Customer Management: #6 Common Mistakes in Customer Handling

Managing customers doesn't usually fall apart overnight. More often, slight gaps in the process slowly become bigger problems. Incidents like missed follow-ups, billing confusion, and unhappy customers will lead to revenue loss. Many businesses don't realise what's going wrong until customers start slipping away.

Here are some of the most common mistakes businesses make when onboarding and managing customers.

Treating Customer Onboarding as a One-Time Task 

Many businesses see onboarding as "done" once a customer is added and billed. But customers come in through different channels. Sales calls, website signups, trials, and in-app. Forcing all of them into a single onboarding process creates confusion and error.

You'll often hear:

"I thought this customer already existed."

"Why do we have three records for the same customer?"

Zoho Billing supports multiple onboarding sources, sales-driven, self-service, API based and bulk import, which makes it easy for businesses to onboard customers into the system naturally without breaking internal workflow. This ensures onboarding remains consistent as acquisition channels expand.

Letting Customer Data Unorganised 

As businesses scale, customer relationships become more complex. Some customers represent multiple branches. Others belong to specific categories, such as resellers or premium clients. Without structure, it becomes difficult to track who owes what and which terms apply.

Teams start asking:

"Which invoice belongs to the parent company?"

"Are these customers eligible for the same pricing?"

Zoho Billing's Customer Hierarchy & Customer Groups features bring order to growing customer data. Hierarchies help manage parent-child relationships, while customer groups let you apply pricing, payment terms, etc., consistently across similar customers.

Handling Customer Requests Manually 

Customers frequently request basic actions such as downloading invoices, checking subscription status, updating billing details, or resetting passwords. When all of this goes through your support team, response times slow down, and customers get frustrated.

Common complaints sound like:

"Can you resend my invoice? I emailed yesterday. Why haven't I heard back?"

The Customer Portal feature in Zoho Billing shifts control to customers. They can view invoices, manage subscriptions, download statements, make bulk payments, update details, and reactivate subscriptions. This reduces dependence on support while improving transparency and trust.

 Losing Customers for No Real Reason 

When the trial expires or the payment fails, businesses often take extreme action, either by cutting access immediately or letting the unpaid subscription linger indefinitely. Both approaches lead to churn or revenue leakage.

Sales teams often say:

"We meant to follow up, but it slipped through."

The Free Plan option in Zoho Billing acts as a safety net. Trial users or customers with failed payments can be automatically moved to a limited-access free plan instead of being cut off completely. This keeps customers engaged and creates opportunities to convert or recover them later.

Poor Handling of Payment Failure 

Payment failures are inevitable, but many businesses treat them as a one-off issue. Without a proper retry or reminder strategy, customers unintentionally churn, even when they are willing to pay.

Customers often say:

"I didn't even realise the payment failed."

With Dunning Management, Zoho Billing automates reminders, retries failed payments, and escalates communication based on configurable rules. You can also set up a secondary payment method to increase the likelihood of successful collections before cancellation.

Not Knowing The Customers At Risk 

Many businesses react only after the customer leaves. By then, it's already too late. Without visibility into churn signals, teams miss opportunities to step in early.

This leads to hindsight comments like:

"We didn't know they were struggling."

Zoho Billing provides Reports, Churn Reports, including Under Risk Report & Renewals report that highlight customers with failed payments, downgrades, or cancellations. These insights help businesses proactively reach out, resolve concerns and prevent churn.

Making It Hard for Customers to Return 

Customers may cancel for valid reasons, such as budget cuts, seasonal slowdowns, or internal changes. When returning requires starting from scratch, many don't come back.

Customer hesitates:

"Do we have to set everything up again?"

With In-term Reactivation in Zoho Billing, customers can resume a cancelled subscription without changing billing cycles or creating new invoices. This makes reactivation simple, quick, and frictionless, especially when enabled directly through the customer portal.

Being Aware is the Key 

Customer management challenges rarely stem from a lack of intent; they come from disconnected systems, manual processes and limited visibility. Zoho Billing addresses these gaps by bringing structure, automation and flexibility across onboarding, billing, lifecycle management and retention.

By avoiding these common mistakes and using the right tools at the right time, businesses can reduce churn, improve customer satisfaction, and build relationships that last longer than a single invoice. 

• Topic Participants

• Hari Hara Sudhan. S

  

• Sticky Posts

• Community Learning Series | Digest #5 — September 2020

  Dear customers, We're happy to bring you the September edition of our #CommunityDigest! Keep track of your subscription KPIs right from your smartphone: Last month, we enhanced our Android mobile app to help our customers get daily updates on their business health. We got to know from a lot of customers that this has made their job much more easier because they no longer have to keep a reminder to manually check on the previous day's revenue or activations. If you have not downloaded it yet, here's

• Community Learning Series | Digest #4 - August 2020

  Dear customers, We hope you're staying safe and healthy. I'm happy to bring you the fourth edition of our #CommunityDigest with some brand-new updates from us. 1. Daily Business Updates (for Android users) The Zoho Subscriptions Android app has got a cool new update: You can now get a push notification to your smartphone that lets you know how many activations and cancellations have taken place, and what's the net revenue for the previous day. The best part is, you can tell the app when exactly you

• Community Learning Series | Digest #3 - July 2020

  Dear customers, We hope you're staying safe and healthy. We're glad to bring you the July edition of our #CommunityDigest. New community members can view our previous newsletters here. This time, we have two major updates and three interesting topics for you: 1. Zoho Subscriptions Developer Community Since the inception of Zoho Subscriptions, our team believed that the recurring billing platform we provide should be able to offer an extensive API library that empowers businesses to automate most

• Introducing: Community Learning Series | Digest #1 - May 2020

  Dear customers, We hope you are staying safe and healthy. Helping businesses manage their customer subscriptions more efficiently has always been, and always will be, our goal at Zoho Subscriptions. We strongly believe this is possible if we grow together as a community and share what we know with each other. To nurture this shared learning experience, here is our brand-new Community Learning Series! ​ Welcome to the first edition of our digest! Each edition of our community digest includes guides

• Recent Topics

• Add Israel & Jewish Holidays to Zoho People Holidays Gallery

  Greetings, We hope you are doing well. We are writing to request an enhancement to the Holidays Gallery in Zoho People. Currently, there are several holidays available, but none for Israel and none for Jewish holidays (which are not necessarily the same

• Unable to Send Different Email Templates for Different Documents in Zoho Sign

  Hello Zoho Community, I am facing a limitation with Zoho Sign regarding email notifications sent to customers when a document is sent for signing. Currently, whenever I send any template/document for signing, the email notification that goes to the customer

• Enable History Tracking for Picklist Values Not Available

  When I create a custom picklist field in Deals, the "Enable History Tracking for Picklist Values" option is not available in the Edit Properties area of the picklist. When I create a picklist in any other Module, that option is available. Is there a specific reason why this isn't available for fields in the Deals Module?

• ZO25: The refreshed, more unified, and intelligent OS for business

  Hello all, Greetings from Zoho One! 2025 has been a remarkable year, packed with new features that will take your Zoho One experience to the next level! From sleek, customizable dashboards to an all-new action panel for instant task management, we’ve

• Vault crashes on Android Devices

  Vault is continuously closing after entering the master password on my Android device. After several attempts I get a system message that says there is a bug in the app. I've uninstalled and reinstalled the app, and cleared the app cache, but nothing

• ¿Cómo puedo configurar las contraseñas creadas bajo una directiva para que nunca caduquen y no aparezcan como caducadas en los informes?

  ¿Cómo puedo configurar las contraseñas creadas bajo una directiva para que nunca caduquen y no aparezcan como caducadas en los informes? La razón por la cual contraseña estas no deben caducar es porque su actualización depende de mi cliente y no de mí.

• Camera access

  My picture doesn't appear in a group discussion. (The audio is fine.) The guide says "Click the lock icon on address bar," but I can't find it. Advise, please

• Are static links available

  I'm still using Zoho Meeting in trial mode. My previous webinar software provided a static link, and I made the mistaken assumption that I could send out my link and start a meeting later. Mass confusion, but my fault. With a paid version do you get a

• Power up your Kiosk Studio with Real-Time Data Capture, Client Scripts & More!

  Hello Everyone, We’re thrilled to announce a powerful set of enhancements to Kiosk Studio in Zoho CRM. These new updates give you more flexibility, faster record handling, and real-time data capture, making your Kiosk flows smarter and more efficient

• Why is Zoho Meeting quality so poor?

  I've just moved from Office 365 to Zoho Workplace and have been generally really positive about the new platform -- nicely integrated, nice GUI, good and easy-to-understand control and customisation, and at a reasonable price. However, what is going on

• How to print a label from zoho creator app?

  Hello, I would like to print a label from zoho creator app record similar to attached one. Size 74mm x 102mm. I tried record template. It leaves plenty of space around the content and also I couldn't set the height of the page. So it is not printing properly. Could someone please direct me to right direction for this requirement?

• Integration between "Zoho Sprints Stories" and "Zoho Projects Tasks/Subtasks"

  We have two separate teams in our organization using Zoho for project management: The Development team uses Zoho Sprints and follows Agile/Scrum methodology. The Infrastructure team uses Zoho Projects for traditional task-based project management. In

• Where can we specify custom CSS in Zoho Forms custom theme ?

  I'm using a form with a dark theme. The OTP popup window is unreadable, because for some reason, the OTP popup background fixes color to white, but still takes the font color specified in the custom theme. This ends up as white on white for me, rendering

• Team Gamification

  Would love to motivate, engage and encourage our team with our social media posts. Would like to include Gamification features of Social Media in Zoho Social or Marketing Automation. And also bring in Social Advocacy tools/tracking/management to these,

• Sync Data from MA to CRM

  Currently, it's a one-way sync of data from the CRM to MA. I believe we should have the ability to select fields to sync from MA to the CRM. The lead score is a perfect example of this. In an ideal world we would be able to impact the lead score of a

• Update CRM record action

  Currently, MA only offers a "Push Data" action to push data to a CRM module. This action is built to cover the need to both create a new record and update an existing record. Because it has been implemented this way all required fields on the CRM module

• Pro Lite Upgrade - Quick Access Tray

  Hello, I was going to upgrade to Pro Lite but the Quick Access Tray feature isn't available for Windows. Of the four features not available for Windows, the QAT is what I'm most interested in. Are there plans to add this feature for Windows anytime soon?

• Boost your CRM communication with new font types, sizes, and default reply-to options while composing emails

  Hello Everyone, We’re excited to introduce a series of impactful enhancements to the email composer settings in Zoho CRM. These updates enable you to personalize and optimize your customer interactions with greater efficiency. So what's new? Add custom

• 3 year sick leave cycle

  How do you set up a sick leave cycle for South Africa? In SA the sick works like this for the first 6 months you get 0.83 paid sick days a month, then after 6 months you sick leave balance is reset to 30 days that can be used over a 36 month cycle.  This

• WorkDrive and CRM not in sync

  1/ There is a CRM file upload field with WorkDrive file set as the source: 2/ Then the file is renamed in WorkDrive (outside CRM): 3/ The File in CRM is not synced after the change in WorkDrive; the file name (reference) in CRM record is not updated (here

• Is Zoho Communityspaces now part of Zoho One?

  Is Zoho Communityspaces now part of Zoho One?

• How to update "Lead Status" to more than 100 records

  Hello Zoho CRM, How do I update "Lead Status" to more than 100 records at once? To give you a background, these leads were uploaded or Imported at once but the lead status record was incorrectly chosen. So since there was a way to quickly add records in the system no matter how many they are, we are also wondering if there is a quicker way to update these records to the correct "Lead Status". I hope our concern makes sense and that there will be a fix for it. All the best, Jonathan

• Bigin’s 2025 Evolution: Highlights from 2025 and What’s Ahead in 2026

  Dear Biginners, Wishing you a very happy New Year! As we stand at the cusp of endless possibilities in 2026, we would like to take a moment to reflect on what we achieved together in 2025. Your continued support, thoughtful feedback, and kind words of

• Send Supervisor Rule Emails Within Ticket Context in Zoho Desk

  Dear Zoho Desk Team, I hope this message finds you well. Currently, emails sent via Supervisor Rules in Zoho Desk are sent outside of the ticket context. As a result, if a client replies to such emails, their response creates a new ticket instead of appending

• Zoho Desk - Change Time Zone for all users and set default for new user

  Hi,   Is there a way to set a default time zone so that when user creates an account via the Zoho Desk invitation, they don't need to select the time zone via the hundreds of choice?   And, for already created users, can we edit the incorrect time zone selected by the user at the account creation ?   Thanks ! Fred

• Introducing WhatsApp integration in Bigin

  Greetings! In today's business landscape, messaging apps play a significant role in customer operations. Customers can engage with businesses, seek support, ask questions, receive personalized recommendations, read reviews, and even make purchases—all

• Allow Manual Popup Canvas Size Control

  Hello Zoho PageSense Team, We hope you're doing well. We would like to request an enhancement to the PageSense popup editor regarding popup sizing. Current Limitation: Currently, the size (width and height) of a popup is strictly controlled by the selected

• Why does Zoho’s diff viewer highlight parts of unchanged lines?

  Hi everyone, I’ve noticed something odd in the Zoho editor’s diff view. When I delete a single line, the diff doesn’t just mark that line as removed. Instead, it highlights parts of the next line as if they changed, even though they are identical. Example:

• CRM x WorkDrive: File storage for new CRM signups is now powered by WorkDrive

  Availability Editions: All DCs: All Release plan: Released for new signups in all DCs. It will be enabled for existing users in a phased manner in the upcoming months. Help documentation: Documents in Zoho CRM Manage folders in Documents tab Manage files

• Passing the CRM

  Hi, I am hoping someone can help. I have a zoho form that has a CRM lookup field. I was hoping to send this to my publicly to clients via a text message and the form then attaches the signed form back to the custom module. This work absolutely fine when

• Automating Employee Birthday Notifications in Zoho Cliq

  Have you ever missed a birthday and felt like the office Grinch? Fear not, the Cliq Developer Platform has got your back! With Zoho Cliq's Schedulers, you can be the office party-cipant who never forgets a single cake, balloon, or awkward rendition of

• Drop Down Value

  Hi, May I know why Zoho Flow treat this drop down as number and not as string. If so, how can I fetch the right value for filtering. This field is from Creator, in Creator upon checking by default it is a string since it's not a lookup field.

• Zoho Survey reminder settings are extremely confusing

  Hi, I just want to set 3 reminders, one week apart from the first email out. Your form is too confusing and I don't understand. Can you simplify and be more specific regarding the language used on the form ?

• Add deluge function to shorten URLs

  Zoho Social contains a nice feature to shorten URLs using zurl.co. It would be really helpful to have similar functionality in a Deluge call please, either as an inbuilt function or a standard integration. My Creator app sends an email with a personalised

• form data load issue when saving as duplicate record is made

  Hello. I have a form with a lookup when a value is selected the data from the corresponding record is filled into all of the fields in the form. But the form is loaded in such a state that if any value is changed it will take all of the values pre loaded

• Recurring Tasks and Reminders in Projects

  Recurring tasks are tasks that are created once, and then recreated automatically after a designated time period. For example, the invoice for your billable tasks is due every week. You can set that task to recreate itself every week. Also, the future

• Unable to remove the “Automatically Assigned” territory from existing records

  Hello Zoho Community Team, We are currently using Territory Management in Zoho CRM and have encountered an issue with automatically assigned territories on Account records. Once any account is created the territory is assigned automatically, the Automatically

• Google Fonts Integration in Pagesense Popup Editor

  Hello Zoho Pagesense Team, We hope you're doing well. We’d like to submit a feature request to enhance Zoho Pagesense’s popup editor with Google Fonts support. Current Limitation: Currently, Pagesense offers a limited set of default fonts. Google Fonts

• Improved Contact Sync flow in Google Integration with Zoho CRM

  Hello Everyone, Your contact sync in Google integration just got revamped! We have redesigned the sync process to give users more control over what data flows into Google and ensure that this data flows effortlessly between Zoho CRM and Google. With this

• Improved Functionality PO Bill SO Invoice

  Hello, I need to enter over 100 items, it's frustrating to scroll a few item rows and wait for more to load, then scroll again. It would be nice to have buttons that scroll to the top or bottom with one click. Furthermore, these items I'm adding are VAT

• Next Page