Case Scenario: Support WebForm is used as contact form on company website. Visitor is not yet customer of company, and is not listed in company CRM. When form is completed, Support is updated with contact information, but CRM is not... therefore potential customer cannot be located in the CRM for follow up or automated responses/workflows etc.
I've been looking through the documentation and there does not seem to be any automated way to create a CRM Lead based on a new support ticket creation (by new contact).
Looking through the forum, there are number of people that has asked about CRM updates from the Support platform. There are also comments from Zoho Staff about two-way integration on the development road-map. That's wonderful, but does not provide a solution now.
I'd like to suggest a simple, easily implemented solution that does not require the significant time investment of full CRM integration and could be operation within hours.
Idea... Use the CRM BCC Drop box as one-way communication link from Support to CRM.
To implement, all we need is a BCC field on the NOTIFICATION template for NEW TICKET.
When the email is received by the CRM Dropbox, a new Lead/Contact will be created (based on rules in CRM) and all support tickets will be automatically associated with new CRM lead/contact.
If the lead or contact already exist in the CRM the email is added to their email history (no new lead is created)
As I see it, there is no downside. (except perhaps the additional load on the mail servers associated)
Can this be done?
.
UPDATE: Obviously, when using this medium to create a lead, the lead contact information from the web-form fields (first name, last name, phone, etc) are not transferred to the CRM. Instead the email address is inserted as the contact name. However, now that we have the contact email address we can invite the lead to interact again via live chat, survey forms, etc... each interaction will update the lead record with the correct name, phone, etc.
So, its not a perfect solution, but it does get the lead into the automation process for sales follow up
UPDATE #2: I am working on a ZohoCreator FOrm that will update both CRM and SUpport on form submit... its working, but a few bugs... will post code sample when complete