In a tough business world, a CRM is key for businesses to handle customer relations, boost sales, and run things smoothly. The tool needs to evolve to keep up with user expectations, enhance productivity, and improve the overall experience. But the CRM's features alone aren't enough to make it work well—user experience (UX) and the user interface (UI) play a critical role in determining its effectiveness.
That’s why we’ve redesigned the UI in our CRM. The latest update brings an optimized layout, improved functionality, and a more intuitive experience that makes managing relationships and insights easier and more effective than ever. This document highlights the top reasons to switch to the new UI and how it can enhance your day-to-day CRM experience.
Key Reasons to Switch to the New UI
1. Improved navigation with the top bar switched to the left
One of the most noticeable changes is the relocation of the navigation bar from the top to the left side.
Learn more.How does this work for you?
- The left-hand menu organizes all key modules vertically, making it easier to navigate through your CRM without excessive scrolling or clicks.
- By moving the top menu to the left, we’ve freed up valuable vertical space, allowing you to view more data at once, whether you’re managing records or analyzing reports.
- Left-side menu bar aligns with most web app standards, creating a more consistent approach to a user's experience.
2. Custom shortcuts
Configuring processes or creating new modules is made easier in the new user interface - they can now be done from the secondary sidebar itself.
What can you configure?
- Create team modules or organization modules from the Modules tab on the left. You can also create folders and associate modules from here. No more navigating to the Setup menu for this action.
- Click the more option to configure different automation processes, edit field and button layouts for your modules right from the sidebar.
3. Module permissions & settings
Enhanced security and data control for your modules from within the sidebar.
How does this feature work?
- Click the more option next to a module to manage your module - its permissions and sharing rules from within the sidebar.
- For Team Modules, which typically require broader data access for collaboration, this feature provides flexibility to data access while restricting access to others.
4. Data visualization made easy with chart view in lists
Charts are no longer confined to reports—they now appear directly within your lists.
Learn more.What can you achieve with this feature?
- Create a visual representation of your record data directly from your lists. Simplify data interpretation and visualize key metrics without switching to the Reports module.
- This feature allows you to take actions based on the insights generated, allowing you to make the right decisions for your business.
5. Interactions tab
Each customer's journey in your CRM is unique, and hence, a seamless omni-channel engagement would help customer-facing teams understand the complete journey of contacts from the time they've been added to their current state in the CRM.
The Interactions tab offers a comprehensive, chronological view of a customer's journey and interactions across various channels within your CRM.
Learn more.
6. Improved focus and comfort with dark mode implementation
Switch between Night/Day/Auto mode to adapt to your long working hours, brighter visual preferences, or your system settings. Learn more.
- Night Mode: Work longer hours with reduced eye strain in Night mode. The dark mode minimizes glare and makes it easier to focus.
- Day Mode: Working in a well-lit or sunny environment, choose the Day mode. The light mode creates a visually appealing and clean work environment.
- Auto Mode: Let your system decide between Night or Day mode based on device settings.
New Functionalities in the New UI
Realizing that businesses need different teams to work together smoothly to improve how they operate, we added the Teams feature to our CRM's new user interface.
Teamspaces
We've introduced Teamspaces to allow team members from various departments to collaborate and work together on a single CRM platform for faster business operations.
Learn more.- With CRM being used mostly by the Sales team of an organization, we aim to extend the CRM to all non-sales members like the Marketing team, Legal team, Operations team and others to define their processes and manage data within their own dedicated space.
- Create folders within your teamspace to organize the numerous modules making it easier for to find and access desired modules without scrolling through an extensive setup menu.
Team Modules
With multiple teams being able to work on a single CRM platform, it is necessary for each team to define their own processes. These processes will be captured in a Team Module.
Learn more. - Tailor modules to capture the different processes within a team and configure automations to ensure smooth business operations.
- Define users and their access to ensures users see only what’s relevant to them, creating a more personalized experience for everyone.
Requesters
Collaboration is the essence of your CRM's success, and we've introduced Requesters to improve collaboration within the CRM platform instead of leaving it to collaborate on other platforms.
Learn more.- A requester's deliverable depends on data created in other team modules, and they need to be assigned to a team module to raise their requests for this data.
- With collaboration happening through requests, you can keep everyone in the loop about progress, fostering accountability and teamwork.
- Requesters can raise these requests from the My Request tab.
What's in store for Zoho CRM's New UI
The new UI for Zoho CRM has an exciting roadmap that includes features designed to enhance usability further and deliver greater value to customers. Upcoming features include:
- Timeline View to get a visual representation of record data for specific time periods.
- Smarter settings with an enhanced setup menu for a faster search and to quickly access your most frequently used features.
- Connected Records to help users link records between two modules in their CRM system to get customer context while executing processes.
- Connected workflows to create automatic creation of records with customer context for various business scenarios.
We are actively working on these updates and will roll them out to users as soon as they are finalized and ready for release.
Why Now is the Time to Switch
Our goal with the new UI is to create a CRM experience that works for you—making it easier, faster, and more enjoyable to manage your business relationships. The new UI is about performance, usability, and delivering tools that fit seamlessly into your workday.
With the enhanced features and improved functionality, we hope to boost your CRM productivity and efficiency, enabling you to focus more on growing your business than configuring your business processes.
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