Customizing your CRM: An overview

Customizing your CRM: An overview

Every business is unique—from how it sells and structures its teams to the terminology it uses and how it organizes data. You might be a B2C or B2B company, a small local bakery, or a global bank. Maybe your team shares one table, or maybe you're spread across countries. Maybe you follow a standard fiscal year or use a custom calendar like 4-5-4.

When you first open Zoho CRM, you'll see a default setup: a standard home page, modules, and fields. These are good starting points, but Zoho CRM is built to be customized to match how your business actually works—which helps you capture the right data, improve team adoption, automate processes, and make better decisions.

Your CRM edition gives you access to different no-code, low-code, and pro-code tools to match your specific business needs. For example, you can:
  1. Quickly modify the Leads module using our drag-and-drop layout builder (no-code).
  2. Bring your call script, data entry, and automated actions into a single interface with Kiosk Studio. Most of the configuration is done without code, except certain actions for which you create custom functions (low-code).
  3. Code a client script to auto-fill certain lead details based on industry and location when creating a lead record (pro-code).
If multiple teams use Zoho CRM, each one can manage its own setup through team modules. This means customization can happen in parallel, reducing bottlenecks and speeding up the whole process. Do you already have a completely customized CRM configuration that you'd like to replicate? You can get most of the work done by simply copying the customization from one account to another!

Here's a quick overview of Zoho CRM's customization options:
  1. Org modules include both standard modules (like Leads, Contacts, and Deals) and custom ones. Standard modules can be heavily customized (by adding custom fields, adding new sections, setting field permissions, editing field properties, and more). You can also create custom org modules to store data shared across teams—for example, a real estate firm might add a Listings module.
  2. Team modules are user-controlled modules in CRM, separate from the organization modules that CRM admins manage. These team modules can be shared among team members (for tracking a team's deliverables, for example) or kept private for individual work within the organization.
  3. Create and modify page layouts to include necessary fields, sections, subforms, related lists, and so on. For example, a custom Leads module can have a different layout for B2B leads and another for B2C leads. 
  4. Add custom fields to modules to capture exactly the data you need. For example, you can add a picklist of custom statuses to track your processes.
  5. Lookup fields in a module help create custom connections with other modules to give context to individual records. For example, you can add a lookup field in the Case Study team module that connects it to the Contacts module.
  6. Layout rules enable the conditional display of fields in a record. For example, you can have the shipping method and delivery instructions fields displayed only when the shipping address field is filled.
  7. Validation rules notify users of mistakes and block incorrect data from being entered. For example, you can ensure that you can only add a number between 0 and 25 for discounts.
  8. A record-locking configuration enables you to lock records manually and/or automatically to restrict actions.
  9. Add global sets to enable the reuse of picklist values across the CRM.

UI and UX customization options

  1. Create teamspaces for individual teams with the modules and other tabs they need for their work. These modules and other tabs can be neatly organized into custom folders for easy access.
  2. Module views display the list of records in a module in different formats to help your users get exactly the views they need to get their work done. We have some standard views that can be customized to a limited extent, like list view, kanban view, chart view, timeline view, and so on. You can also create completely customized canvas module views (list, table, tile).
  3. Customize related lists to show the associated information you need within each record.
  4. Use Canvas to customize record detail pages and form views for the web and record detail pages for mobile.
  5. Add web tabs to open web pages like company-wide announcements, web applications, and more in Zoho CRM.
  6. Custom links let you access third-party applications and URLs to acquire the desired information.
  7. Add custom buttons to extend your Zoho CRM and perform a predefined set of actions based on your requirements.
  8. Custom home pages serve as personalized home pages that display key widgets like charts, KPIs, tasks, kiosks, and lists tailored to a user's role and priorities.
  9. Wizards let you simplify the process of filling out long forms by breaking them down into simpler screens with fewer fields.
  10. Kiosk Studio helps you simplify swift, frequent, and repetitive processes by packing all the steps needed (like accessing data from multiple CRM modules, checking data from third-party apps via API requests, selecting records to work on, and so on) into a single interface while automating actions like sending emails, adding tags, creating records, executing custom functions, and more.
  11. Create templates for emails, invoices, and mail merge to scale up the use of proven content quickly.
  12. Use translations to ensure that multilingual teams can work in the languages of their choice in Zoho CRM.
  13. Customize your CRM setup page to suit your admins' preferences.

Sales customization options

  1. Create multiple pipelines for the Deals module and customize the stages to suit different selling processes.
  2. Team selling lets you define custom roles that are important in your sales cycle. You can then add users to these roles to give them the right level of access for certain deals.
  3. Deal splitting lets you allocate the credit for the revenue that a company gets from a deal proportionally among team members based on their roles and efforts.
  4. With marketing attribution, you can select and customize six attribution models to derive better performance insights across your marketing campaigns, optimize your budget, and give credit to the most successful campaigns.
A great way to copy a fully customized CRM setup into a new one quickly—including other features like workflow rules, blueprints, and so on—is to use the Copy Customization option.

Not satisfied with customizing the CRM with low-code tools? You can extend it by making use of the different developer features like client scripts, custom functions, queries, web app SDKs, and more! Check out our developer resources for more information.

Notes
All the features mentioned here may not be available in all CRM editions. Please check the feature availability page to determine if a feature is included in your CRM edition.

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