How to Get the Most Out of Zoho CRM

To get the best return on your CRM investment you need to integrate it fully within your business and sales processes and adapt it to your specific needs. A CRM is only as good as the information that’s entered and the quality of ongoing utilisation. If you’re wondering how to get the most out of Zoho CRM, read on for a few pointers…

1) Assess how Zoho CRM will be used, for what goal, and by whom

We all know that you can’t adopt a CRM, issue logins and leave it that. The first step to truly maximising the potential of a CRM for process efficiency and revenue generation is to decide how it will be used. What do you hope to gain from a Zoho CRM deployment and who will be your Zoho CRM users?

2) Ensure customer information is updated

Zoho CRM can only transform your business, connect you with your customers, and provide powerful analytics that help you to drive sales and revenue if it has a constant flow of accurate information. Entering customer information into Zoho CRM at every stage of a sales process is vital and every employee must be encouraged to do so as a basic part of their role.

3) Use Zoho CRM to automate basic tasks

Once you have your Zoho CRM goals and users down, it’s time to begin automating your business processes. This might be daunting at first and you may want to concentrate on simply using the software, but you would be wasting one of the best features of Zoho CRM. The platform can cut down administration tasks for your employees, leaving them to focus more on customers than clicking. Zoho CRM can schedule follow-ups, send emails, offer promotions and much, much, more. Zoho has hundreds of automation options leaving you to concentrate on a personal touch to convert your clients. And, your CRM vendor or consultant could help you with customising Zoho CRM, if you have a task not already available on the platform.

4) Incorporate Zoho CRM into your marketing strategy, or your marketing strategy into Zoho

CRM’s like Zoho have built in marketing features, like email campaigns, and even text messaging. It’s worth spending the time seeing what Zoho CRM can do for you, then adding this into your marketing strategy, fully integrating the platform’s functionality with your plans.

Then, ensure your marketing strategy is incorporated into Zoho. Can you align marketing campaigns digital or otherwise with Zoho CRM tasks and pipeline planning, for example?

5) Customise Zoho CRM

Not only does Zoho CRM have a massive suite of activities it can perform for you, track, and analyse, it can also be customised by a professional to your exact business needs. A Zoho CRM consultant will understand your business needs and adapt Zoho CRM to your business processes. Zoho CRM customisation is easier than you think. Workflows and native integrations can be optimised and implemented quickly, and more complex custom workflow management takes little time in the hands of an expert.

6) Train Zoho CRM users

Zoho CRM must become second nature to sales and customer facing employees and they must embrace the system and its opportunity. Employees can only do this if they are comfortable with a platform. Train Zoho CRM users to deliver the best return for you and in doing this, confident users are ever likely to come up with even more process and workflow improvements.

At CRMSocius we understand your time is limited but you need to get the most out of your Zoho CRM investment. Our consultants are available on a short-term, per hour basis, or as long-term support and as a Zoho CRM partner for all your Zoho administration, training, and implementation needs.

We take time to understand your business, show you how to get the most from Zoho CRM, implement and customise the platform for optimum results, and can perform customisations to create the perfect platform for your own operation.

Why UI/UX Matters for a CRM

At the most basic level, the user interface (UI) is the series of screens, pages, and visual elements that enable a person to interact with a product or service. User experience (UX), on the other hand, is the internal experience that a person has as they interact with every aspect of a company’s products and services.

Zoho CRM combines reliability, flexibility and consistency and has an array of benefits for all business types, in turn creating effective UI and UX for your customers.

The importance of User Interface (UI)

Before choosing your CRM tool, it is important to remember that it is much easier for users to embrace a new system if they don’t have to waste time searching for the right field to enter or retrieve their data. At its core, our CRM tool creates a simple user interface for a collection of data that helps businesses recognise and communicate with customers in a scalable way.

By using UI effectively, it will reduce the amount of work its users do, which in turn reduces the amount of effort needed by them and the frustration felt using the system, allowing users to consume the data better. This is done by our system recognising and representing natural structures and collections of related data together in the user interface.

The most important result is that any CRM tool is used to its full potential as this benefits the business the most. To ensure this happens, you need the users to understand its’ capabilities. CRM Socius makes this easy by allowing full customisation and personalisation of the system to suit your business needs.

The importance of User Experience (UX)

Zoho CRM is known for its user experience. It offers a range of different tools all of which have detailed features which add to the experience and make it easy and enjoyable to work with. UX encompasses all the experiences a person has with a product or service.

Customers today don’t just want a service or product, they pay for an experience as well. This is exactly why our system should be the one for you, with its easy to use with added detailed features.

The user is the one who will be using the software the most, and that’s exactly why it is crucial that they feel comfortable with it. If they want to use the software one way, but it won’t allow them to, it can make them feel frustrated. A software program is only as good as the experience it brings to its users. 

Next to the experience, UX can also simplify the use of the system and increase the productivity of its users. With the automation our system provides, you can track, forecast and produce lead management with ease.

Why choose CRM Socius?

We acknowledge the value of user experience and user interface; a CRM solution should be a helpful essential. CRM should be quick & easy to navigate and simple to use so users can “focus more on managing their customer relationships and less on CRMing”. 

Here at CRM Socius, we offer a suite of applications for your business. 

We listen, to understand your business goals and we implement solutions on the Zoho Platform to improve your process, increase efficiency and grow your revenue.

Try Zoho CRM for free.

How to Figure Out Which CRM is Going to Work for Your Business

From a growth standpoint, the right CRM system helps you find leads, follow up with new prospects and nurture them through your sales pipeline. A CRM should also be used to maintain customer loyalty with your clients by not just storing the key information but most poignant data to boost sales – for instance, by personalising the experience for each user you can have more relevant conversations with them providing excellent customer support.

What features should you be looking for in CRM software?

CRM shouldn't just keep your contacts organised – it needs to offer a range of easy to use tools to help you both boost sales and execute much more effective marketing campaigns.

CRM software should offer small businesses a wealth of ways to get more from what they have already. Let's face it, smaller business owners almost always know most things about their clients anyway because they have a smaller volume of them to handle. However, that doesn't mean that you are always able to remember every subtle nuance about every contact in every account. It's the details that matter. Knowing the right thing at the right time can make all the difference in dealing with new and existing clients.

Lead and sales management. Finding new customers by automatically generating leads from various sources like social media, inbound calls, website visitors, newsletter subscriptions and other similar sources can be difficult to track if you don't have the right tool to do so. Following up with important leads needs to be automatic and elements like preset emails and tasks, or contact diary entries for you to call them directly yourself can really make a CRM become a virtual assistant. CRM's can nurture your prospects all the way through your sales pipeline, from the initial lead generation stage to finally closing the sale and even beyond that into post-sale advocacy. Additionally, the right CRM tool allows users to create and store sales quotes and track invoices.

Marketing. CRM solutions often have built-in marketing tools, including email marketing pipelines, email templates, SMS messaging and lightweight project management tools. Some even offer competition tracking and sales forecasting capabilities.

E-commerce. Some high-level CRM software has built-in e-commerce functionality, while other products allow for easy e-commerce integration, either by accessing the API or by using a third-party service.

Reports/dashboards. Most CRM software includes some reporting functionality, and many of the higher-end products sport live dynamic dashboards. Make sure any exporting or importing needs you have (for instance, transferring information to and from Excel or QuickBooks) are compatible with a system you choose.

Which CRM is right for my business? - That is very much a loaded question, but powerful capabilities designed to deliver simple and seamless usability are a must. We can't speak for other tools or software providers but Zoho CRM can help to grow your business today. Try Now. Complete with AI-Powered, Multichannel, 360º View of Your Business. Helping you to Sell Smarter & Faster. Delivering Unbeatable Value, Easily Customisable and Easy To Use.

Try it for free today and see for yourself.

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