An ever expanding buffet of functionality is available to us at a ridiculously low price
November 07, 2022

An ever expanding buffet of functionality is available to us at a ridiculously low price

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Software Version

Enterprise

Overall Satisfaction with Zoho CRM

We initially started out looking for our first corporate CRM package to begin replacing all of the many in-house tracking and reporting functions created within each siloed department using primarily Google apps and MS Office apps. After bringing up CRM we saw both effective and efficient possibilities by becoming a Zoho One customer and planned steady migration in that direction. As each department began taking advantage of CRM automations as key way to improve our processes it became a no-brainer to become and enterprise Zoho customer and start taking advantage of the inherent interoptability with other Zoho applications. We are a relatively small company (~50 employees) and currently use (to varying degree) over 20 Zoho apps in conjunction with CRM.
  • Provide a shared single source of Customer information (classic CRM)
  • Allow us to easily create automations relevant to each department's functionality
  • CRM allowed us to bring up each department separately using in-house designed views with easily created logic functionality applied to fields within each view
  • Build custom reports and dashboards starting with supplied off the shelf examples
  • First level support suffers from cultural context issues-- instead of trying to understand the customer's issue(s), they seem more motivated to close a ticket with canned responses
  • Documentation is not consistent and often does not match the current implementation of the software
  • Producing attractive custom views with more aesthetics and visual cues requires the use of an additional (though included for free in Zoho One) software application
  • We are dramatically more effective due to automations
  • We have access to (AND use!) a significantly diverse range of applications with Zoho One
  • Our operational costs have been significantly reduced by migrating to similar Zoho One app while getting benefit of our apps working together.
N/A

We aren't really using CRM to generate leads and we have an internally built mail platform for system generated and marketing mail (including nurture campaigns). We use the CRM largely as a way making sure that our customer base is trackable across all departments.
All of our Sales leads are fed into the CRM and also customer product ownership/setup etc. are tracked in the CRM. I was with this company for 5 years before we finally got an integrated CRM. The difference in flow of information is like night and day. The CRM is housing a tremendous amount of data (including from other corporate data repositories) in a single readily accessible location, allowing us to quickly understand the financial, product and historical information for a customer very quickly. This, in turn, allows us better and more promptly respond to customers.
  • Absolute improvement on saving time through automations for consultative customer facing staff. This allows each account rep to handle more customers with less time spent on mundane rote tasks.
  • The easily built automations go a long way to prevent activities from falling through the cracks. Similarly, it is easy to implement in-house business rules that let Zoho remind the reps when 'something needs to happen'. This cuts down on having the reps become (error prone) slaves to their individual calendars.
  • Because of the ease with which the other Zoho apps interconnect with CRM, it was a fairly simple process for each department to create and manage department-wide activities (such as sending out ad hoc targeted marketing emails to customers or building a repository for shared departmental documents and materials)
  • We have also begun connecting CRM to our other corporate 'sources of truth' like Stripe and SQL. This allows us (with API calls) to have accurate customer data presented to staff AND obviate the need for duplicate entry of data existing in other sources.
The methodology of the 'out of the box' user interface is fairly easy to learn. In some cases however, the interface is not consistent throughout the software. Upgrades to the interface has certainly improved some of this--- but now we are seeing the same kinds of inconsistencies across Zoho apps, particularly those more recently added to their platform. This issue is not major in that everybody on staff seems able to learn how to work the programs--- it's just annoying and less than efficient when inconsistent user interfaces or inconsistent terms are used in the programs and/or the requisite documentation.
We found that highly technical staff was NOT needed to configure the product for each department. This, coupled with the ability for even non-technical staff to be involved in developing custom automations speaks highly of the product. During the initial migration and implementation there was a great deal of reliance on Zoho customer support. Once these initial tasks were completed and staff became aware of how easy it is to build dashboards, reports and automations then productivity (and even in-house excitement) rose significantly. From a technical perspective, the CRM package does a great job of NOT confusing the staff by forcing them to understand the more powerful (but challenging) aspects of the program (using APIs, developing custom 'modules', etc.).

Do you think Zoho CRM delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Zoho CRM's feature set?

Yes

Did Zoho CRM live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Zoho CRM go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Zoho CRM again?

Yes

For really small companies, the software might be quite challenging 'out of the box'. It is particularly well suited for companies that have at least some technical expertise in-house (particularly around basic data concepts and systems thinking). Zoho offers (for a fee) a dedicated support rep on an annual basis. I cannot emphasize enough how valuable this service is in efficiently migrating to Zoho CRM and then using the all the available features and functionality to customize the software to your specific needs.

Zoho CRM Feature Ratings

Customer data management / contact management
10
Workflow management
10
Territory management
Not Rated
Opportunity management
Not Rated
Integration with email client (e.g., Outlook or Gmail)
8
Contract management
10
Quote & order management
Not Rated
Interaction tracking
10
Channel / partner relationship management
Not Rated
Lead management
Not Rated
Email marketing
Not Rated
Task management
8
Reporting
10
Forecasting
7
Pipeline visualization
Not Rated
Customizable reports
10
Custom fields
10
Custom objects
8
Scripting environment
6
API for custom integration
7
Role-based user permissions
10
Single sign-on capability
Not Rated
Marketing automation
Not Rated
Compensation management
Not Rated
Mobile access
10

Using Zoho CRM

40 - Sales, marketing, customer service, reception, our consultative product for real estate agents, billing, product design team, et. al.
2 - We have one person who specializes in developing automations in coordination with requesting departments and several people who are always looking at Zoho from the big picture view (how can we become more effective, more efficient, or generate more revenue)...
  • Monitoring our existing customers with the product ownership lifecycles
  • Managing the billing to include (cancellations, refunds, disputes and similar issues)
  • CRM provides the basic repository which fuels our ticketing system for Customer Service/Sales/et. al.
  • Automating the recurring activities and reporting to provide efficiencies and increase effectiveness... allowing our staff to get more done and do it better!
  • We have implemented syncing key data from Stripe and SQL into CRM. This is virtually eliminated the need for most staff to even go into Stripe.
  • Our design department uses CRM (and Desk) to track the entire process of customers who are having creative artwork designed for them.
  • We created custom modules in CRM that allow our Customer Service department to track all their interactions with customers (including historical detailing of all customer contacts across phone calls, emails and texts.)
  • Track new groups of customers (for example, Loan Officers in addition to Real Estate agents)
We are committed to the Zoho One platform.