Hello,
I'm trying to use the CRM more and more for my small business, having used mostly Books for now in order to keep track of Estimates, Customers, Invoices. My customers are mostly private individuals, with a few companies. I'm finding several things which should help me save time, that are instead getting in my way and making me waste a lot of time for a simple task: create a lead from an email > send them an estimate. Let me describe a typical case and hopefully you can guide me, perhaps I'm missing something:
1. I get an email via Zoho mail of a customer saying they wish to get a quote from me.
2. Via the widget, I can add this customer as a Lead directly from Zoho Mail, great. Simple. Fast.
3. Now comes complication nr1: I now go to Zoho Books thinking I can find this Lead via the advanced search, but no, In Books it doesn't even search Contacts in the CRM, only accounts. So I've pretty much wasted time adding the details of this possible customer as a Lead in the CRM.
4. I now instead add this person as a Customer directly in Zoho Books in order to be able to send them the estimate, entering again their details (email, phone, adress etc.). Wasting time already.
5. After sending the estimate, I see that this person has now been added as an Account in the CRM, but complication nr2, neither their email or their Mobile phone get transferred over to the CRM (which seems normal, Accounts are for registering companies), and complication nr3, this isn't really an "Account", as it's a private person. Is it not possible in the CRM to have a "Contact" which is simply a private person? Do they need to be an "Account", to be considered a customer?
6. So now I have a "Customer" in Books for which I've had to add the details for, I have a "Contact" in the CRM, converted from the Lead (I was thinking this conversion would allow me to access the person from Books), for which I've entered the details for from the initial email, and this Contact is of no use now it seems, because I've now the same person as an "Account", but which doesn't have any contact info. I would need to add a contact person for this Account, but it doesn't seem possible to link an existing Contact to this Account, and so yet again have to enter the same details to create a new contact...kind of nuts really.
So I'm afraid it makes no sense to me as it is now to keep using the CRM, having to enter so many things in so many different places when simply trying to add a possible Customer and send them an Estimate - which is a task I had hoped to simplify and speed up using Books/CRM/Zoho Mail. Your CRM doesn't seem very geared toward small/medium companies, and making as easy as possible the most common daily tasks of a company selling goods to customers.
I would appreciate if you could offer any tips on how to best implement this simple task that I imagine every company has to do several times a day. Right now this "Customer", "Contact", "Account" nomenclature is confusing, because I've seen that you can also add Deals to Contacts in the CRM, but Books auto-creates only Accounts it seems.
Ideally:
1. I get an email, and the widgets extracts their Name, email and I can add them as a Lead in the CRM. It should be possible to specify if this is a private individual or a company. The choice will decide if an Account should also be created on Step 4, or only a Contact.
2. I go to Books, search and this Lead appears, with the data I entered in Zoho mail via the widget, already there.
3. Having sent them an estimate, this should automatically be added as a "Deal" in the Quotation phase, and this Deal should be under the Lead in the CRM. (right now I have to manually add a Deal based on an Estimate, double work again).
4. If customer accepts the estimate, the Lead is auto converted into a Contact in the CRM (and also an Account if the customer is part of a company, with the Contact auto-added to the Account as the contact person), and this Deal is updated to reflect its status.