Tips and Tricks #20: How to prevent contact duplication with existing leads from Zoho CRM

In this week's tip, we'll be taking a look at how you can prevent contact duplication when existing leads from Zoho CRM subscribe to one of your plans in Zoho Subscriptions.

This post is part of a series of tips and tricks that we post every week. If you missed last week's post about the 3 C's of data in Zoho Subscriptions, go ahead and check it out.

Business Scenario

Managing and qualifying leads is an important part of any business' sales routine. The Zoho Subscriptions-Zoho CRM integration offers a tight sync between both applications and helps your sales teams take control of their targets. With the integration enabled, customers that subscribe to your plans in Zoho Subscriptions will be created as accounts or contacts in Zoho CRM, based on your sync preferences.

However, there may be cases where leads that you're trying to qualify in Zoho CRM subscribe to one of your plans in Zoho Subscriptions without your sales teams knowing about it. This can lead to your sales teams wasting time on already converted leads, which could also get you on the wrong side of customers because of sales calls even after they've subscribed to your service. This week's tip will help you avoid this.

Setting It Up

Like most of our previous tips and tricks, this one can be implemented by using a custom function. After a new customer signs up to your service from the hosted payment pages, the custom function will check whether they're already stored as a lead in Zoho CRM and if they are, the lead in Zoho CRM will be converted to a contact instead of creating a new contact in Zoho CRM. This custom function is not limited to hosted payment pages alone and will be triggered as soon a new subscription is created in Zoho Subscriptions (for example, it also works if one of your staff creates a new subscription using Zoho Subscription's web or mobile apps). Here's how to set it up:

Go to Zoho Subscriptions > Settings > Automation > Custom Function.
Click + New Custom Function in the top right.
Enter a name for the custom function and select the module as Subscriptions.

Select the predefined event as New Subscription.
Copy the script for this custom function, which can be found on GitHub, and paste it in the Deluge script editor.
Click Save.

A few points to note:

This custom function will not be triggered if a customer alone is created from Zoho Subscriptions and will only be triggered when a new subscription is created.
The leads in Zoho CRM will be converted into an Account or Contact based on your sync settings.
The Deluge script for the custom function requires an Auth Token, which can be generated here.

Now, you're good to go and will no longer be faced with contact duplication because of leads from Zoho CRM.

Try it out and let us know how it goes, we'd love to hear your feedback in the comments below. We'll be back next week with a new post, so stay tuned!

Cheers,

Varun Steven

The Zoho Subscriptions Team

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