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Zoho Sets its Eyes on Large Businesses

Written by Allison Howen | Nov 18, 2013 6:00:00 AM

The goal of all businesses is growth, but when the hard work has paid off there is nothing worse than finding out your technology providers cannot grow with you.

This is why Zoho has expanded its Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software and Zoho Support solution to meet the needs of larger businesses better. Learn more about the platform enhancements below:

Zoho CRM

- Territory Management - this customer segmentation feature enables users to organize customers by grouping them together based on criteria such as geographic locations, industry type, expected revenue, product lines and divisions. Users can now do forecasting based on territories, identify regions that are making profit and better plan allocation of resources.

- Custom Modules - Users can tailor their Zoho CRM implementations, allowing them to supplement the standard sales, marketing and customer support modules with industry-specific modules that can be built without developer tools. The custom modules behave like standard CRM modules, allowing users to customize, import and export data, configure workflow rules, link with standard CRM modules and generate reports.

- Custom Functions (for workflow automation) - Users can automate business processes by capturing complex business logic in a function created using Deluge, Zoho's scripting language. A function can be created to automatically update data in related CRM modules or third-party apps. Users can also pick from a pre-built list of functions in the custom function gallery.

- Social Integrations - Users can listen to and engage in customer conversations without leaving their Zoho CRM account. The new Social tab inside the CRM allows users to monitor social mentions and trends as well as provides the ability to search the entire social stream for leads.

Zoho Support

- Cloud Telephony - This feature brings the traditional customer service telephony system into the customer support application. Cloud Telephony allows users to hook up a customer service phone number to receive calls within Zoho Support. Through this integration, agents can see a caller's background information in order to find solutions and resolve issues. Plus, the system automatically creates support requests for missed calls from customers, attaching any voicemails to the support tickets.

- Mobile Apps for both iPhone and iPad - These apps allow users to offer customer support from any location. Support agents can quickly respond to requests using response templates, and support requests can be assigned to other agents with Quick Assign. Moreover, agents can tag each other and ask for help via social network-style comments. Important activity related to requests is also delivered through push notifications.

It is important to note that all new features for Zoho CRM are already available for Enterprise edition users. Moreover, mobile apps for Zoho Support are available for both Enterprise and Professional edition users. Cloud Telephony, however, has a few limitations in functionality for Professional edition users.

"Over 50 thousand businesses have come to rely on Zoho CRM and Zoho Support to manage their customer relations and customer support needs respectively," said Raju Vegesna, Zoho evangelist. "Now, we are going deeper with both CRM and Support, adding advanced functionality often needed by large businesses. As both CRM and Support are increasingly being deployed in large businesses, we updated these applications with several advanced features to accelerate this trend."