Zoho CRM

My name's Raven Beria, and I'm the founder of Brandalaxy, a brand consultancy firm in Hawaii. We facilitate workshops to align and unify purpose-driven companies focusing on the vision, values, and goals of their organization. I always try to deliver a process-oriented service to my clients, so picking the right tools for CRM was critical from the start, and I'd like to share my experience. Here are my thoughts:

When I was looking for my CRM, I based my criteria from what I learned in Jim Dubois's (the former Microsoft CIO) book, Six-Word Lessons to Think Like a Modern-Day CIO: 100 Lessons CIOs and Tech Leaders Must Embrace to Drive Business Velocity. Some of the core takeaways I got from Jim was to make issues visible to all teams, consolidate/eliminate everything possible, and cultivate a DevOps mindset that drives for automation, security, and integration.

As a result, I ended up choosing Zoho CRM because I discovered Zoho One - the entire suite of 40 + apps that include Zoho CRM for $30/employee. This made the most sense, considering Zoho had different apps for each department of a business, like marketing, sales, and project management, all able to integrate with its CRM and "talk" to each other. Here's a rundown of the other pros and cons:

Pros:

Integrations: Thinking big picture of how the CRM integrated with the rest of my business was key, connecting with my current software to make issues visible to all departments. When I did this, I looked in the future of the kind of software I'd need in the future also. That's when I discovered one problem: there are a lot of apps for every single thing. Change is already hard enough, and I pictured how difficult it would be to explain and onboard new employees to different software. With Zoho's integration to effortlessly connect information from one app to another using its own software for a single log-in, it was a big plus for me. This allowed me to start consolidating external apps and move into project management apps native to Zoho.

Customizability: With any business, you should have an agile mindset, including the software that you have. Businesses spend a lot of money to hire developers and create a system for them. But the reality is technological solutions and the way you do business also evolve. That's why I wanted to make sure it was easy for me, as a business owner, to customize the solutions too. That way, when my processes changed, I could customize the features of my CRM. When I learned how easy it was to customize Zoho's modules and fields in user profiles, the business process workflow, and more, it became the top on my list.

Customer service: With the enterprise features for Zoho, I've had 24/7 access to Zoho's customer service, which has saved me a lot, including on weekends. Even when I have a single question on editing a business workflow, I can count on sharing my screen and getting live feedback and input from their support team.

Cons: Despite having a whole suite of tools that talk to each other, some of the apps still don't beat its competition, depending on how you rate stuff. For example, the Zoho Survey's customizability in appearance isn't anywhere close to other software's aesthetic design. That's important if you take branding really important, especially since the survey tool you use is client-facing. Nonetheless, you can still integrate other apps to Zoho CRM!

Overall experience:  I've enjoyed my time with Zoho for my day-to-day operations and workflow. You can tell their entire team has an agile mindset too with all the constant updates that really rely on user feedback (take a look at the responses from the mobile apps, and you'll see what I'm talking about!). Overall, my experience has been great.

Total Rating: So far, I'll give it a 5 on my rating scale because it does exactly what I need it to do, along with having great customer service that's available to me 24/7.

Bottom line: Think like a chief information officer and think-big picture first, considering how you can (1) Make issues visible to all teams (2) Consolidate/eliminate everything possible, and (3) Cultivate a DevOps mindset that drives for automation, security, and integration. By understanding the above, you can implement a CRM that drives positive change everyone is involved in, instead of adding another software that creates resistance!

I founded Goalry, Inc with the mission to create one place to reach financial goals and comparison shop for any money matter. Here I willbe sharing the Pros and Cons of Zoho CRM software:

Pros

1.     Zoho is much cheaper than other software and offers great services, plus monthly billing options too.

2.     Zoho is better for SMB’s or first time CRM users.

Cons

1.     It just doesn’t have the advanced functionality.

2.     Customer service and support online aren’t as good as it can be.

It is a very useful system and can be used as a foundation if a company does go on to scale up.

I'd like to put forward a series of quotes from Water Filters Australia, who use Zoho CRM. For almost 20 years, Sydney-based small business Water Filters Australia was working on old, cumbersome technology. But last year the company realized its outdated systems were restricting its growth and preventing it from becoming the company it wanted to be. Despite having little-to-no previous technical know-how, the team on-boarded Zoho's cloud software technology across the business.

The team is exclusively all over the age of 55, has deployed the technology to streamline business processes, managing customer information, and increasing productivity. The technology has already helped double online sales and save $100,000 in annual staff wages. Not only that, they've proved that technology isn't the sole domain of silicon valley or recent graduates.

Q: What technology did Water Filters Australia update and what was the reason behind this?

A: We’ve been in business for 20 years, but until recently we’d been using cumbersome legacy technology. It wasn’t automated to the extent that we wanted it to be, didn’t provide information in real-time - which was very important for us - and didn’t help us meet our business objectives. We needed a central solution to bring the entire business, and all our processes, together. We felt that working with old technology was preventing us from reaching our full potential and becoming the business we wanted to be. We reached a point where we just couldn’t move forward with the systems we had, so in August 2018 we onboarded Zoho CRM; a highly-intuitive cloud software to help automate processes and streamline the business. We haven’t looked back since.

Q: Was there any hesitation amongst the team about adapting to the new technology?

A: The migration to Zoho CRM has been easy. We run our own call center, and the average age of the team is 55-plus, so there was a little trepidation initially. The software is very user-friendly, however, and they mastered it very quickly - I thought it would take a lot longer. They’re now very comfortable with the software and the business is benefitting as a result.

Q: What are some of the practical ways that Water Filters Australia helped team members (particularly older members) adapt to the new technology?

A: Zoho is extremely intuitive and user-friendly, so implementing the system and getting the team up-to-speed with its various functionalities was far more seamless than we originally thought. We instigated a number of customized functions and it was important that the procedures for each were well documented. Developing Procedures Manuals along with continual staff training greatly supported and assisted with Zoho’s implementation.

Q: How has technology helped the business?

A: We can now automate our communication with our B2C customers, and as a result, our online sales have doubled. We’ve also saved over $150,000 as a result of the improved operational efficiencies we are now benefiting from. We still haven’t seen the full extent of the financial benefits yet, but those will become more apparent the longer we use Zoho. The benefits are far more wide-ranging than merely financial, though. Our processes and efficiencies have improved markedly: we’re making more calls, engaging more customers and accessing information far quicker. It also makes it much easier to set and monitor KPIs and create activities. For example, we can create follow-up activities to call a lead back on a specific date or email a customer when their product needs replacing. The system automatically flags that to the team. Previously, so much of what we did was just written on paper, which was far from ideal! But with all that information now accessible to anyone via the cloud, we’re able to improve our service and customer experience. From a management point of view, we’re benefitting from the customized reports the system prepares which allows us to understand the business far more holistically than before.

Q: Anything else to add?

A: Before we onboarded the new technology, a consultant came to do a review of the business: we showed them where we were, and where we wanted to get too, and Zoho certainly makes those goals far more achievable. The entire process has been far more seamless than we anticipated, and we’re already reaping the rewards. Working with Zoho’s technology has us on track to become the business we knew we could become, so I wouldn’t hesitate in recommending new technology to other small businesses.

Pros: Recently started using it and have been very happy with all of the new apps included with the ZohoONE subscription... Love the surveys

Cons: So far we have been truly happy and have not run into anything we are unsatisfied with... Only been using it about 2 months

Overall Experience: We are former users of Zoho and ZohoONE is like a totally different software. It blows the "old" version of Zoho out of the water!

Pros: Easy to use with easy customer support option

Cons: User interface can be better overall

Pros: Features

Cons: Can improve UI and UX

Pros: Superb automated everything

Cons: Not integrated with some software

Pros: It works well

Cons: There are multiple minor issues with almost all features

Pros: Easy to use

Cons: Not so friendly