Customer Management: # 1 Pick a Convenient Way to Onboard Customer

Customer Management: # 1 Pick a Convenient Way to Onboard Customer

When Meera opened her bookstore, onboarding customers was effortless. A customer walked in, picked a book and left with a handwritten bill. As the store gained popularity, things changed.

"
AlertCan I place an order over the phone?" a customer asked one day. Soon, emails followed. Then came requests like, "Do you have a monthly magazine subscription?" and "Can I rent books instead of buying them?"
That's when the challenge began.

Customer details were spread across notebooks and spreadsheets.
Alert
"Did we already bill this customer?"
"Why is this customer listed twice?"
Some customers were added multiple times, invoices were delayed, and the sales and finance teams struggled to stay aligned. Meera realised that customers were entering her business through various sources, but there was no consistent way to onboard them.

To handle this growth without disrupting daily operations, Meera needed a system that could support different customer onboarding sources while keeping everything organised in one place.

Customer Onboarding in Zoho Billing 

Zoho Billing allows businesses to onboard customers in multiple ways, based on how customers interact with the company. Whether the sales team adds the customer, signs up online, comes through an application, or already exists in another system, Zoho Billing provides a smooth onboarding experience.


Sales Driven Onboarding 

Sales-driven onboarding is commonly used when customers are acquired through direct interaction, such as walk-ins, phone calls, or email requests. In Zoho Billing, a salesperson or finance team member can manually add a customer and issue an invoice.


Imagine when a customer visits the store to purchase books or places an order over the phone, the salesperson adds the customer to Zoho Billing and generates an invoice.

For larger or negotiated deals, the salesperson can create a quote before converting it into an invoice. This helps formalise pricing and close deals efficiently.

Businesses that use Zoho CRM can integrate with Zoho Billing to streamline this process. When a lead is marked as Won in CRM, the customer details are automatically added to Zoho Billing, reducing the manual data entry and ensuring a smooth handoff from sales to the finance team.

Self-Driven Onboarding 

Self-driven onboarding is ideal when businesses want customers to sign up directly through online channels.


Using Zoho Billing, businesses can set up a website with a Pricing page and embed the pricing widget to display available plans. When customers click Subscribe, they are redirected to a secure hosted payment page.

Zoho Billing's multi-page hosted checkout supports email validation during signup, helping prevent duplicate customer records. This allows customers to onboard themselves easily while ensuring accurate customer data.

API-Based Onboarding 

As businesses expand across mobile applications and custom platforms, manual onboarding may no longer scale.


Zoho Billing provides REST APIs that enable businesses to create customers programmatically. When a customer signs up via a custom form or application, the Customer Creation API can automatically create the customer record in Zoho Billing. This ensures real-time onboarding while keeping all customer data centralised.

Migrating Customers from the Legacy System 

For businesses migrating from spreadsheets or other billing systems, Zoho Billing supports customer onboarding via Bulk Import. Customer data can be uploaded in CSV format using a sample import file. This makes it easy to bring existing customers into Zoho Billing without manual re-entry or downtime.


What an Effective Customer Onboarding Does to Your Business 

Effective customer onboarding sets the tone for the entire customer relationship. When onboarding is smooth and consistent, businesses reduce operational friction, gain better visibility into customer data and respond faster to customer needs. It enables teams to work with clarity instead of corrections and allows businesses to scale without adding complexity. Ultimately, strong onboarding builds trust early, improves team efficiency, and lays the foundation for long-term customer retention and growth.

 

Notes
Up Next: Organise before Operate

 

 

    • 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

    • Not receiving email from customers and suppliers

      I am getting error . most of the customers tell me not able to send me email please check i have attached screenshot

    • Create user

      Hello I want to create user, but i get this error Unusual activity detected from this IP. Please try again after some time.

    • File emails in Shared email folder

      Hi, I am unable to allow users to collaborate in Shared email folders: User 1 shares a folder let's say "SharedTopic" with full permissions Users 2 and 3 can see this folder but are unable to add emails to this folder or search in this folder. For example,

    • Consolidated report for multi-organisation

      I'm hoping to see this feature to be available but couldn't locate in anywhere in the trial version. Is this supported? The main aim to go to ERP is to have visibility of the multi-organisation in once place. I'm hopeful for this.

    • How to Switch from Outlook for Mac to Outlook for Windows

      The most often used file formats for users to manage crucial data are OLM and PST files. PST files keep a copy of data on the configured system from Outlook, while the OLM file contains the Mac Outlook data items, which are only accessible with Outlook

    • Name autocomplete

      Hi, During searching emails the web tool does not always propose the auto-completion of the saved emails. As a result I either have to go to contacts and look up the exact email, or the exact full name including the middle name and any dots, which is

    • Are custom portals accessible on the Zoho learn smartphone app?

      In other words, can users external to my organisation, once signed up, use the app in the same way as internal users? Thanks

    • How to increase my Zoho sign limit.

      I cannot send a document/contract for signature. Zoho sign says I reached my monthly limit. May I know how to fix this please? Thanks! 

    • Can not add m365 outlook account to zohomail.

      I am attempting to use zoho mail as an imap client to add my outlook.com m365 account. In the m365 exchange admin center i have made sure the imap is enabled. In zoho mail i go to settings, mail accounts, add account, add imap account, i select "outlook",

    • Unable to attach Work Order / Service Appointment PDF to Email Notifications (Zoho FSM)

      I’m trying to include the Work Order PDF or Service Appointment PDF as an attachment in Email Notifications (automation/notification templates), but I don’t see any option to attach these generated PDFs. Is this currently supported in Zoho FSM? If not,

    • local file csv import problem

      The issue occurs when I upload a CSV file via Databridge. In the preview, everything looks correct — the values are in the proper columns. However, after clicking Import, the first column becomes empty, and the values from that column appear in a new

    • Función Deshacer y Rehacer

      Hola. Soy un reciente usuario de Zoho Notebook que he migrado desde Evernote. He encontrado en falta una función que considero muy importante: un botón para "deshacer". Es frustrante cuando se borra un parte del texto o un archivo de una nota, generalmente

    • Tip #59- Technician Console: Exploring View option- 'Insider Insights'

      Hello Zoho Assist Community! Ever wondered how technicians adapt quickly during a live support session? Imagine a customer reaching out with an issue that’s disrupting their work. The technician starts a remote session and begins troubleshooting right

    • MRP or Manufacturing Module for Zoho

      We have been searching for options for a production planning or MRP that will integrate with Zoho.   Zoho Creator is pushed as a platform that can have an MRP built from scratch but we would like to find more of an out of the box solution and modify it to fit our needs.  Are there any recommendations? Would Zoho consider creating a custom solution in Creator to support this need?

    • encountering an error when attempting to associate an email with a Deal using the Zoho CRM extension in Zoho Mail.

      When I click "Yes, associate," the system displays an "Oops!! Something went wrong" error message. I have attached a screenshot of the issue for reference.

    • Can 1 Zoho CRM instance sync with 2 Zoho Marketing Automation instances?

      Can 1 Zoho CRM instance sync with 2 Zoho Marketing Automation instances?

    • Can I add Conditional merge tags on my Templates?

      Hi I was wondering if I can use Conditional Mail Merge tags inside my Email templates/Quotes etc within the CRM? In spanish and in our business we use gender and academic degree salutations , ie: Dr., Dra., Sr., Srta., so the beginning of an email / letter

    • Zoho mail account ownership transfer

      We recently took over another company and have assumed responsibility for its Zoho account, including Zoho Mail and all related services. We would like to formally transfer ownership of this account to our organization. Could you please outline the complete

    • Email Authentication is Failing

      I'm trying to setup gitlab with email authentication. I used the following configs picked up from: https://docs.gitlab.com/omnibus/settings/smtp/ gitlab_rails['smtp_enable'] = true gitlab_rails['smtp_address'] = "smtp.zoho.com" gitlab_rails['smtp_port']

    • DMARC reports for mail I didn't send: how to deal with?

      I know the enthusiastic amateur's bare minimum about e-mail; am able to set up a Thunderbird account and know the basic acronyms. I have a Zoho Mail account connected to my domain, and have set up SPF, DMARC and DKIM successfully according to Zoho's instruction

    • ms

      Email set up for communication

    • Fix the speed

      It takes ages to load on every step even though my dataset is quite small.

    • Capture Bank Charges for Invoice Payments

      We've added the Bank Charges field in the "Add Payments" page both in Zoho Invoice & Zoho Books. So all you need to do is to enter the bank charges when you record a payment for the invoices. This bank charge will be included to the amount paid for that invoice. Steps to add the bank charges while you record the payment:       1. Click the "Invoices" sub-tab under the "Money-In" tab.       2. Click the 'add payment' link for the invoice that you wish to record the payment for.       3. On the add

    • Image field in custom module

      Hi guy, Is there any hope of adding a custom image field in the custom module? We created a custom module to keep track of assets, and it would be helpful if we could attach an image to the record. Thanks Rudy

    • Deluge Function to Update Custom Field

      I'm trying to get a Deluge function (which will run as part of a Schedule in Desk) that retrieves all tickets with the status "Recurring" and updates the custom field checkbox "cf_recurring" to "true". Here's what I have, which doesn't work: searchValue

    • "View ticket" link is broken

      The "View ticket" link in our Zoho ticketing system confirmation emails is broken (please see attached). Impacts ability to update/review details, and, refresh recollection at a later date. Any help would be much appreciated.

    • import data from Apollo.ai into zoho crm via zoho flow

      I might be asking this question in the wrong forum. We use Apollo.ai to find potential new leads for our business, there are around 10000 leads that we have initially found. We have an Apollo.ai account but just to do searches, we dont use it as a crm.

    • Woocommerce Line Item Information

      I'd like to add each line item from a Woocommerce order to a zoho creator form record. The line items are found within the line items array, but I'm not sure how to get each item out of the array? Any help would be much appreciated.

    • Synching changes to Stripe when changes are made in Zoho Billing

      We have a situation where we have merged customers in Zoho BIlling and then found out later that the payment in Stripe was not updated and still associated with the old customer record. The card gets updated and billed, but that payment is still associated

    • How do I fix this? Unable to send message; Reason:554 5.1.8 Email Outgoing Blocked.

      How do I fix this? Unable to send message; Reason:554 5.1.8 Email Outgoing Blocked.

    • Disable Smart Filters By Default

      The smart filters "feature" is causing confusion for Zoho Mail users. New emails should be delivered to the inbox unless they have specifically opted to redirect them somewhere else. People don't understand that new emails might be waiting in a random

    • ME SALE ESTE ERROR: No fue posible enviar el mensaje;Motivo:554 5.1.8 Email Outgoing Blocked

      Ayuda!! Me sale este error al intentar enviar mensajes desde mi correo electronico de Zoho! Tampoco recibo correos pues cuando me envia rebotan. Ayuda, Me urge enviar unos correo importantes!! Quedo atenta MAGDA HERNANDEZ +5731120888408

    • Client Script | Update - Client Script Support For Custom Buttons

      Hello everyone! We are excited to announce one of the most requested features - Client Script support for Custom Buttons. This enhancement lets you run custom logic on button actions, giving you greater flexibility and control over your user interactions.

    • Zoho Mail not working

      Zoho Mail not working

    • Queries on Project-Based Inventory Consumption and Proforma Invoice in Zoho ERP

      We would appreciate your clarification on how Zoho ERP plans to handle the following: Project-based inventory consumption without itemized sales orders Accurate project cost tracking along with inventory reduction Proforma Invoice usage We look forward

    • I can't add a new customer in Zoho invoice? Anyone had this issue before?

      Ive been using Zoho invoice for over 6 years. Today I wanted to add a new customer to send an invoice to but it doesn't save when I try to access it from the pulldown menu when you go to send a new invoice.

    • Spreadsheet View click & focus issue in Arabic (RTL) localization

      Hello Zoho Support Team, I am facing an issue in Zoho Creator Spreadsheet View when using Arabic localization (RTL). Scenario: My app supports English (LTR) and Arabic (RTL). I created a Spreadsheet View for a form. In English, everything works correctly.

    • Customer address in Zoho Bookings

      Hello,  Is it possible to add customer address information to the Zoho bookings appointment screen? Or have it pull that information automatically from the CRM? We are wanting to use this as a field management software but it is difficult to pull the address from multiple sources when it would be ideal to have a clickable address on the appointment screen that opens up the user's maps.  It would also be advantageous for the "list view" to show appointment times instead of just duration and booking

    • Ghost email notification on a form

      Hello, We have recently encountered an error where I can not see a email notification set up for a form which I am currently the owner, although neither the form nor the notification were created by me. However, neither can the Super Admin access the

    • bulk edit records and run internal logic

      hi there is few logics in manner "it this than that" logics work well when i edit entry openning it one by one (via workflow "on add/edit - on success" , for custom field "on update/on user input") but when i try bulk edit records - logic does not work.  how can i turn on logic to work as programmed - for mass editing records via bulk edit?

    • Next Page