Item: Zoho CRM Plus
Rating: 10
Author: Marc Fishman

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Zoho CRM Plus was purchased as part of the Zoho One platform. With several leftover databases from acquired companies, and our older data (from Nutshell), we needed to implement a single CRM to drive our sales and operations teams. We use the CRM to keep track of leads, deals, and accounts (as I'm sure most do). We were seeking a solution in sales to operationalize the 'speed-to-lead' live leads (through companies like BuyerZone), as well as handle acquired lead lists we wanted to call through. As we continued to uncover the feature set, we also implemented automated email blasts to nurture leads. In Operations, we utilized Zoho CRM Plus to handle important notifications of statuses of our existing clients. For example, clients on the cusp of cancellation would trigger notification and changing of fields to help our customer service team to go through their processes. In time we optimized as many processes as we could using the workflows. This includes automating task lists, email notifications, and more. We've even started exploring the 'Canvas' feature to better optimize the productivity of our teams.

Pros and Cons

Workflows and Automations allow you to trigger nearly any advanced functions you could imagine to improve productivity.
Integrated email blast and parser.
Canvas UI builder allows you to reorganize content into the best configuration depending on the team members.

Automations and certain functions do need to be hard-coded... so a steep learning curve depending on your need.
PhoneBridge integration was not available for our system.
Integrated email inboxes are NOT related to ZohoMail, which means you can end up managing 2 inboxes.

Return on Investment

Allowed us to qualify leads as quickly as they entered the system. This maximized our opportunity to close "low hanging fruit" easily.
Allowed for better customer service through integrated automations that notified the right team members quicker to deal with issues.
Helped us to put together several old databases of "dirty" data. Clean it. And start fresh.

Support Rating

We do use Zoho Enterprise Support, and it's worth every penny spent. Our representative is prompt and basically like an external team member. The entire Zoho Team — from our account rep to our support tech — always make sure they are listening to our needs and helping us achieve our goals with the software. From very meticulous coding of advanced automations to seeking integration solutions for 3rd party vendor data we want... we've ALWAYS been supported by the Zoho Team. The software meets our needs and inspires us constantly to "dial-in" better solutions to improve our productivity. That the support team is aligned to those goals just makes them happen all the quicker.

Key Insights

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

Yes

Are you happy with Zoho CRM Plus's feature set?

Yes

Did Zoho CRM Plus live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Zoho CRM Plus go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Zoho CRM Plus again?

Yes

Usability

I personally started off as a CRM novice. But in a matter of 2 months, I was writing my own custom workflows, playing with modules and fields, and training my sales and operations teams to manage leads and accounts. Simply put, the system is intuitive after a brief introduction. The level of customization is staggering until you change your mindset. Zoho CRM Plus excels where you're able to attack your goals as problems already solved in the platform — you just need to locate the feature to make what you want to happen... happen! I equate it to the Adobe Creative Suite. You don't pick the fun filter before you lay out what exactly you want to draw. With that mindset intact, you can dial in the system to meet your and your team's needs based on your proposed SOLUTIONS, not just leaning heavily into a single feature to "force" some ROI.

Professional Services

I already discussed this prior with the Enterprise Support. But them aside, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention Zoho is committed to connecting their userbase together. Within a month or two of using the product, we were told about Zoho User Groups. We had one right in my backyard (Chicago). I was able to both attend a meeting (pre-covid), and then stay in touch in an integrated Cliq channel. I always have power-users at my fingertips to ask quick questions. That Zoho makes it a point to keep these connections, and empower them... makes my life easier when inevitable "wants" pop up.

Contract Terms and Pricing Model

Zoho was purchased a few months before I'd started.

Likelihood to Recommend

For small to medium-sized businesses, you can't get a more robust CRM system for the money. Because of the ease of use of the workflow builder in a single day I was able to set up complex automation that triggered notifications and emails to both customer and sales team members based on actions on a landing page I built elsewhere in Zoho (Zoho Sites). Was able to make a CRM lead intake form on the site tie directly to the CRM such that a new lead got an introductory email from the company, assigned to a specific sales team member based on certain answers on the form, and then that sales team member received a direct message to their phone to take next steps. We also created automated task lists populated based on certain actions. For example, when a deal was 'Closed/Won', it triggers automated emails to the operations teams, and a 16 step implementation process is assigned to various team members to usher the new account into production.

Zoho CRM Plus is haute cuisine served at quick service pricing.

Overall Satisfaction with Zoho CRM Plus