeks

• Next Page