Ever since Zoho was launched in 2005, it has been focused on enabling businesses to expand effortlessly. This means that if a business wants to grow then Zoho implementation can be very helpful. It offers ease of use that makes Zoho one of the topmost CRM choices available. All thanks to Zoho, one can still have effective customer relationships even though there is no real person to do a specific job.
Zoho is user-friendly and comes with all that is needed to keep the customers satisfied. It is a decent CRM solution for many types of businesses. The pricing that Zoho is available at is quite competitive and is considered to be at par with Salesforce and Microsoft CRM. The fact that Zoho comes with so many features makes it a great tool for businesses to grow.
Zoho is available in several tiers of plans and ranges from the free option to the Enterprise solution which is a great option for virtually any company. Its applications and features make it worth using for any kind of business. In this blog, we intend to see the different features of Zoho and how it is a good option for business organizations in 2022. Let’s begin.
Overview of Zoho CRM
One can effectively say that Zoho CRM is like an all-in-one solution. It is an online CRM system that does not need you to look through different departments or anything of that sort which makes it an excellent option for businesses of all sizes. Zoho CRM is a tool that all employees can use effectively and this is one thing that is very important.
The Zoho CRM implementation makes sure that employees do not need training for taking advantage of many features right away. It is a CRM solution that can effectively bend to your needs. You can customize the dashboard for different teams or projects and create multiple pipelines for matching the customer journeys. In addition, Zoho CRM allows you to create reports in a couple of clicks with deep insights on just about anything that you can think of.
Moreover, Zoho CRM includes features such as real-time sales signals and customer notifications, blueprint business management for online and offline processes, mass emails, prospect scoring capabilities, advanced customizations, AI assistant, inventory management, etc. The best part is that Zoho is affordable. The cheapest plan that Zoho offers starts at $14 per user per month and there is no skimping on features. If you need customization and features then Zoho’s upper-tier CRM plans come at $23, $40, and $52 per user per month.
What’s more, Zoho also provides a free plan with three users. It comes with many important features such as lead management, task management, document sharing, workflow rules, and a mobile application as well. To help small businesses, Zoho has recently started Bigin – a CRM that enables small businesses to manage their customer relationships easier than ever. When small businesses are prepared to move ahead of spreadsheets and legacy sales tools, Bigin is a great tool to begin.
What’s new in Zoho CRM in 2022?
Other than the many features that customers are already aware of, Zoho is coming up with other powerful features in 2022 that can empower business organizations. These features will be centered on delivering an exceptionally high standard in customer experience. Let’s have a look at them below.
1. Unified Platform for End-to-End Remote Working
One of the biggest problems that professionals have seen while working remotely is context switching. This is a problem that makes the professionals leave tasks incomplete and move on because of an interruption and it creates a negative impact on productivity. There can be many reasons for the disruptions and so many of them are inevitable when working from different locations.
For example, if the web developer is supposed to finish an important task in the fixed timeline and there is an immediate team meeting called then the developer will end up attending the meeting which will leave the task incomplete. This and many other interruptions can be avoided when there is a team collaboration tool in use.
With the Zoho implementation, you can set your status at “Engaged at Work” when you are working on completing an important task while informing your teammates that you will be unavailable. This way, remote work status in Zoho Cliq can help in focusing on work without causing any interruptions.
Zoho Cliq is a team collaboration tool that can be used by professionals for working and collaborating effectively. It comes with remote work features that help in working through the various disturbances along with being integrated with other apps or tools that you use. This helps in avoiding contextual switching at work and being all the more productive.
2. Client-end Scripting
The client scripts help the developers to use JavaScript codes for extending the capabilities of the Zoho CRM system in a way that addresses niche business needs. Since the scripts are executed on the client-side, a team can address many requirements.
This can be primarily done with low latency scripts that perform actions such as field validation, computations, UI actions, auto-population, field validation, enrichments along with trigger widgets, functions, and flyouts.
3. Omnichannel Communication
The present hybrid work environment presents a vital place for the sales representatives to maximize benefits across channels of communication when engaging with prospects.
For building the robust omnichannel communication platform that is already a part of the Zoho CRM system, many enhancements have been introduced across email and telephony systems so that sales can become more effective.
4. Personalized Emails
The personalization of emails has proven to be an important step in building long-term trust with customers. Hence, Zoho is presenting new ways to add a personal flair to emails so that the business identity can be established strongly in the minds of customers.
Zoho will enable businesses to customize all aspects of emails from font styles and sizes to the email signatures for individual email addresses and email aliases. This will help the businesses to foster a much better reputation in the minds of clients.
5. Smart Working With Automated Workflows
Artificial intelligence will hold an important place in future workspaces. While curbing the challenges posed by the pandemic, many organizations realized the importance of AI because it helps in the automation of everyday tasks with the use of bots.
AI also reduces workload and improves productivity by focusing on important work rather than manual data entry on a loop. The workflow automation does not just reduce human error in the workflow but it also saves a lot of time. In fact, automation of the workload can give the professionals the benefit of streamlining business processes.
For instance, one of the important tasks for any organization is to engage the customers and address their questions. This is an important task as happy customers form the foundation of any business. The customer service can address issues and an internal communication tool can help in discussing work items with fellow customer success executives.
Zoho CRM helps in navigating between the customer community while being updated on the new customer posts. You can also engage a bot that instantly notifies new queries and complaints within Zoho. This is an exceptional way in which routine tasks can be automated efficiently.
In addition, Zoho will also be coming up with exciting new updates to Zia which is Zoho CRM’s AI sales assistant. These updates will be bringing new levels of insights and understanding of customers and they will help in building meaningful and personalized customer relationships.
6. Defining Email Sharing Policy
Based on the roles of CRM users and the kind of email communications that you are engaging in, you might want emails to be available to every user in a CRM. The emails should be confidential and they should only be available to a small group of decision-makers.
With the Zoho CRM, you can effectively define your email sharing policy at the organizational level for each role while updating the policy for users in bulk. You can also set email sharing permissions for new employees or update them when users move to assume different roles in the CRM system.
7. Streamline Sales Calls
The native integration comes with an ability for managers to monitor, guide, and support the representatives to improve at making sales calls. The Zoho CRM integration enables sales professionals to keep an eye on how the representatives are performing in their active calls while managing the calls that are there in the queue waiting.
Sales managers can also coach new sales representatives as they progress through a call by jumping indirectly to take the lead when the situation calls for it. This will lead to streamlining the business process of sales effectively.
8. Understanding Workflow Failures
Workflows play the role of building blocks of automating the sales processes. Anytime when they fail to trigger or do not operate in the manner that they are supposed to, the direct impact can be on the sales performance which can negatively impact customer experience.
Zoho integrations make it simple to get in-depth information about when and where the workflow fails and all the records that get affected. The team can use important data for fixing the underlying problems and get the workflows up and running once again.
9. User Experience
The user experience has been a forgotten aspect when it comes to CRM solutions. While pursuing robust functionality, strong market presence, and competitive prices, businesses can often overlook the experience offered by CRM solutions to the daily users.
A good user experience has the ability to offer a better customer experience because it helps the sales team to be more productive and effective when working with the CRM solution. This is why Zoho has come up with Canvas which lets businesses provide a hyper-personalized CRM experience to users. Moving ahead, Zoho will also be bringing more intuitive features for building on a strong UX foundation.
10. Accessing Multiple CRM Accounts
It will be possible to associate a user with multiple CRM accounts to allow business owners, upper management, and decision-makers for managing multiple businesses with ease.
The users will be able to switch between accounts easily and quickly which will make it easier to access key business data that helps in understanding growth and deriving insights. This feature of accessing multiple CRM accounts can be used to prepare agendas, reports, and ideas for future planning with a single set of login credentials.
Conclusion
The online CRM system that you use should keep growing to keep pace with the constantly growing work environment and technological advancements. Take the step of choosing and employing the best available CRM system for your business so that your organization can function well.
Zoho CRM comes with a free trial which can help you in experiencing all the features that it has to offer. If you want to make the most out of Zoho and all the amazing features that can offer your business, get in touch with an experienced Zoho Consultant.