Disclaimer: We are a product agnostic CRM consulting services firm & not a Zoho partner or reseller. The intention of this post is to share our insights, gained from recommending, implementing & overseeing Zoho CRM implementations and observing Zoho's remarkable growth over the years. We hope our experience can be useful for companies considering evaluating Zoho as a CRM and business process automation platform.
Witnessing Remarkable Growth From its early days as a free tool for a number of users to its current position as one of the top three most recognizable CRM brands alongside Salesforce and HubSpot (for us atleast), Zoho has come a long way
Diverse Product Portfolio Today, Zoho offers over 40 products across 11 categories, spanning sales, marketing, customer service, finance, and more. Its integrated suites, such as Zoho One, have gained popularity among businesses.
Fulfilling Expectations Over the past two years, we have led Zoho CRM projects for three customers, automating sales, marketing, and customer service functions. Zoho CRM has consistently fulfilled our expectations, offering a user-friendly interface, robust lead and opportunity management features, and efficient customer service capabilities.
Although the lead to deal conversion process can be improved. We were also able to seamlessly integrate Zoho CRM with Zoho Campaigns and Zoho Books. In one project, we integrated Ozonetel's cloud telephony solution, which proved to be a simple and effective plug-and-play integration.
Great Value Pricing One of our jobs as a CRM consulting services firm is to keep an eye on pricing of various CRM products & here Zoho provides great value compared to its closest competitor. The CRM Plus package, priced at Rs. 2900 plus tax per user (billed annually), includes sales, marketing, customer service, projects, chat, analytics, surveys, and more. The enterprise version, priced at Rs. 2400 plus tax per user (billed annually), offers sales, marketing, customer service & workflows, making it suitable for most SMB enterprises.
Areas for Improvement While Zoho boasts numerous advantages, there are areas where it can further improve and grow:
Licensing and feature combination The standard and professional versions of Zoho CRM may have limited customization and workflow capabilities, often necessitating the recommendation of the Enterprise version.
Feature depth While Zoho offers a wide range of apps, it may not provide the same depth of functionality as more specialized software’s. This may limit its suitability for highly specialized industries or large-scale enterprises.
Partner network As per our interaction experience some partners lack the necessary knowledge, expertise, and in-depth capabilities on the platform, particularly when extensive customizations and integrations are required.
Account management and customer support There is room for improvement in response times and the overall support experience.
