Zoho CRM Introduction

Zoho is a CRM system that is utilized by over 300,000 enterprises.  Recently Zoho has implemented a lot of changes including  their artificial intelligence assistant ZIA.

By Harvey Brown, CustomBulkUSB Data Scientist

(Reach me on twitter @_harvey_brown)

Zoho is a CRM system that is geared towards small- and medium-sized business that facilitate managing your potential client’s data.   A CRM system is a program that helps businesses keep track of their business relationships by storing and organizing their business contacts.  Some other common examples of CRM systems are Salesforce, Less Annoying CRM, Insightly, and Base.  The data typically includes last name, email, company name and what the client is interested in ordering. Zoho has several interesting features in which I will give a brief overview of some of them:

Sales Signals

This feature allows one to see where in the process your potential client is.  This feature located in the upper right hand corner of the page at the bell symbol allows you to see if the customer has opened an email and/or replied to it. You are also notified if the lead filled out a survey.

Screenshot of Zoho Zia Dashboard

Telephony

You can call the customer right from the website.  This is a convenient feature that’s useful when on-the-go and where all of the lead’s information is front-and-center.  I will also mention here that Zoho has a filed in each customer’s profile where you can leave a note about the phone call.  From our experience at CustomBulkUSB in using Zoho, it is recommended to leave a short note.

Email

You can email the customer while still in the system.  You are also allowed to create templates for commonly sent email messages.  We have used several different templates and also have programmed the system to send out an Auto Reply message whenever a lead has filled out our webform.  The good thing about this system is you can also check if the message has been delivered and as mentioned earlier, whether or not the customer has read your message.

Chat

You can set up an instant chat feature eon your website.  This can be an important part of the sales pipeline in getting customer to answer their micro yes’s (include link to increasing sales article here).  Chat allows a customer to voice any questions or concerns they have about your product or service.  You can also track who is visiting your website at any moment.

Social

This tool is important for monitoring and managing your brand’s online reputation.  You can track what people are saying about your company online.  This is a great way to get feedback and address your lead’s concerns as they arise.  Zoho allows you to see if a customer is on Google Plus, LinkedIn or Twitter.

Profile Permissions

You are allowed to assign different people in the business to different functions.  You are allowed to decide who can approve leads, add, import, or delete leads.  Zoho has three permission levels: standard, sales manager and administrator.  Administrator is the highest level which allows one access to all of the features and standard is the lowest level of permission which allows access to just emailing and communicating with the leads.

Zoho Zia

Zia is the artificial intelligence component of Zoho that is being implemented into the CRM system in phases.  Zia has a lot of neat features which are described in detail below in this video:

I hope you feel more comfortable with what Zoho has to offer. Zoho has a free 15-day trial to consider as well.  Consider signing up here.