[October 09, 2014]

Zoho Introduces Zoho CRM Plus - First Unified Customer-Centric Offering for the Entire Customer Lifecycle

Zoho today unveiled Zoho CRM Plus, the first unified customer-centric software offering that takes customer relationship management beyond the sales cycle and traditional interaction channels. The new offering features an end-to-end, multi-channel approach that provides insight, context and information throughout the entire customer lifecycle - from the moment a customer clicks on an ad or engages in social media to when he or she buys and is retained as a happy customer.

Legacy CRM platforms were designed uniquely around sales force automation. Other companies started to fill in the gaps with email marketing, social media and customer support. This led to siloes of information and IT integration pains. If customer information is not stored in a centralized place, it is hard for companies to be customer centric.

Zoho CRM Plus approaches the CRM market from the perspective of the new digital age, where most customer interactions start in Google or Facebook (News - Alert), and allows companies to follow that interaction along every step of the funnel. By having everything in a centralized place accessible by every customer-facing member of the organization, Zoho (News - Alert) CRM Plus allows companies to have an unprecedented level of context for each customer during every single touch point. Zoho CRM Plus also provides analytical tools to help companies measure and improve their customer-related activities.

"When the first CRM packages came into the market in the 1990s, Google (News - Alert) AdWords didn't exist, social media didn't exist and companies had less of a focus on customer service," said Rodrigo Vaca, VP of marketing for Zoho. "Thanks to social media, companies now engage with their customers in a very different manner; thanks to Google they advertise in a very different way; and customer retention is now just as important as sales. Zoho CRM Plus not only covers every single interaction along the customer lifecycle, but brings context to each one of them, making it the only complete customer software designed for this new era."

Beyond Sales Force Automation

While sales force automation remains critical to any organization, customer relationship management should encompass what happens before a lead is even registered, during and after the sales engagement and delivery, and into customer retention. Customer relationship management stretches beyond sales, so every customer-facing employee should have access to the appropriate data within their CRM system. Zoho CRM Plus is the only unified offering available today that makes this possible.

• Engage the Right Prospects: Zoho CRM Plus helps companies identify prospects who are most engaged with a brand's website, landing pages or social media content so that they can be prioritized accordingly. It enables a bevy of communications channels, from online chat with customers as they navigate the site, to enabling email campaigns that leverage information stored in the CRM system. It also encourages social media interaction while providing insight into the customer's status and standing.
• Sell Smarter: Advanced automation capabilities in Zoho CRM Plus create a hub for all customer-related information, enabling the prioritization of customers so sales teams can focus on the most important customer opportunities. New improvements to its sales force automation functionality are also announced today, including telephony and integration with Google AdWords, designed to increase the customer insight into online marketing ROI.
• Retain More Customers: Zoho CRM Plus provides innovative customer support tools so companies can provide the right customer assistance at the right time via phone, email, chat or social media. Its project management tools help companies manage and collaborate during the client delivery process.
• Measure and Improve: Zoho CRM Plus helps companies continually measure and improve key steps along the customer lifecycle. From tighter integration with Google AdWords to advanced CRM analytics and customer satisfaction surveys, Zoho CRM Plus allows companies to build dashboards and KPIs that relate multiple pieces of data from their CRM and other external systems.

New Enhancements and Individual Offerings for Marketing, Sales and Support

While Zoho CRM Plus is offered as a single package, customers are still able to get individual pieces of it separately, including Zoho CRM for Sales Force Automation. Zoho today also announced three new offerings that round up its marketing, sales and support portfolio.

Here's a snapshot of the new offerings:

• Zoho CRM for Google AdWords transforms how B2B companies monitor and measure the ROI of their online marketing efforts. The integration between Zoho CRM and Google AdWords allows customers to track the evolution of a sale from initial keyword click to closing contract and beyond. Zoho CRM for Google AdWords is available today for all customers in the Enterpris Edition. For more details, see the separate press release on Zoho CRM for Google AdWords at https://www.zoho.com/in-the-news.html.
• Zoho SalesIQ provides website intelligence for sales and marketing teams, enabling them to engage website visitors, persuade them and get them into the sales funnel. Unlike traditional website analytics that focus on aggregate visitor data, Zoho SalesIQ provides intelligence for sales teams at the individual visitor level, making it possible to identify the most important opportunities or any active prospects that might be coming back to the company's website for more information and further consideration. Features include:
  • Visitor tracking: Provides real-time information about the people visiting a company's website (such as location and referrer), pages viewed and actions an individual website visitor has taken in the site so companies can more easily identify and target the most valuable visitors.
  • Website chat: Zoho SalesIQ enables sales reps to proactively engage with website visitors via chat. Companies are able to provide personalized service and, at the same time, target the most valuable website visitors according to their on-site behavior. Zoho SalesIQ is able to track website activities such as the number of pages viewed and time on the site and also pull information from Zoho CRM to provide a complete customer profile.
  • Seamless path from visit to sale: Zoho SalesIQ partners with Zoho CRM to seamlessly convert a website visitor into a contact or opportunity. Sales reps are then able to view previous interactions that online sales reps had with the customer as well as the path the customer took to find the site and interact with its marketing content.
• Zoho Social is a new product tailored for companies and marketers who want to increase their social media across channels so they can listen and drive better engagement with actionable insights and tools. Features include:
  • Listen and engage instantly: Zoho Social allows companies to monitor their social media presence across the major social media channels: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn (News - Alert) and Google+. By funneling everything happening around one brand to a single place, companies can more easily and quickly react to feedback from customers.
  • Reach the right audience at the right time with the right content: Zoho Social enables companies to collaborate on their content strategies and plan every step along the way. When it's time to make that content public, Zoho Social automatically suggests the best days and times to post on each social network based on when the company's audience is most likely to be online and ready to engage. Zoho Social is also able to deliver a post in Facebook to different users at different times according to the users' time zones.
  • Monitor and act: With Zoho Social, brands can track the status of their social media presence and discover what content types resonate with their audience. Beyond simply tracking keywords, Zoho Social is able to understand the sentiment behind mentions and track how that sentiment evolves over time. Companies can examine all this information on customizable reports which can be shared with the entire team and senior management.

Zoho CRM Plus is available today to select customers for $50 per user/year. CRM Plus includes Sales Force Automation, Customer Support, Marketing Automation, Project Management, Management Data Analytics and Customer Satisfaction Survey modules.

For more information on Zoho, visit http://www.zoho.com. To get breaking Zoho news, follow the company on Twitter (News - Alert) at @zoho and on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/zoho. The latest news about Zoho products is available on the company blog, http://blogs.zoho.com.

Additional Zoho Resources

Zoho news releases: http://www.zoho.com/in-the-news.html
Zoho videos: http://youtube.com/zoho
Zoho blogs: http://blogs.zoho.com
Zoho on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/zoho
Zoho on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/zoho

About Zoho

Zoho is a comprehensive suite of online productivity, collaboration and business applications for businesses of all sizes. Over ten million users rely on Zoho apps. Zoho's productivity and collaboration applications include Email Hosting, Document Management, Office Suite, Project Management and more alongside a host of business applications ranging from CRM and Campaign Management to Customer Support, Accounting and more. These applications are offered directly via Zoho.com or through hundreds of partners in the Zoho Alliance Partner Program. For more information about Zoho, please visit http://www.zoho.com/.

Zoho is a division of Zoho Corporation, a privately-held and profitable company. With U.S. headquarters in Pleasanton, CA and offices in Austin, Chennai, London, Tokyo and Beijing, Zoho Corp. serves the technology needs of millions of customers worldwide. For more information about Zoho Corp., please visit http://www.zohocorp.com.

All brand names and product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.

Tags: Zoho, Zoho CRM Plus, SalesIQ, Zoho Social, Google AdWords, customer relationship management, social media, sales force automation, customer support, marketing automation, project management, data analytics, customer satisfaction survey, CRM, online applications, online productivity, online collaboration, business applications, office suite

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