When the first CRM packages came into the market in the 1990s, Google AdWords didn’t exist, social media didn’t exist and most companies didn’t see customer retention as strategic. Customer engagement started when a sales person visited a prospect or made a phone call.
Fast-forward two decades, and now companies engage their customers in a very different manner. They interact with them on social media, the sales cycle starts with Google AdWords, and website engagement is paramount. Now, forward-thinking companies recognize that customer retention is just as important as sales.
The way companies interact with customers evolved. Traditional CRM software didn’t. Customer Relationship Management was supposed to mean everything customer-related. Instead, CRMs got stuck in Sales Force Automation – the part where companies take a lead from beginning to close, and sales managers forecast what is about to close. Other pieces of customer-facing software, be it social media, email marketing or customer service became stand-alone categories, rarely -or very weakly- integrated with the core database of customers.
Today we’re announcing Zoho CRM Plus – the only unified software offering that allows companies to become truly customer-centric. With Zoho CRM Plus, companies can engage the right prospects, sell smarter and retain more customers through email marketing, better social media engagement, post-purchase implementation and customer service. Companies can’t become customer-centric if all their customer information is siloed across multiple software vendors. Zoho CRM Plus is the one must-have piece of software for every customer-facing person in an organization.
Engage the Right Prospects
One of the challenges companies face is not just finding more prospects – but knowing which prospects they should engage with and how to prioritize them. Zoho CRM Plus helps companies identify prospects who engaged with their website, chat with them, connect through social media, send email campaigns and automate other marketing items. Zoho CRM Plus helps convert seemingly random website visitors to engaged prospects.
Sell Smarter
It starts with having all customer and prospect data in the right place. Sales teams cannot become customer-centric if critical customer information is scattered around different systems. Beyond basic lead and contact information, Zoho CRM Plus helps companies keep track of customer support requests, marketing campaigns and website engagement. Did a hot sales prospect just tweet something negative? Better act fast.
Teams that spend time in repetitive tasks or handling low-value prospects don’t help the bottom line. The advanced automation capabilities in Zoho CRM Plus means that sales teams will always be dedicated to the most important customer opportunities. Work smart. Sell smarter.
Retain and Delight More Customers
It is cheaper to keep a customer than to acquire a new one. That is why increasing retention through customer satisfaction initiatives is a priority for modern organizations. Zoho CRM Plus provides advanced customer support tools so every company can provide the right help to the right customer at the right time – whether over phone, email, chat or on social media.
Customer retention starts by delivering your promises on time. Zoho CRM Plus project management tools help delivery teams stay on top of key client deliverables and collaborate on every item to meet all milestones without a hitch. Collaboration features like feeds, document sharing and chat keep everyone on the same page to ensure better customer focus.
Measure & Improve
Zoho CRM Plus helps continually measure and improve every single step across the customer lifecycle. Start by measuring the impact that marketing spend has in customer acquisition rate and revenue. Integration with Google AdWords gives marketing organizations better insights into how their ad spend relates to revenue.
Sales operations can rely on our Advanced CRM Analytics, which provide deep understanding into the performance of sales teams through custom visualizations that relate multiple pieces of data from CRM and external systems. Similarly, measure and improve customer retention with feedback from customer satisfaction surveys. Ensure your customer support team is able to ward off unnecessary problems.
The Power of Context
Zoho CRM Plus not only covers every single step along the customer lifecycle, but brings context to every interaction. You can see tweets and Facebook posts in the context of the relationship your company has with them. You can see customer deals in the context of what kind of experience they’ve had with your customer support team. You can see leads in the context of how well they’ve engaged with your site. Context matters. Nobody in the industry offers such a complete offering built entirely from scratch.
Zoho CRM Plus is available starting today, for $50 per user per month. We are intentionally limiting the number of customers we sign-up for the product while we bring it out of beta and into full availability.
We know that not every customer is ready (yet!) to buy into our entire vision of a single piece of software for marketing, sales and support – so we’ll of course continue to offer parts of it separately, including the main component, Zoho CRM, as well as other pieces of this big vision that we’re unveiling today, including:
- Zoho CRM for Google AdWords
Connect your Google AdWords account to your Zoho CRM account so all your data-driven insights are in one place. You’ll be able to close the loop between your online spending and your offline conversions. If this wasn’t enough, we’ve also added and enhanced other features in our core Zoho CRM product, including integration with VOIP and hosted PBX Systems, sales collaboration through feeds, holistic customer activity views with CRM Views, and more.
- Zoho SalesIQ
Real-time website visitor intelligence for sales and marketing teams, enabling them to engage visitors, qualify and get them into the sales funnel. Unlike traditional website analytics that focus on aggregate visitor data, Zoho SalesIQ provides intelligence at the individual visitor level. Companies can identify the most important opportunities or the active prospects coming back to the company’s website. Intelligent triggers enable reps to engage with the most valuable prospects. And of course, reps can convert a visitor to a lead in Zoho CRM and all engagement history is available to CRM users for future reference.
- Zoho Social
Zoho Social provides actionable insights for marketers and companies who want to increase their social media engagement with better content, real-time monitoring and advanced analytics. Zoho Social allows companies to reach the right audience at the right time – delivering content when their target audience is most likely to see it. And that’s not all, Zoho Social also helps teams collaborate on content and create customized reports.
We’ll provide more details about each one of these apps in their own posts in the coming days. We have much more to say. We know it is a big vision, and we want you to be a part of it.
I have a big issue I signed up for the Zoho CRM PLus trial and now I want to downgrade back and I am unable, the it shows an error when I try to enter the reason, it says the reason has eceeded 750 characters even when I enter only one character please help its urgent
How many zoho campaign email can you sent with crm plus and is your branding removered from Campaign and salesIQ with crm plus
Hi there, I looked at Zoho for a CRM a while back but couldn't make the move because each sale from my e-commerce website would enter a new contact (using Zapiers), even if it was a repeat purchase by an existing customer (it created a duplicate contact). Does this new CRM product allow me to layer repeat sales by the same customer under one contact record? I offer promotions for my repeat loyal buyers so its important that I can identify them easily. Also, is there a way to record refunds issued for returned products? I use Paypal Pro for a merchant processor. Thanks! lisa
Separate from Zoho's solution, I have no problem grabbing the GCLID on my webform. I brought the issue to Zoho's tech support re the "undefined" component being appended to the GCLID. They confirmed that they are aware of the issue and that it's a flaw on Zoho's end. The good news is that they seem to be optimistic about laying the issue to rest soon. "We are sorry to inform that this is an issue on our end and it will be fixed within this week. In the meantime, you can manually embed the hidden script in the landing page of the web form. Or you can wait till the end of the week for this issue to be fixed. We will be updating you on the fix."
I'm looking at the GCLID that is passing through to Zoho CRM. For some reason, each time a new lead is created, the word "Undefined" is being appended 3xs to the end of the GCLID. For obvious reasons, this seems to be preventing Zoho from grabbing the auto-tag attributes from Google. I have received a few dozen leads since implementing the script on my pages. Every leads gets the GCLID appended with "undefined" and none of the leads have since retrieved any of the auto-tag elements - no keyword, no ad ID, no campaign - nothing. It's been active since Saturday p.m. so I know it's not merely a question of waiting... Any thoughts on this?
We currently use Salesforce, Quickbooks, Basecamp, TeamGannt and a few others to manage our business. This is a mess running back and forth between all these apps. I was looking at Zoho and all your products to combine some of these together since they integrate. I just now saw that you have Zoho CRM Plus. Does Zoho CRM Plus contain all your other products under one roof? I was looking at a package using Zoho Books, CRM, Projects, Help Desk, Creator and possibly a few others. I am having a hard time understanding is Zoho CRM Plus and what it has in it. Thanks.
Just starting this business with 30 successful years behind me......I need to get with the new technology.....I also need help doing this.....love your new programs
I am a user of Zoho CRM and would like to upgrade to Zoho CRM Plus. However, there is still something I don't quite understand. How is Zoho CRM Plus integrated with email marketing companies like MailChimp or AWeber or the like? Do you provide your own email marketing tool for large scale campaigns? Thanks a lot. I really need an answer on this matter.
Hi Miguel, We have our very own email marketing software called Zoho Campaigns and this is also a part of the Zoho CRM Plus package. Zoho Campaigns lets you create, send and track your email campaigns. It also lets you send out targeted campaigns to leads and contacts stored in your Zoho CRM account. You can access your Zoho Campaigns account from your common dashboard at: https://crmplus.zoho.com/ For more details on Zoho Campaigns, refer: https://www.zoho.com/campaigns/ Do write back if you would like a customized demo and we’ll be happy to schedule one for you. Regards, Sharanya
I will not move ahead until basic function do not work correctly. As an example, I'm stucked for one week cannot Sync CRM with Campaign !!
Hello Loic, Sorry for the inconvenience. One of our team members will contact you and troubleshoot the issue as soon as possible. Thanks, Gopal
Nice features but unfortunately we are a B2B business and use tools like Google+ and Linkedin. Would LOVE to see those integrated into the Social section of the app.
Hello Brian, Thanks for your interest in Social CRM. In Zoho Social, we support both LinkedIn and Google+. We will activate trial once we're ready. Please leave your email at: http://www.zoho.com/social/
I second Jon Porecca. Would really love to see LinkedIn as part of Zoho Social.
We are a B to B company. We do not use Facebook or Twitter. We use Google+ ,Linkedin and Viadeo Hope theese Social networks will be available soon in Zoho CRM Plus
Hello Pascal, Google+ and LinkedIn integration are available in Zoho Social. We will take up integration with Viadeo in future. Gopal
Amazing upgrade! I imagine a lot of hours went into making all this possible and I will probably test drive the product. But for a small business who came to Zoho for many reasons, the $50.00 per seat seems steep, would you possible be driving people back to Salesforce?
Congrats on the new releases! We look forward to double-clicking on the new vision. As part of the release, it appears you have renamed Zoho LiveDesk to Zoho SalesIQ, That may be a good name for touchpoints which immediately or ultimately serve Sales. However, there are organizations with no explicit sales process --government comes to mind immediately--, and other similar market segments. SalesIQ does not encompass all use cases for the product, so IMHO you might reconsider the naming.
Hello Ricardo, Thanks for your kind words. Zoho Sales IQ addresses both livechat as well visitor tracking. SalesIQ does not encompass all use cases for the product Can you please let us know the missing features? We'll be happy to add them in one of the future updates. Gopal
Hi guys, I love the ideas of being able to connect with our customers on social platforms, as it was while Zoho was connected to LinkedIn. What I find quite a challenge is to jump from around 20 dollars I am paying now, to 50 you are asking for the "plus" version. Isn't there any price point in the middle?
Will this all be accessible from the CRM or will these all have their own dashboards?
Hello Blaine, You can access all these products/features from a single dashboard https://crmplus.zoho.com . Gopal
Is this a new code base? ie will code updates only be implemented on the "crm plus" or will they also update the regular crm?
Hello Corrine, Now we have the same code base of Zoho CRM and other seven products. You can access CRM Plus modules from https://crmplus.zoho.com . Gopal
Using the Adwards integration, would I be able to know which one of my leads came through Adwards? That would be awesome. What about Zoho Social? Thanks
Hello Asaf, Yes, you can easily track keyword, landing page, ad spending, network and other details of leads generated through Google AdWords (both search and display networks). For more details, please refer our online help: https://www.zoho.com/crm/help/google-adwords/index.html Zoho Social is an online social media marketing platform for publishing your social media content, monitoring and analyzing results. For more details, please refer:https://www.zoho.com/social/ Thanks, Gopal
ZOHO CRM Plus is coming to change the way that organizations relate to their customers, in a unified world is easiest lost insatisfied customers, then take care of every aspect of our relation with them is very important, and I think that ZOHO CRM Plus is the right tool to cake it.
Hello Felipe, Thank you for your kind words. Gopal
Congratulations to ZOHO. SMBs will certainly benefit from using all these services integrated to their CRM. Now with CRM Plus the decision is no longer about affordability but about wanting to commit to grow your business
We just tied in the Google Ad words to our account, cant wait to dig into it in the next week or so. Looks like it will help us report to our customers.. Great Idea, thanks for thinking of that.
Hello Phil, Thank you for integrating with your Google AdWords account. Please give a try and let us know your suggestions and comments. Gopal
I just noticed a screen shot on the Zoho Social page for google+ and LinkedIn "Standard Reports" hence maybe those platforms are supported? If so, please disregard my previous comment.
We only use google+ and LinkedIn for social, and not twitter and facebook, why should we consider this or Zoho Social if those platforms are not supported? Looks great though, cheers to Zoho!