Zoho has launched its CRM for Everyone solution in a bid to “democratize” its customer relationship management offerings.
Announced at the company’s annual Zoholics conference, the new capabilities will provide each individual company team with its own space, where they will be encouraged to actively contribute and enhance customer growth and CX.
Described by the company as the “first true democratization of the CRM paradigm,” the solution will enable cross-functional access – empowering teams and users to manage their own workflows autonomously.
These new collaborative features will allow sales teams, as the main custodians of customer relationships, to spread information and coordinate customer deliverables across areas such as solutions engineering, contract management, sales enablement, and customer onboarding – all from within a single platform.
Zoho claims that CRM for Everyone will enhance visibility for all stakeholders in the customer journey, close coordination gaps, shorten turnaround times, and improve the quality of the customer experience.
Indeed, Sridhar Iyengar – Managing Director at Zoho Europe – explained how the new capabilities will help to eliminate silos and boost customer experience offerings:
“Over the years, it [the CRM system] has accumulated a wealth of customer context, but access to the CRM is strictly rationed, and teams are forced to operate on their own islands with limited context.
This is fundamentally antithetical to a great customer experience. Zoho CRM for Everyone exists to break down those silos, unifying all customer operations teams onto the CRM to deliver better customer experiences.
So, let’s take a closer look at some of the additional CRM for Everyone features.
Achieving Democracy
In discussing precisely how companies will be able to benefit from the added cross-functional capabilities of CRM for Everyone, Zoho outlined examples such as account managers being able to involve solutions engineers for product demos, and specialists having the ability to track customer onboarding,
The company claims that while each role/team may use different core applications for detailed tasks, the new solution will allow them to converge on the CRM for shared customer responsibilities.
The potential of Zoho’s latest CRM enhancements was discussed by Liz Miller, Vice President and Principal Analyst at Constellation Research, who described the tool as a “solution that meets the modern sales and engagement strategy, reaching beyond the stagnant notion that CRM is a record or a database.
It applies connected collaboration and a project management mindset to the operations of building durable customer relationships through cross-functional actions in order to seamlessly drive more profitable relationships with customers.
While Zoho confirmed that it will be adding more capabilities to the solution in the coming weeks, in the meantime, the company highlighted the following three features:
Team Modules
Business teams can independently create team-specific data modules, which include custom fields, permissions, and workflow automation, all under IT governance.
