Hi,

I am doing some end of year clean up in Zoho CRM and I getting frustrated with what looks to be a lack of foresight with a lot of the features.  When I first implemented ZCRM, about 18 months ago there were a few quirky things that were fixed immediately.  These days it seems like development has slowed to a crawl.

The first thing I noted ion my cleanup process was that the email templates, reports and views were getting out of control.  Each user of the CRM system has the same report/view/email but with the variable as their name.  I thought I could clean it up by using the great built in wildcard functionality that allows for just about any variable EXCEPT the user name. 

This means no way to clean up the mess of individual views/reports/email templates.  What is the point?  They took this feature all the way to the goal, but can't seem to get it across.  I would insert a cricket reference but don't have a clue. 

As I was looking into this I sort of stumbled on the managing autoresponders functionality.  I thought this would be perfect for our trial software process because that starts with a web to lead form and we manually send out reminders during the 30 day trial window.  I started to implement and I got right down to the point where I have to schedule each email and I find that I am presented with a calendar to schedule each email.

A calendar...?  WTF am I going to do with a calendar?  How am I supposed to schedule multiple emails to different people that come into the system at different times with a calendar?  The correct UI would have been schedule each email x days from the web to lead capture event.  That way it works for all leads in the system, not jut one.

Once again the Zoho CRM team took a great feature all the way to the goal but can't seem to cross.  Maybe someone from the Zoho CRM team can explain the logic behind this feature.  I sure can't see it.

So the last three features I have tried to implement all have fatal flaws. Email into CRM ,Email wildcards and Autoresponders.  All great features that just do not work in the real world.  What is going on?  At one point I thought Zoho CRM would be able to mount a credible defense against the CRM incumbents, now they seem to have given up.  It is still the best bang for the CRM buck but being the lowest price does nothing if you can't seem to get features implemented correctly.

Just my .02.  Please feel free to correct me If I am wrong on any points.

Adam

Moderation Update:

This is to inform you all that Zoho CRM’s Autoresponder feature will be discontinued by September 30, 2025.

If you're currently using Autoresponders to automate email follow-ups, we recommend switching to Cadences. This feature allows you to automate a sequence of personalised follow-up actions tailored to responses.

We encourage you to check This Announcement Post for more details.

Hence, I'm locking this post.