Zoho Implementation Archives - Page 2 of 4

Rising Customer Engagement Trends in the Market

Abhishek Sharma / customer engagement, customer engagement strategy, customer relationship, seamless customer experience, targeted marketing strategy / CRM Services, Digital Marketing, Zoho CRM, Zoho Implementation

Customer engagement has been an important concept in the market for quite some time now. However, when we come to really think about customer engagement, we also begin to understand why it has become important. The thing is that engaging with customers helps in adding value to the customer journey and also provides them with a personalised experience.

Designing a customer engagement strategy empowers a person to build a strong connection with customers and also allows interaction on the channels that are important. This is how you can gain an idea of how important it is to create an effective customer engagement strategy.

For so many years, businesses have only been focused on gaining market share and getting profit from it. However, the pandemic has pretty much changed everything. Consumer preferences have changed drastically now, and the way these preferences interact with businesses has changed as well.

The great consumer shift tried to impose a new shopping experience since Covid-19 started. This opened up many new opportunities for businesses to access new customers and also provide a delightful customer experience all through the buyer journey.

In this blog, we will see what customer engagement is and what is its importance?

What is Customer Engagement?

Customer engagement can be simply defined as the means by which an organisation creates a relationship with a wide customer base for the purpose of fostering brand loyalty and awareness. This can be easily accomplished by marketing campaigns, new content created for and posted to websites and outreach via social media and wearable devices among other methods.

Even though there can be many variations to this definition, the premise pretty much remains the same. A company aims to foster a positive relationship with the customers with an aim to promote the brand, generate more sales, and offer an amazing experience on a personal level.

Importance of Customer Engagement

Customer engagement is easily one of the most important aspects of a successful organisation. A customer who is engaged with a specific company is capable of generating more revenue than a customer who feels less connected to a company. Hence, customer engagement strategy means more profit for the company and almost everyone who runs a business wants that.

In case a company does not have a plan for improving customer engagement, you can miss out on a lot of money and opportunities to interact with valuable customers and even potential ones. Building a relationship with customers does not just make more, but it also helps in establishing trust and loyalty with the customers. Having customers who trust a business keeps them around for a long time while making them repeat customers.

Even the connection between customer engagement and customer loyalty is pretty profound. Someone who is a loyal customer is likely to show more loyalty by repeatedly purchasing from a company, spreading the word about a business by social sharing, and referring to other people like friends and family.

A present customer spreading the word to other people is perhaps an important tool in a company’s arsenal. Communicating with customers in a positive way encourages them to go out of their way for promote a business socially and by word of mouth. This communication helps in controlling what other people are saying about you all across the internet.

1. Insight Centric Customer Engagement

Data, personalization, and artificial intelligence have allowed marketing technology platforms to offer campaign analytics in times such as these. The insight led customer engagement platforms to allow marketers to mark the important moments in the journey of a buyer while charting a seamless customer experience.

The collaboration between marketing and insights helps both sides of the partnership make much better decisions while devising stronger and more customer-focused campaigns that drive businesses.

Data can be used for personalising the campaigns which is an essential step for customer engagement. A strategy such as this leaves almost no room for trial and error methodologies while leading to focused, and data-backed marketing campaigns.

2. Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence has added more of a personal touch to customer engagement trends and processes. In the past, marketers used to collect large amounts of consumer behaviour centric data.

However, the dearth of any tools for data analytics also meant the brands could not leverage data completely for strategy and decision making. At present, marketers have easy access to AI-based advanced tools in which the primary value is brought by the speed at which large sets of data can be analysed and used for generating predictive insights.

Focusing on how AI has lent a much more human-centric approach. Improved data analysis has offered the world an insight into the needs of customers who either lost their jobs or felt the need to upskill during the pandemic. With the adoption of advanced data-based marketing automation, brands have been able to offer content and discounts that speak to diverse customers while focusing on a targeted marketing strategy.

Moreover, AI has also minimised manual efforts while offering a human touch to customer interactions with the personalization of campaigns. With machine learning becoming more mature, it is likely that we will see more customer-facing marketing automation capabilities.

Hence, with AI-powered channels, brands can effectively analyse data and also deliver relevant content based on the stage of the buyer’s journey. AI-enabled chatbots provide constant assistance to users as and when it is required. These AI assistants prove to be excellent tools for offering customer support and engagement.

3. Personalised Content

Customised communication when backed with suitable data points helps the organisations to break through the chain of generic messages while standing out in today’s market which is pretty saturated. Doing this is an important step in treating all your customers as an individual and offering services that are relevant.

The reason for the popularity of brands has been a personalised experience that allows customers to place orders and pick them up in-store. Any marketing tactic that comes across as machine created and transactional does not prove successful in building customer loyalty and this is irrespective of how data is leveraged.

There must be a one size fits all approach that proves sufficient for attracting and even retaining customers. This is because this customer engagement strategy helps in offering the best customer experience and the greatest customer lifetime value.

Personalization has become an important investment with the economy recovering and consumers feeling safe to start spending again. All brands that personalise their approach to where and how they engage with customers can invest in paid media selectively. This helps in winning as a good share of sales makes its way back.

4. Single Interface

Another emerging trend in the market that is focused on customer engagement is easy access to all channels in just one place. A single interface is straightforward to allow any digital channel to be accessed easily and from one place.

With a single interface, a lot of time and money can be saved which also results in a hassle-free experience for the customers. In fact, the multi-channel approach helps in finding all touchpoints of the customer insights journey across all channels.

5. Cloud Platforms

The final goal of customer experience is always to create a satisfied consumer. There is no better way to get better customer satisfaction than by using cloud platforms.

The cloud does an excellent job of offering many benefits for businesses that are looking to improve their experience including an ability to personalise experiences, improve collaboration, offer better customer service, and undergo digital transformation. While this goes on, a business should also be able to offer user-friendly features that can keep the customers coming back for more.

Cloud platforms are perfect for managing customer engagement. They provide a safe and centralised location for customer management and interactions in just one place. This also makes it simple to track customer behaviour over time, find trends, and make better decisions about which products and services to offer customers.

It also helps in understanding how businesses are performing relative to competitors. Cloud platforms also make it simple to collect and analyse data while offering features that improve interactions and create better customer engagement. There are many solutions in the market and each of them has its own set of features.

6. Augmented Reality

Another rising trend when it comes to customer engagement is augmented reality. It has offered a way for retailers to translate in-store visits into digital experiences. Customers always want to understand, see, and experience a product before they purchase it.

Since augmented reality offers a seamless customer experience, most customers expect retailers to provide an AR experience. AR allows customers to browse 3D products from the comfort of their homes, try 3D products, gather information including reviews, pricing, and colour options, and use virtual trial rooms.

It should not come as a surprise that customers who use AR are more likely to purchase. In addition, AR provides retailers with the ability to overcome location barriers, and save costs on real estate, infrastructure, and other operational expenses while also boosting brand recognition and differentiating in the market.

7. Visual Engagement

Videos have proven to be a big winner for quite some time when it comes to a customer engagement strategy. Everything from team meetings to sales calls, everything has turned into video calls. In addition, more and more retail businesses have been able to make videos central to marketing strategies.

It is hard to argue when most millennials say they have purchased after seeing a video. Retailers are using many video types for engaging customers including explainer videos, promotional videos, testimonials, company culture videos, etc.

Many retailers also redefine the online shopping experience with the use of interactive shopping videos. These videos also empower consumers to instantly purchase a product directly from the content within a few clicks without leaving a video.

Another important area where visual engagement is seen is customer support and retailers do this by combining video chats and co-browsing. This is where agents see customer screens in real-time and guide them with forms, processes, transactions, and demos. For instance, retailers use co-browsing for e-commerce support for helping consumers find products that they want and reduce cart abandonment.

Conclusion

Zoho comes up with Zoho SalesIQ which helps in keeping up with the rising industry trends and taking your customer engagement strategy to another level. Moreover, Zoho also brings Zobot to the table which is an AI-powered chatbot used for screen sharing, voice calling, and chat routing.

Customers can have more than they need for proactively engaging with the brands if the brands use Zoho and the multiple features that it is capable of bringing to the forefront. At Encaptechno, we offer Zoho consultancy that can help your business meet the rising customer engagement trends in the market.

Rising Customer Engagement Trends in the Market Read More »

CRM Services, Digital Marketing, Zoho CRM, Zoho Implementationcustomer engagement, customer engagement strategy, customer relationship, seamless customer experience, targeted marketing strategy

A Detailed Guide to Marketing Automation

Abhishek Sharma / automating marketing activities, business approach, content marketing, lead generation processes, marketing automation, marketing automation platform, marketing strategy / Digital Marketing, Zoho Implementation

There are many methods for promoting a brand at the present time. However, marketing managers are always looking for workable methods that can make promotional efforts meaningful and efficient. To manage the lead generation process, the marketers must know the reason behind each action taken by visitors to a website.

From knowing which source is driving the visitors to a website to knowing what nurtures the marketing strategy, everything must be focused on. To make this simple, building relationships with prospects is important. Hence, most marketers are focusing on marketing automation.

In this blog, we will try to understand what marketing automation is and the features it brings in great length. So let’s begin.

What is Marketing Automation?

In simple language, marketing automation is the process of using software for automating repetitive marketing efforts. With the automation of repetitive and time-consuming manual tasks such as generating and segmenting leads, planning social media campaigns, sending emails and SMS, and qualifying leads, efficiency and personalization of user experiences can be ensured.

The goal of automating marketing services is to move your leads down the funnel and finally convert them. When used properly, the features of marketing automation lead to many positive results.

Why Marketing Automation?

Running online marketing activities without dedicated and efficient software is still possible when the size of your company is still small. However, just as a company keeps growing and attracts more leads, the marketers need more channels for engaging with customers because managing interactions becomes difficult.

Capturing, nurturing, and qualifying a wide range of leads, running effective campaigns for customer segments, and different post-purchase marketing activities required to get automated. This marketing automation keeps the customer engagement consistent and meaningful. The Zoho marketing tools do just that when it comes to automating everything.

According to Marketo, 76% of organizations implementing marketing automation generate a return on investment within the first year itself. That’s not all. It is also said that over 44% see a return within just six months. The most important function of marketing automation platforms is to automate and streamline activities carried out by the sales and marketing teams.

One can plan and execute lead generation and nurturing plans to launch a wide range of digital ad campaigns from a central hub without hitting buttons such as, “send” or “launch” on each message, email, or ad. The businesses that use marketing automation can see a wide range of benefits across all of their important everyday operations.

An important increase in the number of qualified leads that reach the sales team, a higher conversion rate, and better productivity for sales and marketing teams are good ways in which marketing automation helps a business.

Steps Needed to Start Marketing Automation

Over many years, marketing automation was considered rather difficult to understand. However, the use of marketing automation platforms such as Zoho Marketing Automation changed almost everything. This tool comes with a lot of simplicity that is combined with an actionable plan. Businesses of any size can automate their marketing.

There are mostly six prominent ways in which marketing automation can be started. They are mentioned below.

1. Setting Goals

Goal setting offers a clear direction for a marketing strategy. Some goals such as building brand engagement or increasing thought leadership are good to have but they are unlikely to bring in desired results as they are generic.

It is recommended for the marketing strategy goals to be precise, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timely. Each and every effort of the marketing strategy must have a goal. This will channel your energy towards getting tangible results. In fact, you will also start seeing the results of your efforts quickly.

2. Creating and Segmenting Leads

An important aspect of marketing automation is the generation of good quality leads. This is a step that makes you capture all the leads that show interest in your brand whether it is subscribing to a newsletter, engaging with social media, or signing up for webinars.

There is a wide range of promotional channels for driving traffic to your landing page. These channels make lead generation effective. When you have good quality leads in your hands, you can also segment them into groups with similar characteristics, needs, and interests who show similar purchase patterns.

When you really get to segmenting the leads, you will see that it increases your campaign open rates, customer satisfaction, and many more things. You will know what your leads are looking for and you can find it easy to engage with them suitably. For instance, you can form segments such as “Website Visitors Under the Age 25” or “Women Aged Under 18” to make the lead nurturing process efficient.

3. Website Optimization

We know the importance of a website. It is like a modern business card that tells almost everything about your business. The key to increasing your conversions is to attract visitors to your website first.

When you deploy the right set of keywords, focus on content marketing, and high-quality user experience, you can be assured that your website will be seen. Website tracking in the marketing automation platform ensures that you get the exact count of all the visitors.

Understand what the visitors on your website are focusing on. Tracking those elements on the web page and discovering more about them while also knowing why the users clicked on a call-to-action button, a specific location, the source, etc. You should also know the number of clicks, the visits, and more.

4. Targeted Marketing Campaigns

Yet another important aspect of a business approach is to send targeted marketing messages to the leads at the right time using the right channel. This is the cornerstone of the lead nurturing process.

One of the best parts of a marketing automation campaign is that you can customise your leads as per their requirement and set up automated workflow or scheduled posts. Do not forget to include things such as emails, SMS, social, push notifications, and ad campaigns. Make sure that you are easily found where your audience is.

5. Scoring and Qualifying the Leads

Different attributes can be used for scoring more leads. You can move your leads through the funnel by adding numerical points based on important information that has been submitted.

The reaction of leads to the marketing campaigns, click-through rates, and how the leads are engaging with a brand shows a lot. This makes it easy for the marketing and sales team to respond appropriately while figuring out who is interested in buying your product and who is looking around generally.

6. Measuring Overall Performance

You can measure and contextualise the marketing activities that help you reach your target market. Getting a clear understanding of conversion rates, revenue growth, marketing returns, and other key performance indicators help immensely.

The marketing goals help in empowering you to improve your marketing strategies while optimising the returns. Choosing the key performance indicators helps in measuring progress quickly and accurately.

Features of Marketing Automation

Zoho Marketing automation platform helps in attracting website visitors, tuning anonymous visitors into leads, and converting leads into customers. The features that it offers bring marketing and sales operations closer. They are mentioned below.

1. Lead Management

These days, it is important to get leads to notice your brand and offer them the best experience well before the competitors can do it. Lead management helps in attracting leads, nurturing them, evaluating their sales-readiness, and handing over the best ones to the sales team.

From lead generation to understanding the online behaviour of these leads and evaluating them for sales, Zoho marketing automation helps in everything. It helps in managing the entire lead cycle. You can effectively engage, empower, and earn your customers using the marketing automation features of Zoho.

2. Lead Generation

You can get more leads by adding sign up forms and smart pop ups on the landing pages. Moreover, you can also bring leads by syncing the CRM leads or other apps. The benefit of automating marketing activities is that no opportunity for generating new leads is ever lost.

Business success depends entirely on the leads and one’s ability to get the audience excited about a brand. Leads can be attracted from many sources and with unique requirements. Your focus must be on creating a good relationship with the leads.

3. Behavioural Targeting

You must understand the online behaviour of your leads so that you can use important information for customising messages. Create profiles for all visitors on the basis of their browsing behaviour so that you can give them just what they are looking for.

There are two primary types of behavioural marketing.

Website Behavioural Marketing: Make sure that a visitor is interacting with the website in terms of page visits and link clicks. You can start by defining a goal for the visitor, group the visitors based on their actions, and create a personalised experience.
In-app Usage Targeting: Marketing automation allows you to see how the users are interacting with a product while getting an idea about the features that interest them the most. You can send tailor-made content for improving the user experience.

4. Multi-Channel Marketing: Marketing automation

allows you to drive brand awareness by forming a connection with the audience on the platforms they use. You can plan your marketing activities across many mediums, allocate a budget, and realise your ROI.

It is important to understand that leads are almost everywhere. Using the Zoho Marketing automation, you can easily reach out to the leads from various channels while giving them the freedom to choose how the leads wish to connect. In addition, all the lead data is stored in one place so it is easy to follow up any time and any way.

5. Engagement Marketing

Relevance is important to ensure good customer engagement. Hence, one must focus on building engagement programs that help in fostering strong customer relationships.

Journey Builder: It is possible to see and map the user experience with the brand’s products and services. You can create a personalised journey for each lead and customer to see how they have progressed at every step.
Autoresponders: Zoho marketing automation allows you to send an automated series to new leads or run promotional campaigns based on lead interactions with the previous emails.
Workflows: You can create flows to get your leads into the right email series. After this, you can also engage them with useful content.

6. Analytics

Finally, Zoho marketing automation also helps you to get in-depth reports on lead growth, campaign performance, and revenue generation. You can effectively measure all the marketing goals with the power of precise analytics.

Graphs, reports, and customer journey traces enable you to use everything that a marketer needs for making smart and sound decisions. Moreover, they also allow you to visualise the performance of the marketing funnel from analysing the acquisition to studying the conversions.

Some ways in which analytics works in Zoho marketing automation are mentioned below:

Lead Insights: The lead insights allow you to see how many leads you have gained over a period while evaluating the effectiveness of the lead generation activities.
Lead Attribution Reports: You can also know which sources you are getting the leads from so that it becomes easy to focus on targeted promotions.
List Reports: You can compare your mailing lists to see which list is active and which one has the most engagement with the promotions.
Campaign Reports: Zoho marketing automation also allows you to see which campaigns have the most opens and clicks including the kind of content that works with your audience by comparing different campaigns.

Conclusion

Marketing automation is a modern solution for simplifying the marketing process for a team while also giving the leads a unique user experience and constant engagement. When a brand focuses on delighting the prospects with service and meeting needs instantly, getting conversions and increasing the revenue becomes simple.

The various marketing automation tools help in capturing leads with information, reaching out to them through channels, and tracking the progress with the sales funnel. Encaptechno is experienced in working as a Zoho partner for many businesses with a record of helping them grow. Get in touch to get support in implementing marketing automation, today.

A Detailed Guide to Marketing Automation Read More »

Digital Marketing, Zoho Implementationautomating marketing activities, business approach, content marketing, lead generation processes, marketing automation, marketing automation platform, marketing strategy

Tips to Reinvent Your Recruiting Process with Zoho Recruit

Abhishek Sharma / AI recruitment software, artificial intelligence, recruiting automation platform, zoho recruit, zoho services / Zoho CRM, Zoho Implementation

When the pandemic affected people the world over, so many employees in different countries were subjected to layoffs. Two years after the pandemic, the workflow has completely changed. So many young professionals have become used to working from home and many have even quit their jobs to pursue other things and build start-ups.

To put this in easy words, the Great Resignation has hit industries similar to a tidal wave and it has also reshaped traditional work models causing massive shifts in working norms. As a result, multiple talent acquisition managers and professionals are redesigning their recruitment processes.

In this scenario, the implementation of a recruiting automation platform such as Zoho Recruit has helped many organizations. In this blog, we will see what Zoho Recruit is and how organizations can use it for reinventing their recruiting process.

What is Zoho Recruit?

Zoho Recruit is an Applicant Tracking System (ATS) and recruitment software that has been created for managing the recruiting process in staffing agencies and corporate companies. It is an AI recruitment software that can streamline the recruitment process seamlessly. Starting from resume management, candidate sourcing, applicant tracking, communication, interview scheduling, and hiring functions within a single system, Zoho Recruit does it all.

One of the primary objectives of creating Zoho Recruit was to eliminate manual data entry and traditional hiring methods including spreadsheets for scheduling, resume attachment downloads on desktop folders. Other than this, Zoho Recruit brings important stakeholders on board including customers and recruiting team on just one platform.

From multi-channel communication to product customization and hiring productivity or third-party integrations, Zoho Recruit provides a wide range of features that support the requirements of staffing agencies of all sizes, different industries, small and medium-sized businesses, and even large enterprises. The integrations with some of the premium job boards and niche boards also give recruiters using Zoho Recruit a much better advantage over competitors.

This is recruiting software that uses feature incorporations such as source boosters, semantic search, advanced customizations, hiring pipeline dashboard, advanced customizations etc. for ensuring that the time to fill is reduced to a great extent and the cost per hire is parallel. Finally, Zoho Recruit’s advanced automation features also help in saving time and recruiting faster, better, and smarter.

There are prominent features that make Zoho Recruit stand out in the market and they include advanced search, creating job openings, scheduling interviews, application tracking, assessing candidate’s status, tracking sources, emailing inside Zoho Recruit, embedding resume forms, publishing job openings, parsing resumes, and much more.

Benefits of Zoho Recruit

1. Automated Recruitment

When done manually, recruitment involves many tasks that must be carried out properly. It is important to make sure that candidates from reputable sources are sourced, job listings are posted on the right platforms, and candidate data is consolidated, and so on.

Zoho Recruit serves as an automated hiring platform that simplifies all these processes so that the focus is more on attention-demanding responsibilities. It has customizable tools that help in programming the software to automate data input, consolidate candidate information, update interview schedules, tackle tedious and repetitive recruitment tasks.

2. Effective Candidate Assessment

This is one of the most time-consuming aspects of the recruitment process when it comes to compiling information of candidates for assessment. By looking at the candidate pages tool of Zoho Recruit, it is possible to take a detailed look at the profile of a candidate without feeling any need to sift through piles of documents.

Zoho Recruit helps in finding the name of a candidate in a database, clicking on it, and seeing a detailed profile with pictures, contact data, and social links almost immediately. This way, the recruiting manager can sort the candidates by taking a good link at their credentials.

3. Application Filtering

Zoho Recruit is significantly effective at hiring easily because it works on the basis of previously inserted values that each applicant should respond to. In case an application does not fulfil any given criteria, it can automatically be withdrawn until the recruiter wants to have a complete look at it.

Meanwhile, Zoho Recruit ensures that vacancy appears at all important locations and job boards so that quality candidates can come across eventually. Until the position is filled, the vacancy is shown so that steps are taken to hire a person early.

4. Streamlined Application Database

Right after a candidate gets chosen for hire, Zoho Recruit login can be used to automatically feed information into a centralized applicant database for easy onboarding and performance monitoring.

When the records are in the system, it becomes possible to manage candidates and the present employees while using their information stored in the database. As the application is entirely cloud-based, one can get it up and running immediately while not worrying about any complex downloads and expensive installations to worry about.

Tips for Reinventing the Recruiting Process

1. Redesigning Hiring Strategy

In almost any field, professionals are always on the lookout for increasing their performance and moving up the professional ladder. One of the best techniques to do this is reviewing the past performance so that actions can be observed and analyzed when they are their best and one can find what areas must be worked on.

Recruiting process is similar. It is important that you break all elements of your hiring process, look at your past performances using metrics such as time to fill, cost per hire, and so on. In case you have collected feedback, this is a good time to study that feedback and pick a pattern of which applicants did you like. This will streamline the previous recruiting experience.

Other than this, leveraging changes such as mass job reshuffling also gives you a great chance to rebuild your talent pool while letting you stay on top of rising employment trends such as economies. When you look at every stage of the process under a microscope, you will be able to uncover both the hiring success and challenges that cause you to miss out on potential candidates.

2. Highlighting the Pain Points

Once you know the challenges that you have been facing in the recruiting process, you can start working on all of them individually. This will give you time for re-evaluating and recording the improvements substantially rather than trying to change it all at once. For example, a small change in listing down applicants can make radical improvements in the overall process.

It is always good to experiment with AI recruitment software as a hiring professional so that you can keep an account of what is beneficial and what is not. The changes that you make are calculated and also yield a large return on the investment. In case candidate management is something that is proving to be trouble then you can be better off focusing on issues of candidate communication.

Recruiting process management enables you to analyze the effectiveness of solutions at a micro-level. After you narrow down the problematic areas in recruiting strategy, you can put important variables to test until the time all solutions come together to form an improved hiring process.

3. Adopting Data-Driven Approach

Hitting a block in your hiring process can be frustrating, to say the least. This is more so when the times are tougher for the recruitment industry. What matters is how you will overcome the slump.

When you condition yourself to become proactive and prepared for problems ahead of time, you become capable of handling uncertain job markets. The best way to do this is to become proactive with data.

Gathering the data you need for making improvements to your hiring strategy can require diving into technology. It is best to evaluate the digital ecosystem and see whether adopting or migrating to a recruiting automation platform will work for you and your team.

An ATS allows you to design a workflow that can effectively automate repetitive tasks while giving you more time to reconnect with and earn goodwill with customers. In addition, an effective AI-powered ATS also provides you with real-time data that is usually stored automatically and is accessible anytime with reports and dashboards.

In case you find it rather troublesome to gather data needed to compete in the present recruitment market, it is best to learn more about the working of the Zoho Recruit Application Tracking System. It can give you the information needed to make decisions because it allows you to track weaknesses and develop solutions.

Conclusion

Recruiting process is not so easy. There are many aspects that must be taken care of as the needs of all clients in a staffing agency cannot be thought of as one. Hence, there is a need for robust AI recruitment software that can effectively optimize the recruiting process irrespective of moving from a traditional hiring system to migrating from ATS. With the implementation of Zoho Recruit, the recruiting managers can decrease the time and allow others to find the right candidates for each role.

Recruiting managers can have different needs but they can effectively customize the software according to what they want. Zoho Recruit also helps to form a strong online presence with multiple integrations. It helps extensively in managing relationships with customers. The tools and integrations can help in improving efficiency in sourcing, screening, onboarding, and hiring candidates without any sacrifice of quality of hire.

If you haven’t already implemented Zoho Recruit, it is time to take action and do it right away for better recruiting and hiring managers. Get in touch with our certified Zoho consultants to know more about Zoho Recruit and how it can help your business.

Tips to Reinvent Your Recruiting Process with Zoho Recruit Read More »

Zoho CRM, Zoho ImplementationAI recruitment software, artificial intelligence, recruiting automation platform, zoho recruit, zoho services

Streamline Your Hiring Process with Zoho Recruit Automation and AI

Abhishek Sharma / AI recruitment software, artificial intelligence, recruiting automation platform, zoho recruit, zoho services / Zoho Implementation

The job market needs a scale up and efforts are being made consistently to do the needful. The positive trend of people looking for a job has set into motion a much more lucrative year for the recruiters when it comes to business, but also the satisfaction of putting people to work when it makes a difference.

During the COVID, many professionals had been displaced. However, today these professionals are able to apply for jobs that are relevant to their skill sets. This promises them a much better scope, both for the candidates to find their dream jobs and for the recruiters to be able to partake in a journey.

In case you are a recruiter or you dream of starting your entrepreneurial journey then working with a recruiting automation platform can be extremely helpful. This is the right time to start and starting an application such as Zoho Recruit is a great choice.

In this blog, we will discuss how a person can streamline your hiring process with Zoho Recruit with automation and artificial intelligence. First, let us start by understanding what Zoho Recruit is in complete detail.

What is Zoho Recruit?

Zoho Recruit is a recruiting automation platform that helps in quick and improved hiring processes. It is a cloud based applicant tracking system that is created to offer diverse and an end-to-end hiring solutions for the staffing agencies, temporary workforce, and corporate HRs. Using the intuitive remote hiring software such as Zoho Recruit, the hiring process can be made completely effortless.

Zoho Recruit also offers seamless integration for the hiring process. With Zoho Recruit, Zoho has come up with a tool that enhances the manner in which recruiters find, engage, and hire talent. There is a growing list of integrations that offers recruiting professionals all the freedom needed to work with the best tools and solutions for ultimately strengthening the recruitment platform.

Zoho Recruit for Staffing Agencies

Zoho Recruit is an AI recruitment software and an enterprise ready platform that comes with a built in customer portal, resume processing tools and much more that ensures hiring processes are fool proof. It makes agency recruitment completely effortless.

The staffing agencies can source talent quickly by instantly searching candidates using powerful source boosters of Zoho Recruit.
Staffing agencies can maintain safe, compliant, and completely inclusive hiring practices with background screening functionality.
The agencies can also make informed hiring decisions on the basis of a comprehensive view of candidate status.
Job application process can be simplified by auto-filling information from LinkedIn profiles.
Staffing agencies can create a blueprint on the same page so that the recruitment process can become automated.
The resume templates can be tailored for the candidates using a company logo and more.

Zoho Recruit’s Corporate Recruiting Software

The hiring process is changed considerably with Zoho Recruit’s corporate HR software. This software streamlines the hiring process for corporations and SMBs with features that make ensure short filling time and longer employee retention. Custom made career pages can also be created and employee referral portals while including the HRMS and managing candidates.

Zoho Recruit helps in employee referral which further leverages the workforce as a sourcing extension.
Offer letters can be sent with ease using Zoho Recruit. They can be digitized creating templates for candidates to accept the job.
Zoho Recruit is an AI recruitment software that can be used to build an employer brand. You can extend the look and feel of a brand by customizing the Careers page with Zoho Recruit.
Zoho Recruit allows the corporate organizations to assess first and then interview. You can create pre-screening assessments to measure candidate skills.
The feature of effective territory management introduced by Zoho Recruit grants the users easy access based on the characteristics of accounts.
You can easily convert hires to employees with the Zoho People integration while converting a candidate’s status to employee seamlessly.

Zoho Recruit for Temporary Staffing

The jobs can be closed quickly using Zoho Workerly. This is a temporary staffing software that allows agencies to schedule jobs for temps, create and approve e-timesheets and also generate invoices within a single interface.

Zoho Workerly enables an easy and conflict-free scheduling method in just one place.
You can create and manage timesheets across various jobs.
You can generate invoices immediately when a job gets completed and get quick payments using Zoho Workerly.
The temp portal can be used to accept or reject a job or with an email or a text message.
You can update work, clock hours and send timesheets for review using the mobile application.
You can also view the job offers and see any upcoming, current, and completed projects.

Zoho Recruit for Hiring on the go

Zoho Recruit allows the users to see the candidate profiles, schedule calls, interview candidates and do much more. Using the mobile application of Zoho Recruit, one can step away from work without stepping away from work.

Zoho Recruit allows effective planning of a workday. You can create, organize and prioritize effectively. The Recruit calendar helps in planning and tracking tasks while keeping your day on schedule.
You can instantly manage records effortlessly with Zoho Recruit. They can be added and managed while being on the road including Job Openings, Contact, Candidates, Interviews, Clients, and To-Dos.
Zoho Recruit also helps in scheduling interviews with ease. You can arrange interviews with the candidates in just a tap or two.
An excellent AI recruitment software, Zoho Recruit helps in updating job structure status right away. Candidates can be kept in the loop by changing a job opening status so that no one is guessing.
You can hold meetings with only a single tap. The Zoho Recruit mobile application helps in keeping up with the candidates, clients, and contacts. They are always just a call or a text away.
You can sort candidates quickly using Zoho Recruit. If you need to see which candidates are associated with a job opening or submitted to a client for a review then the data is always available at your fingertips.
The comments and communication can be tracked easily and from anywhere using candidate, client and contact modules.
After the configuration of your email account, the Mail Magnet is useful in scanning the inbox and keeping you notified about emails while performing quick actions.

Now that we have got an overview of how Zoho Recruit helps in streamlining the hiring process, let us discuss an example.

Understanding the Streamlining of Hiring Process with Zoho Recruit

Sanjay runs a staffing agency from the year 2019. After facing many challenges during the pandemic, he finally thinks that the companies are becoming stable now and wish to hire talented individuals. Sanjay knows that the traditional method of recruiting manually is not just time consuming and cumbersome but are not time and talent sensitive.

Recently, Sanjay was assured that he had been thinking right because he was approached for hiring multiple professionals for his new client. Different posts require a different set of skills and some also require certifications for performing tasks set by job description.

With multiple requisitions being open at the same time, Sanjay and his team knew that sourcing, screening, assessing, and choosing qualified candidates in the limited time frame is not possible. Using Zoho Recruit, Sanjay noticed an improved recruitment process. His journey with the AI-driven Zoho Recruit is:

Sanjay can easily add his brand information and the user roles using the customized access permission for individual employees.
Sanjay is using an ATS for the first time so he imports the data from all spreadsheets for managing the candidate database and client contact information.
Sanjay can add important information about job opportunities his clients have specified while assigning them to recruiters from his team. The team can then push the job requisitions on various job boards and vendor portals.
Using Zoho Services, Sanjay can be associated with the different recruiters and some clients can also have internal team leads that would like to refer candidates. For managing the job orders better, he can create a vendor portal where the best matching candidates can be submitted and stay updated on the status during the hiring process.
Sanjay’s clients create new job openings, send feedback for the candidates submitted, and take the interview decisions. This can shorten the feedback loop after the candidate interviews and enables Sanjay to cater to various clients at the same time.
After the client shortlists the candidates, Sanjay can schedule interviews based on the stage they are in the process. This differs from video interviews, live interviews, cognitive assessments, and much more. Using an AI recruitment software such as Zoho Recruit, time can be saved while scheduling interviews and eliminating redundant tasks, coordinating client schedules, and gathering post-interview feedback.
Sanjay can then set up a workflow to send customized emails for hiring candidates.

Staffing Agency Example

Rekha is running a staffing agency in India. She implemented Zoho Recruit because her present ATS does not cater to the language diversity she needs and also lacks important features. Her team also gets caught up in the completion of activities such as manual searching of candidates, sorting stacks of resumes, making calls and sending emails to set up screenings with candidates.

Rekha is completely aware that at the present time, even 24 hours can make the difference between landing or losing a top candidate. This is how Rekha set up the system.

Rekha can add her brand information and changes the preferred language to English on the ATS while customizing user roles and access permission for individual users.
Rekha can migrate from another ATS to Zoho Recruit so that the import of data can be easy from the previous workspace.
After Rekha imports the data on the basis of client requirements, she can add information about job opportunities and assign them to recruiters from her team.
All resumes that Rekha and her team received from various job integrations, social media, and careers go through a resume parser mapping powered by AI. This helps them to standardize and align parsed resume structure to a customized form for a seamless import of candidate profiles.
Rekha can use Zia after the candidate’s resume is parsed to generate a Match Score for seeing how good of a fit they might be for the job. Zia, the AI assistant of Zoho Recruit uses skillsets associated with the job for assessing requirements before fetching a list of candidates with matching skills and generating match scores.
Rekha can offer candidates a portal to apply, track applications, and receive prompt updates for improving the candidate experience and strengthening the employer brand.
The Advanced Recruit Analytics empowered using Zoho Analytics helps Rekha analyze Zoho Recruit data and create useful business intelligence reports and live dashboards. Using this integration, Rekha’s recruitment process is optimized and adjusted based on data. The resume parser mapping powered by AI and proprietary algorithms helps to standardize and align parsed resume structure supported by an organization.

Conclusion

The needs of all clients in a staffing agency cannot be presumed as one. Hence, a robust and user-friendly ecosystem can optimize recruiting process regardless of transitioning from a traditional hiring system or migrating from ATS. Zoho Recruit helps in decreasing the time and allowing to find the right candidates for each role.

Sanjay and Rekha had different needs but they were both able to customize Zoho Recruit and streamline their hiring process. With this AI recruitment software, Sanjay and Rekha’s team has more time for targeting potential clients.

Zoho Recruit also helps to form a strong online presence with multiple integrations. It helps extensively in managing relationships with customers. The tools and integrations can help in improving efficiency in sourcing, screening, onboarding, and hiring candidates without any sacrifice of quality of hire.

Streamline Your Hiring Process with Zoho Recruit Automation and AI Read More »

Zoho ImplementationAI recruitment software, artificial intelligence, recruiting automation platform, zoho recruit, zoho services

A Complete Overview of Zoho Analytics

Abhishek Sharma / analytics software, business intelligence, data analytics, data visualization, reports and dashboards, self service BI, zoho partner / Zoho Implementation

Zoho Analytics is one of the finest self-service BI and data analytics software that allows you to analyze data, create amazing data visualizations, and discover hidden insights within minutes. It provides cutting edge analytical solutions that are needed to transform raw data into actionable insights.

Zoho Analytics also allows users to fetch data from any data source and analyze it visually for making informed and data-driven decisions. In addition, it also allows the user to easily share insights and collaborate.

A great feature about Zoho Analytics software is that it allows the users to create visualizations and dashboards to present data via a quick, easy and self-service model. It also brings detailed insights and analysis to an organization’s business data on demand without any help of IT assistants or data analysts through extensive automation efforts all across the analytical process.

The users can crunch large datasets, clean and blend data, perform different analytical tasks and also visualize the results in dynamic graphics to extract insights. They can also make informed decisions in a stand-alone or embedded environment with the support of mobile devices. Additionally, it comes with a flexible on-premise and cloud deployment model.

Features of Zoho Analytics

1. Data Integration

You can get your data analyzed wherever it may be using over 250+ data sources of Zoho Analytics. You can connect to data from files, feeds, web URLs, databases, business applications, and much more.

Files and Feeds: Zoho Analytics allows you to upload data from spreadsheets and flat files such as Microsoft Excel, HTML, CSV, XML, JSON, text files and more. The data can be easily fed from online storage services such as Zoho Docs, Box, Dropbox, Microsoft OneDrive, etc. It is easy to pull data from web URL feeds.
Databases: You can connect with popular business applications in Sales, Marketing, Finance, Help Desk, IT, HR, and many more with the ready-made connectors.
Custom Apps: Zoho Analytics software offers powerful data import and integration APIs for building a connector quickly, and getting data from any offline/online application for analysis.

2. Data Preparation and Management

You can use the self-service data and management application called Zoho DataPrep very easily with Zoho Analytics. This is a good way to get your data cleansed, transformed, enriched for easy and better analysis.

Auto Model: Zoho Analytics is a business intelligence software that automatically identifies data types. You can get suggestions for joining datasets and create custom data types for identifying and fixing invalid data.
Smart Cleanse: You can filter and cleanse data using intelligent suggestions. Improve the quality of your data by removing duplicates and invalid entries.
Transform: You can format and change your data without any need for coding. This will also help you reshape your data using over 250+ functions like summary, pivot, unpivot, etc.
Enrich Data: Zoho Analytics also allows you data with ML/AI-powered transforms such as sentiment analysis, keyword extraction, language detection and more.
Catalog Data: The use of Zoho Analytics software also enables you to manage your datasets by categories, custom tags, data readiness, data quality, and more. You can also use the search capabilities of Zia which is Zoho’s smart AI assistant for performing system-wide metadata searches.

3. Visual Analysis

The data visualization is one of the best features of Zoho Analytics. With the use of this feature, it is possible to slice and dice your data while analyzing it visually with a wide range of visualization tools.

Visualization Options: Zoho Analytics allows you to use a wide range of charts, widgets, summary, pivot, and tabular views for creating insightful reports and dashboards.
Drag and Drop Report Creation: Zoho Analytics also enables the effortless creation of meaningful reports and dashboards with the intuitive drag and drop interface.
Tabbed Dashboards: With Zoho Analytics, many reports can be combined into tabbed dashboards using a drag and drop designer. You can insert images, formatted texts, web components and widgets in a flexible designer layout. You can make this easy for your executives and users to track KPIs effectively.
Dynamic and Interactive: Zoho Analytics is a reports and dashboards BI software that allows you to use a wide range of interactive options such as view underlying data, drill down, contextual filters and many more for performing ad-hoc exploratory analysis.
Geo Visualization: You can analyze your geographical data with interactive map charts. You can compare and measure key metrics across countries, regions, states, postal codes, and latitudes and longitudes.
Image-Based Visualizations: Zoho Analytics helps in plotting location data spread over custom image boundaries such as basketball courts, city parking lots, roads, etc. This includes image visuals in your reports to enhance visual appeal and readability.

4. Augmented Analytics

Zoho Analytics software augments your analysis of data with the technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, natural language processing and generation, and getting quick insights from your data.

Zia Insights: It is possible to get contextual and actionable insights that go way beyond visualizations in the form of digestible narrations with zero interactions.
Conversational Analytics: Zoho Analytics allows you to engage in colloquial conversations with Ask Zia so that you can get relevant reports as answers.
Automated Reports: With a single click, you can generate a valuable set of auto-generated reports on whatever data you may have when you are beginning your analysis.
Predictive Analytics: You can also apply custom forecast models and forecast values of business metrics while predicting the upcoming trends.
What if Analysis: Zoho Analytics helps in simulating complex scenarios, and finding optimal business outcomes with the use of what-if analysis.
Data Alerts: With the Zoho Analytics self-service BI, you can get notified automatically on important changes to your KPIs, anomalies, goal achievement, etc. This helps in staying on top of your business.

5. Unified Business Insights

It is possible to unify the business data across an organization from various functions such as marketing, support, finance, sales, etc. You can easily analyze this unified data and unearth end to end insights.

Easy Connectors: Connect to 50+ popular business applications within a few clicks. Auto-sync and unify data from various business applications in hourly intervals only.
Pre-built Analytics: Zoho Analytics software helps you instantly begin your analytics journey with much valuable pre-built visualization that offer a comprehensive view of business health. You can build your own ad hoc reports and dashboards to suit your specific needs perfectly.
Data Blending: Zoho Analytics also helps in the automatic blending of data from various applications. It is also possible to define metrics that span across the data from multiple departments. You can create reports and dashboards with these metrics and offer end to end insights across a business.

6. Collaborative Analysis

Zoho Analytics is a business intelligence software that makes collaboration an important part of data analytics. You can easily democratize data, allow pervasive BI and analytics in your organization.

Share Reports and Dashboards: Zoho Analytics allows you to share reports and dashboards that you create with your colleagues, and collaborate with them.
Best Access Control: You have complete control over what your colleagues can see and do with the data and reports that you share with them. The fine access control with specific options such as read-only, read-write, report authoring, export, and drill down is excellent assistance.
Easy Commenting: Zoho Analytics helps you to share contextual comment threads and instantly collaborates with peers on a report or dashboard. You can add and annotate images or go back to see the entire document history anytime and anywhere.
Printing and Emailing: With the use of Zoho Analytics, it is also possible to schedule your reports and dashboards to be emailed automatically. You can export and print reports for offline access as well.

7. Data Storytelling

Zoho Analytics allows you to tell interesting stories by using the data. You can present and publish analytical insights in the context of familiar business workflows. This will make the process of data analytics a lot more efficient and enjoyable.

Slideshows: Zoho Analytics is an excellent tool to craft immersive analytics presentations with the use of Zoho Show, an online presentation service. You can add rich narratives in the form of text, images, shapes, etc along with reports and dashboards. This helps in weaving data stories to your audience.
Web Portals: You can create purpose-built data analytics portals using the site builder called Zoho Sites. This will make it easy and exclusive for your users to analyze the data with visualizations.
Ask Zia: It is possible to embed the AI assistant of Zoho Analytics called Ask Zia along with Zia insights anywhere in the business workflow. You can allow data-driven decision making at all endpoints.

8. Mobility

Zoho Analytics helps in accessing and interacting with data, reports, and dashboards from phones and tablets.

Mobile Applications: It is possible to access and interact with the reports and dashboards that you have created in Zoho Analytics on the move from your iOS and Android powered mobile devices.
Dashboards Application: This one is a purpose-built and immersive mobile application to access and explore the dashboards that you have in Zoho Analytics. Creative features support the inviting fluid interaction and analysis.
Conversational Analytics: This feature allows you to speak with Zia on the go. You can ask questions and get precise insights as answers in the form of reports and widgets.
Mobile Collaboration: Zoho Analytics helps you add comments to reports, and hold meaningful conversations with your peers.

9. Embedded Business Intelligence

Using Zoho Analytics software, you can offer a white-labelled BI and analytics application under your brand name. You can also set up a standalone analytics portal and embed it within your application.

Embedded Analytics: It is possible to integrate a full-featured analytics platform within an application using the single sign-on API and SAML authentication.
Self Service Analytics Portal: You can set up a rebranded analytics portal and customize it with rich design elements while seamlessly making it accessible with the use of web and native mobile applications.
Augmented Business Intelligence: Zoho’s smart AI assistant called Zia can be easily embedded for getting automated insights from any reports and dashboards. You can take advantage of Zoho Analytics by using features such as smart forecasting and ML-based predictive analysis.

10. Security and Governance

Zoho Analytics software is used by strong Zoho security practices including the support for redundancy, backup, confidentiality, and privacy. This helps in ensuring that the data is safe and secure.

Data Security: Zoho Analytics has a privacy by design model which allows the customers to have better control over the data. The time tested and accredited enterprise grade security features and governance framework makes sure that continuous data is managed.
Data Backup: The data can be stored in Zoho Analytics cloud version and it can be backed up each day in the data centres. You can do a periodic backup as well.
Roles: The users, viewers, and administrators role at the workplace, organization, and accountant labels are present. There is a clear segregation on who can do what based on the roles.
Logging: Zoho Analytics software offers all user activity and access within the application. Hence, it is possible to know which user logged in at what time, which user has access to which functions and much more. All this ensures security and accountability while the auditing is going on.

11. Deployments

You can effectively deploy Zoho Analytics according to the needs that you have. It is also possible to subscribe to Zoho Analytics cloud, and install it on premise in your servers. It can also be deployed in public clouds such as Azure, Google, and AWS. Lastly, you can also use the white labeled version of Zoho Analytics.

Cloud: Zoho Analytics offers easy access to a full fledged self service BI and analytics service that is hosted in Zoho Cloud with just a browser and a mobile application. There is no upfront cost and you can pay as you go ahead with either monthly subscriptions or a yearly lock in.
Onpremise: You can easily install Zoho Analytics behind the firewalls and on your own servers. This also helps you analyze the data in house.
Public Cloud: Zoho Analytics software can be deployed on the public cloud of your choice. This is similar to AWS, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure.
Embedded: Zoho Analytics offers a complete analytics application in your brand name. There is a choice to either go with the standalone analytics portal or an embedded one with your own application. The white-labelled version is available in the cloud and on-premise models both.

12. Extensibility and Elasticity

Zoho Analytics is an excellent data analytics application that is a full-fledged, scalable, and powerful analytics platform. It helps the developers and system integrators to develop and deploy custom analytics applications and integrations.

APIs: You can use a robust set of APIs for the purpose of authorization, custom styling, data integration, and dynamic reportings embedding to build custom analytical applications of integrations. This also allows you to maximize the potential of extensible low code or no-code integration with a tech stack.
Zoho Marketplace: You can choose to complement your analytical abilities with a wide range of analytical applications available in the Zoho partner driven Marketplace. There are domain-specific and purpose-built native analytics applications also available in third-party marketplaces.
Big Data: Zoho Analytics allows you to analyze your big data with ease and derive key business insights. The data can be present in big data sources such as relational, NoSQL and cloud databases or popular business applications.

Conclusion

Zoho Analytics is designed to benefit businesses from deep analytics using data interpretations, auto-generation of reports and other such features that can help in automatically blending data from various apps for cross-functional analysis. This helps the user to get a comprehensive view of the business.

The implementation of Zoho Analytics can help you derive business metrics and capture key performance indicators as well. You can plan for future events with forecasting and predictive capabilities, ask questions and get analysis from Zia, and do much more.

If you haven’t already got Zoho Analytics implemented, now is the time to get in touch with a certified Zoho partner such as Encaptechno and get things going. You will be amazed at what all you can do with the use of Zoho Analytics and how it can benefit your business.

A Complete Overview of Zoho Analytics Read More »

Zoho Implementationanalytics software, business intelligence, data analytics, data visualization, reports and dashboards, self service BI, zoho partner

Detailed Comparison Between Hootsuite and Zoho Social

Abhishek Sharma / social media dashboard, social media management platform, social media marketing, zoho social implementation / Digital Marketing, Zoho Implementation

The rise of social media has been more of a game-changer for many businesses and content creators. It has offered an easy way to market a brand and various products or services. Well-planned social media marketing plans help in increasing organic traffic and boosting sales. However, social media marketing is not so much of an easy endeavor.

The process of managing social media marketing can be somewhat time-consuming for small to medium-sized businesses. An effective solution to this is social media management platforms that help in centralizing and automating social media posts. Two of the most popular social media management platforms in the market are Zoho Social and Hootsuite. They help in planning, scheduling, and posting with a calendar which then sorts the posting process.

The right use of social media platforms can help in building and creating posts including adding branded content and customized photos to articles. You can centralize and automate posts for many social media applications which makes social media marketing so much more efficient without limiting your reach across platforms.

The platform chosen by a business depends on its needs and marketing plan. In this blog, we will see a detailed comparison between Hootsuite and Zoho Social to get a better explanation.

Zoho Social and Hootsuite – An Overview

Hootsuite and Zoho Social are two different products that come with different features, prices, and functionalities. Where on one hand, Hootsuite stands out for being oriented towards complex needs and multiple teams of an enterprise-level business, Zoho Social comes with basic functional capacities needed to manage social media presences.

Both the social media management platforms help in bossing the social following. They also allow staying on the top of the client’s list and prospects in an efficient way. These tools are powerful for reconfiguring the social media approach in case your current one is failing to reach marketing goals.

Below, we will have a look at Hootsuite and Zoho Social in detail to understand what they can bring to the table.

What is Hootsuite?

A dominant social media management tool, Hootsuite helps its users to find prospects, serve customers, and do much more with social media. It also enables the service seekers to handle prominent social media channels such as Facebook, Twitter, and so on. Many customers consider Hootsuite to be one of the most comprehensive social media marketing tools.

It is a tool that comes with an organized dashboard and customizable layout. By using the unique social media dashboard of Hootsuite, teams can collaboratively schedule updates to various social networks. It is also possible to integrate existing marketing tools, streamline workflows, track campaign results or trends, and quick-adjust tactics accordingly.

Hootsuite comes with multiple attractive features as well. It contains collaboration features, cooperative writing, and editing, contact management, content management, project management, and many more. There are other useful software features as well such as social media marketing features, reputation management features, and social media monitoring features. Using Hootsuite, people can easily share engagement streams with their teams. Moreover, it is also possible to control multiple communication channels with this collaborative platform.

Features of Hootsuite

1. Monitoring Social Media Streams

One can say that a compelling feature for using Hootsuite is that it enables a brand to manage multiple social media networks all in one place. There is no need to remember all the passwords anymore or even go to each website individually.

With the use of Hootsuite, it is easy to post, update, review responses, and connect with the target audience on all the popular social media networks. In addition to using platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, it is also possible to collaborate via third-party apps such as Tumblr, Evernote, Slideshare, MailChimp, etc.

2. Schedule Posts

Another significant reason for using Hootsuite is that it enables one to schedule important messages all across important social media platforms. You can create a social media strategy that includes crucial times when postings are most often read and get more followers to see your content.

All you have to do is just pick the day and time that suits your needs in the best ways. This enables you to view the scheduled posts in easy to read calendar format.

3. Viewing Analytics

The social media dashboard of Hootsuite comes with many analytics features that give you an in-depth view of how well your social media strategy is working. This is a tool that comes with the ability to track all your favorite platforms while delivering them in an easy-to-read series of charts.

In addition, Hootsuite also provides an extensive range of monitoring and reporting features that enables you to create professional-looking reports on the social media progress page.

4. Sharing Information

Hootsuite comes with a bookmark plug-in feature that helps in sharing content across the internet with your followers. This is an add-on that sits on the top of your browser toolbar for easy access.

When you discover that something on the internet is important that must be shared, all you have to do is just click on the Hootlet button. The application will shorten the URL and insert a small snippet of important text from the site into the social media message. It is a plug-in that makes adding Hootsuite to your social media arsenal worthwhile.

5. Tracking Important Phrases

A great way to connect with your customer base is through social media listening. You have to see what most people on social media are engaging in while bringing in your company’s value to the topic or trend.

Hootsuite comes with features that help you track key phrases and terms across the posts of other uses while determining when your expertise can be beneficial. This is an excellent way to bring in new customers by just being in tune with their needs.

6. Managing Customer Service

Another reason why many companies do not adopt social media management platforms is that it becomes difficult to manage customer service on them. With the use of Hootsuite, it becomes easy to view questions in a single place without checking multiple social media websites.

Moreover, you can also store draft messages for posting when a customer asks a frequent question such as store hours or directions to your business location.

7. Collaborating Effectively

It becomes easy to manage your team with Hootsuite. It is a social media management tool that allows you to add different team members to the social media accounts of your choice and see first-hand who is posting what information and who has scheduled posts.

The effective collaboration that is offered on Hootsuite also makes it easy for you to assign tasks, add collaborators, and edit posts just as you see fit. Basically, the entire process of social media management becomes streamlined in a way that all the stress is removed.

What is Zoho Social?

Zoho Social is a cloud-based social media management platform available in the SaaS version which can be run on multiple devices. This is software that helps users in monitoring social media channels, perform multi-account management, and encourage multi-user collaboration.

Social media performance analytics and data-driven insights are also offered with Zoho Social that helps in making informed decisions. With this software, you can easily manage and track content while ensuring much better customer engagement. It is also possible to monitor keywords and schedule multiple posts with Zoho Social. You can create content and publish it automatically with the use of this social media marketing tool.

Zoho Social is used to schedule content in various ways, monitor metrics that matter, and create intelligent reports. It also empowers you with all the features needed to create a renowned brand on social media. It is basically a modern and organized interface for social media management and analytics. It is a solution that is focused on the needs of small and medium-sized businesses with advanced analytics, a post scheduler, and an integrated message center.

In sum, Zoho Social is packed with features that are built for all social media needs. You can schedule content in various ways, monitor all that matters, and create intelligent reports.

Features of Zoho Social

1. Scheduling Posts

Zoho Social comes with a content pipeline and an intuitive social media scheduler. You can control when and how you wish to reach out to your brand’s audience by choosing from a wide range of scheduling features. You can plan, schedule, and publish easily. All the publishing tools that you need are in one place.

By using Zoho Social, you can schedule posts, drag and drop to reschedule and manage the content pipeline from a single screen only. You can also create a posting schedule with different time slots, or depend on the SmartIQ predictions for posting content when the audience is most active.

Zoho Social helps in building a posting pipeline effortlessly. It is easy to use content creation tools such as RSS and zShare browser extension that can pair with the social media dashboard.

2. Monitoring

Zoho Social comes with monitoring features for businesses and agencies. You can monitor the important keywords, product reviews, brand hashtags, and much more. In addition, you can also discover new leads and see what people are saying about the brands you manage across your social channels.

With the social media management platform of Zoho Social, you can create listening columns for tracking the brand reviews, mentions, and brand keywords. You can also easily discover all important trends, and participate in industry conversations.

Other than this, Zoho Social also comes with a live stream of your social engagements in just one dedicated tab. You can also respond to engagement and get more context on important brand interactions. Lastly, you can reply to inline messages on Facebook and Twitter while checking out the social profile information of engagers and other important responses. This will help you in sending timely replies to requests and messages with real-time notifications.

3. Collaboration

Zoho Social is a social media management platform that comes with many smart collaboration features. It allows a number of people to work together on different social things. You can discuss popular posts, share custom reports, and plan a campaign together.

You can also make quick decisions and save time while collaborating with the team from Zoho Social. Zoho Social helps in having important conversations with teammates. You can discuss engagement, reports, and work collaboratively on the drafts with chat, audio, and video calls.

Even if someone in the team has a new content idea, they can discuss it and get approval on the drafts, and share copy ideas all from one tab. Zoho Social also brings your team on board with a specific role for all team members that are invited. You can choose from the available roles or create new roles of your own. It is easy to decide which brands, features, and social channels each team member can access.

4. Analyzing

Zoho Social is a social media analytics tool that measures all that matters to a brand. You can analyze the impact of a social media strategy with this tool. It is also easy to create insightful reports that help in understanding your audience and tracking your social media performance.

You can easily discover where your followers are from, the kind of content they like, what they are saying about you, and get key metrics for analyzing the brand’s performance. Zoho Social also lets you choose from a wide range of analytics for your social channels. You can add more visual appeal to your reports with graphs and charts, set up a schedule, decide a frequency, and automate reports to be delivered to your team at a time of your choice.

5. User-Friendly and Intuitive

While Hootsuite and Zoho Social come with similar features, Zoho Social is preferred by many because it is extremely intuitive and user-friendly. This benefit avoids a learning curve even when you do not have experience using social platforms. You can pick things up and learn from wherever you left.

Once you get the hang of things, it becomes easy to come on board and train others. Hootsuite is focused on a larger business which is why it involves more time on setting things up and more time on training employees for using the platform.

Conclusion

Zoho Social and Hootsuite both can be used for tracking the effectiveness of social media campaigns and change the strategies accordingly. Based on the differences that are mentioned above and the needs of your business, you can choose a social media management platform that enables you to gain a wide reach.

Our Zoho CRM consultants have been offering the best consultancy services to many clients across various industries. If you want any more guidance or support on Zoho Social implementation, feel free to get in touch.

Detailed Comparison Between Hootsuite and Zoho Social Read More »

Digital Marketing, Zoho Implementationsocial media dashboard, social media management platform, social media marketing, zoho social implementation

Benefits of Zoho Integration with WhatsApp

Abhishek Sharma / crm platform, streamline business processes, zoho crm integration, zoho integration with whatsapp, zoho partner / Zoho Implementation

All businesses run to increase income and the number of loyal customers. For achieving this goal, the organization must grow and be led to improve its services. On one hand, it is established that a company cannot satisfy needs if it does not have an established connection between various departments. That said, in case your company is way too focused on the inner workings then it will not succeed without good quality customer service.

The Zoho integration with WhatsApp enables you to improve the client service and optimize the company’s work as well. This integration is somewhat useful in delivering a set of useful tools as well. It helps in analyzing and improving the sales department work. You can get noticed and communicate where it is comfortable for the customers.

The Zoho CRM integration with WhatsApp helps in extending your support through WhatsApp messenger to the customers. The customers will find it easy to reach your support representatives for support from their WhatsApp messenger while the representatives may continue using SalesIQ to respond. Other than this, customers can also look out for your business on WhatsApp and connect instantly.

In this blog, we will look at the benefits of Zoho integration with WhatsApp but before doing that, let us first get an overview of this integration and why it is considered important.

Zoho Integration with WhatsApp

Zoho is a CRM platform that unifies all aspects of a business in just one place. It allows to have everything centralized, improves productivity, and be more competitive. The data obtained from CRM is extremely important and useful and Zoho further helps in segmenting the customers, having more controlled management, and improving customer retention along with consumption.

The Zoho integration with WhatsApp makes sure that the communication with the current customers becomes way more productive. The communications can also be customized. With the Zoho CRM and WhatsApp, you will have many benefits over your competitions that have the ability to set you apart from the rest.

In case a business wants to have an image of caring about its customers then you must know that you are on the right track. With the multi-channel support of Zoho, it becomes possible to reach your customers with chat, calls, emails, and social media. All thanks to the integration of WhatsApp, this communication is also available for use.

The Zoho CRM integration improves sales performance with sales automation. The integration is expandable and customizable. On the other hand, the analytics and reporting tool also helps in giving you very important data that can be used to track everything happening in your business. This function can be used to draw business strategies and see important results.

Moreover, security is guaranteed with this integration. This is a rather important point since you cannot leave your company in the hands of just about any other CRM. It is necessary to invest in support and security. The Zoho CRM integration with WhatsApp promises streamlined business processes, a method to contact your customers, leads, and contacts of the messaging applications of millions of users directly from the CRM.

You can use one of the most preferred communication channels like WhatsApp for connecting and getting help instantly rather than navigating to the website and initiating a chat every time. The chats can be managed by customers through WhatsApp, web, and mobile from a similar dashboard.

Top Benefits of WhatsApp and CRM Integration

1. Improved Business Control

The more workforces become involved in a business, the more difficult it can become to monitor the work of each individual. However, Zoho integration with WhatsApp can help in controlling the sales department remotely. You can have first-hand information about the activity of your sales managers.

The integration of WhatsApp with Zoho CRM enables the owner of the business to check the communication that is happening between the managers of different departments. Therefore, you find it easy to evaluate the quality of work of every individual employee.

All thanks to the integration between WhatsApp and Zoho CRM, all communication will be stored in the CRM. The owner can track which sales manager closes the maximum deals and identify the most effective employees. Basically, the streamlined communication process ends up improving the overall business functioning.

2. Better Analytics Tools

Another important feature of a successful business is the ability to accumulate and analyze important data. All businesses must be clear about their target audience so that estimation of the weaknesses and strengths of a company can be done adequately. This important information helps in identifying the potential for further growth and the quality of offered products and services.

The Zoho integration with WhatsApp can help in gathering all the information about the customers in just one place. You can analyze your age, gender, and choices of customers who are using your services and products. This allows you to see the target customers much more clearly and work dedicatedly to engage with these people in the future.

The connection of WhatsApp with your CRM can help you to learn more about the negative sides of a product. The CRM system can save you questions, suggestions, and reports about the problems that customers experience commonly. Therefore, the company can analyze reviews and work on the revealed issues properly.

3. Automation Opportunities

The integration of WhatsApp and Zoho helps in properly adjusting the CRM system according to the needs of a company. You can create multiple marketing funnels and send deals, contacts, and tasks to different steps of the funnel.

The integration helps the sales managers to reduce multiple routine activities and spend more time in communication with customers. The incoming messages coming from WhatsApp trigger the Zoho CRM to automatically create a task that reminds managers to respond to the customer.

With the Zoho CRM integration, it becomes possible to automate the process of updating the CRM list whenever a prospective user or a customer messages. You can also set up a chatbot to collect information from users and collect or update information saved on Zoho. Automating the processes can help you and your team save time and effort for handling multiple customers at the same time.

4. Streamlined Workflow

In case you have got Zoho set up and running then it makes sense to have your team manage everything on Zoho. From getting important updates about new contacts to reaching out to your existing customers, the Zoho integration lets you use the platform with the added ease of automating an important bulk of the process.

After your customers have been listed on Zoho, you will be able to sort them into different categories and assign them to other agents as well, as you would usually do. A well-defined system can automate the complete process.

When you have a list of customers sorted into Zoho, you can easily reach out to them automatically with predefined messages or also have your team reach out to customers based on the queries. Other than streamlining your workflow, Zoho integration with CRM helps tremendously in streamlining the workflow with which you can stay on the top of your business.

5. Easy Communication

The integration of Zoho with WhatsApp makes sure that you are able to access customer information and reach out to your customers on a platform that you are familiar with properly. You can engage with your customers on a platform that they are familiar with and use frequently.

You will have the ability to send out messages to a wide user base by using rich media such as documents, images, videos, etc. If used properly, it can be a perfect solution for businesses that have a large customer base.

It allows businesses to streamline the workflow and CRM processes while being accessible to users at the same time. Businesses can make good use of WhatsApp by greeting customers with a personalized message when a conversation is started with a business.

6. Follow-Ups

The Zoho CRM integration with WhatsApp enables you to send automated messages with complete details about all your products and services to your current or even potential customers. The best part is that these messages are simple to set up and they can be sent out very quickly with just a little effort.

Therefore, you can ensure that your customers get the information they need without making them wait in any way or even risking their annoyance. You can also go a step ahead and save the answers to some of the most frequently asked questions. This helps in reusing the answers in the future and it also helps in increasing the speed of the issue resolution process followed by your business.

7. Better Internal Communication

Better internal communication in a business is done with team collaboration. In different words, there are different tools that enable collaboration between teams and business sectors. With WhatsApp and CRM integration, there is no need to worry about any team communication problems.

Other than allowing you to communicate with your prospects and customers seamlessly, the integration also helps in removing any kind of inefficient departmental silos that can improve communication in your company. Hence, the complete organization flows all the more optimally and effectively while improving organizational communication.

8. Optimized Business Marketing

The WhatsApp CRM integration enables you to send a useful catalog of images, location, documents, audios, videos, to your potential customer. Based on the interest of your customers, you can send them marketing collateral that can spark their interest.

In this way, you can nurture leads and increase the chances of conversion as well. When you start putting this into practice, this can turn into one of the best ways to move the leads down the sales funnel and increase your chances of conversion.

Conclusion

WhatsApp is one of the most popular messaging applications out there that is used by one and all. It is used for both personal and business purposes. Organizations use it to leverage more benefits by integrating it with their CRM systems.

You can also integrate your WhatsApp account with a CRM platform to start messaging by getting in touch with an experienced CRM consultant from Encaptechno. The integration will allow your WhatsApp instance to use information that is already contained in your CRM.

Benefits of Zoho Integration with WhatsApp Read More »

Zoho Implementationcrm platform, streamline business processes, zoho crm integration, zoho integration with whatsapp, zoho partner

10 Common Zoho CRM Mistakes and How to Avoid Them?

Abhishek Sharma / common crm mistakes, crm structure, online crm system, zoho consultant, zoho crm implementation / Zoho CRM, Zoho Implementation

The customer relationship management systems have been helping many businesses grow by streamlining the entire sales process. However, the most important requisite for the CRM structure to perform well is a successful deployment of the system. There are many factors that contribute to the effectiveness of the online CRM system. They include ensuring that all the features are included, process-oriented implementation, and correct third-party integrations.

No matter how much prior focus is laid on not making mistakes while CRM implementation, something or another goes wrong easily. When the CRM systems were introduced in the beginning, they offered businesses a long-term strategy to promptly engage and manage customer relationships, close more deals, and automate any kind of recurring tasks.

A common misconception that comes with a Zoho CRM implementation is that it is seen as a one-time event. People make the mistake of thinking that after the implementation of Zoho, all lost leads, broken sales methods, and lack of follow-ups will be repaired. Even though it is true that the Zoho CRM system is designed to support the sales process through and through, it must also be remembered that the system will not by itself cause the business to grow.

Hence, it is necessary to consider CRM implementation as an important long-term and company-wide process as opposed to a one-time event. Oftentimes, the managers have the best intentions but their strategies end up hitting the hard ground during the implementation phase. In this blog, we will see why that is by looking at the 10 common Zoho CRM mistakes and how to avoid them.

1. Inability to Underline a Problem

Somehow, this tends to be one of the most common mistakes during the process of Zoho CRM implementation. Understanding that you have a problem is the primary step. You may also have heard this before but let us look at this point in reference to the sales cycle.

You must understand the CRM strategy starts to unfold right when you are deliberating about choosing a CRM system. It is very much possible to think that you do not even have a problem. You must know how to manage all the touchpoints a potential customer can possibly have with your business.

Factors such as knowing how to sift through emails, the important points in your notepad, managing your call records, the customers who are there in your sales pipeline, and the revenue that can be expected next month are all important. If you feel that any of these factors are not understandable or known by you then there is a good chance that there is a problem in your sales cycle.

When you know all the problems, you will be able to use the features offered by the CRM system in a much better way. After all, the CRM systems are there to support you and make your work-life easy to manage. So you must see the problem for what it is and own it because the good news is that there is always a solution.

2. Failure to Purchase the Value of CRM

You must remember that communication is key in this situation. As a manager, you should understand the value that a CRM system is capable of bringing to your business. Once you understand this value properly, you will be able to make a better sense out of the big picture and the value that CRM can bring to your organization.

All employees are like puzzle pieces that fit into a bigger picture of your business growth. Getting a better context of how the CRM can support these roles can help employees to buy into the CRM strategy. You can help your team make the most out of the value of CRM by considering factors like the business growth strategy of CRM, the value provided by CRM to each time and organization, and the context of an existing CRM process.

All through this, the important part is to keep in mind that the sales team needs extra attention during the change. You would not want the sales team to think that you are adding a mundane task to their already existing busy day. You can gain buy-in from the experienced sales professional by offering a context of how the CRM system is designed to work on tedious tasks and problems out of the way so that the focus can be on closing deals.

3. Failure to Communicate Goals

Any changes can open a door for misunderstanding, loss of motivation, and frustration. Being a manager you can set expectations from the beginning. It doesn’t matter if your goals are not clear at the moment, you can give your team an idea of where you want to go and how the online CRM system is going to help in achieving that.

It must be clear that a CRM is like a consistently functional strategy that helps a team close more deals so that the business can grow. You can keep your team motivated by answering questions like what is the need of implementing a CRM system, how will the CRM system support the individual roles, and how can a CRM system offer a better context about these processes?

4. No Ongoing Executive Support

Avoid being the professional who has one meeting with the staff only to disappear later. It is necessary to be present and involved in the integration process. This way, you will not just give your employees a new process but you will also integrate a system into an already existing process.

Your employees should be able to trust you and when you are proactive while keeping your team accountable for integrating the process, the online CRM implementation and function become easy. The focus should be to keep the team in the knowledge by facilitating regular communication on how the employees are integrating CRM into the process.

Other than this, you must also be able to schedule individual meetings with employees and ask for their special input on the improvement of processes within the CRM system. In addition, you should also be able to hold the team leads accountable for supporting a long-term strategy with the integration of the CRM system.

5. No Strategy In Effect

It is easy to know that we need a CRM system but it is much harder to implement and use the CRM system in a suitable way. It is possible that you have deployed your CRM system to check off all important items. You could have also created roles and profiles, migrated the correct data, set up the workflow automation, put webforms on your website, scheduled the sales pipelines reports, and set up lead assignments.

However, the main challenges come when you are getting your teams to use it all. You have to give this part due consideration so that the job can be successful. Setting up the online CRM system and deploying it is a small part of the entire CRM strategy. The CRM system implementation actually continues after deployment as well. This is a long-term strategy.

You can consider factors such as how your team will be using the CRM, how the team will support the sales, marketing, and customer support, how the team will be held accountable for updating data constantly, how the employees will be trained, and which online CRM training will make you available to your team.

An effective Zoho CRM implementation strategy will include the development of a company culture where the customers are at the center of a business. You must be dedicated and consistent with your goals and strategy so that the CRM system can support your business growth in the right manner.

6. Taking More Features Than Needed

A common mistake while choosing and implementing the CRM system is getting attracted to multiple features without really understanding if your business requires them or not. There are many users who do not end up using the features of CRM properly.

You do not have to choose the most advanced and feature-rich uses. Rather, it makes sense to determine the most suitable features for you based on the business needs that you have. Make sure that everything is aligned with your budget and priorities.

Before the implementation, make a list of all the features that you want to use. It will also be beneficial if you end up getting the inputs of your end-users while asking them about the workflow pain points that they wish to solve.

7. Not Training the Team

Choosing and implementing a CRM structure is only the beginning of a long battle. A robust online CRM system will not mean anything if no one understands how to use it. Therefore, correct implementation and training the end-users on how to use the CRM system is important.

When you do this, you will help your team understand the need and benefits of using the system and also encourage them to integrate the CRM into their daily tasks. This will help you in having a low adoption rate. Businesses have a long way to go when it comes to CRM adoption.

Businesses must realize the importance that the CRM system is capable of bringing while increasing sales performance. The best way to avoid this mistake is by having a proper training program in the right place so that the end-users can have a chance to explore the system before officially adopting it in everyday activities.

Taking the support of a Zoho consultant can help you train the team for using CRM. You can discover the training tips such as planning, using resources, determining best practices, and creating training modules for making the most out of a CRM investment.

8. Not Using Mobile CRM

The most important benefit of accessing a CRM with a mobile device is that you can do it anytime and anywhere. This is one of the common CRM mistakes made by many companies. You must realize that mobile CRM keeps you on top of your tasks without any need to be in front of the computer at all times.

Not using the mobile CRM app properly can slow down the response time to customers and increase the chance of missing out on important customer updates. Most salespeople who use their mobile phones are able to meet their sales quotas as compared to the ones who do not.

Most of the teams that use the mobile CRMs also end up improving their overall productivity. You can choose a CRM system with an excellent mobile CRM app and ensure that the sales team downloads and uses it.

9. Failure to Maintain Clean and Accurate Data

The customer data is more like the lifeblood of a CRM system. It is necessary to ensure that you migrate and maintain correct and updated customer data into the online CRM system.

Despite understanding the importance of this, many businesses fall into the trap of maintaining bad data that result in inaccurate sales forecasts and outdated customer information. All the missing, outdated, and incomplete data ends up costing a lot to the companies.

To make sure that this does not happen, organizations can create a standard practice on data entry for the team to follow. For instance, the process of identifying mandatory fields that should be filled out when creating a new customer profile so that duplications are removed.

This can include full name, company name, contact details, landline, and mobile details, address, and social media profiles. Other than this, you can also schedule periodical setups to clean the maintenance system. Doing this can help in seeing duplicate or missing information after which steps to rectify things can be taken immediately when the process is done regularly.

10. Lack of Integration

One of the prime benefits of using a business tool and multiple software applications is the ability to integrate tools with each other. Any failure to do the same will end up decreasing the productivity level as it forces the users to use various systems and toggle between different business tools.

As a result, the chances of data duplication and scattered business knowledge will increase. Most people understand that lack of business integrations with other tools is one of the biggest challenges of using the CRM structure.

Before the CRM implementation, make a detailed list of all the business tools and see if they are compatible with each other or not. The CRM providers must have a list of native and third party integrations available to use the system. If you have a CRM system and are planning to subscribe to other tools then you can do the same by checking if the CRM integrates with these tools or not.

In case you discover that the CRM does not integrate with a business tool then you can also consult a Zoho consultant. The consultant will introduce an automation tool that can connect apps and services. Two or more applications will be easily connected to automate all repetitive tasks without any need to code or depending on developers for integration.

Conclusion

Making CRM mistakes can be costly. They do not just include financial impacts but they also lead to a loss of valuable time and key customer data management. The good thing is that careful research on important aspects such as knowing the right features, integrating them suitably and following the implementation process can avoid the common CRM mistakes.

You can consider all the mistakes mentioned above so that they can be avoided or you can do a better job and take the support of a Zoho consultant. This way, your business will be prevented from making potential hiccups down the road.

10 Common Zoho CRM Mistakes and How to Avoid Them? Read More »

Zoho CRM, Zoho Implementationcommon crm mistakes, crm structure, online crm system, zoho consultant, zoho crm implementation

Collaborate and Communicate Effectively With Zoho CRM Feeds

Abhishek Sharma / customer satisfaction, sales cycle process, sales pipeline, zoho consulting partner, zoho crm feeds / Zoho Implementation

Collaboration is an extremely important aspect of businesses. When you need to finalize a deal or even negotiate on the discount price or organize an event, you collaborate with a team to achieve your goals. To make this possible, the tools that help in communication are very helpful in making sure that everything is said, understood, and timely implemented.

Any platform that allows you to get actively involved in the discussions and share your ideas can be purposeful and time-saving as well. The feature of Feeds in Zoho CRM offers one such platform where you can easily share your views and also discuss matters with team members to speed up the decision-making process.

In addition, Zoho Feeds also gives you important updates on records that you follow such as updating a record, making changes to a record, etc. With the use of Feeds in your Zoho CRM account, you can effectively do the below-mentioned things.

Post a message and share it with all the users in your organization.
Post a message in a group and share it with all members of a group as well.
Mention a role, user, or group in the status messages.
Send a direct private message to your colleagues.
Comment on the status messages and reply to them with private messages.
Follow the records automatically by creating important auto-follow rules.
Attach important documents to messages that are being posted.
Get notifications for the mentions and changes that are made to the records and the ones that you follow.

What is Zoho Feeds?

Zoho Feeds is more like a forum on Zoho CRM where any team can collaborate and communicate easily. Let’s understand Zoho Feeds with an example of the sales team. Using Zoho Feeds, the sales team can share insights on the go and keep the rest of the team updated about how they are doing while also giving each other recognition for sales accomplishments. The Zoho Feeds can allow a team to work together and accelerate the process of sales optimally.

All the status mentions, comments, direct messages, changes made to your records, deletion of records, adding notes to records, etc. can be listed. The Zoho Feeds can further be filtered based on the modules and time period as well.

You can mention other users, groups, and roles in the status messages. All users who are associated with the mentioned groups or roles can easily view the messages on their Feeds wall as well. You can follow the records that are important to you so that they can be shown automatically. You can also use the Follow button for manually following the records and creating auto-follow rules to follow other records.

Zoho Feeds helps in getting notifications within the Zoho CRM anytime when a user mentioned you in a comment or a message. In addition, the files can also be shared with other users in an organization or a specific group. You can send direct messages to the users. Any comments added for a record’s update can be added as a note for the record. In addition, notes can be added to a record that is available in Feeds as a comment.

Understanding Zoho Feeds

All the information that you have does not necessarily need to be shared with everyone you know in your organization. It happens often that your content and information are only relevant to a specific group of people. In case you focus more on communication within a closed group, collaboration becomes much easier too.

Zoho Feeds helps you in sharing important updates while collaborating with all users in your organization. While making an important update on the Feeds tab, you can just select the required group and restrict communication in the same group.

Zoho Feeds also allows you to create a group directly from the Feeds tab by simply clicking on the Create Group icon. For instance, you just have to specify the Group Name as Product Launch and Description as Marketing Activities for the product launch.

Within the Group Source section, you can also choose the group members you wish to add. You can choose the roles, users, subordinates, and people from different groups too. When you click on the group, you can just view the group’s feeds and group members while carrying out the conversations.

This is pretty useful, particularly because you can create more groups for specific sales regions too. In case you are a part of a sales team that follows up on leads and contacts from the USA, Europe, APAC, or the UK, you can also create Groups for these regions and put ideas, suggestions, and discussions in these groups.

Create Groups

You can have a marketing group, finance group, sales group, team leads group, and management group. Basically, in case you wish to facilitate communication within the closed circles then it can be easy to collaborate and share information in the organization.

The groups can be created under the Zoho Feeds and any discussion that is going on within a group can be used for sharing files, status messages, etc. The groups can be easily accessed by the users of the group and you can also mention your group in messages or send private messages to the group.

Changing the Feeds Preference

Zoho Feeds is one of the best ways to keep a tab on all records that are important to you. However, in case you think that the Feeds section is becoming too cluttered with different updates then you can choose the modules that you wish to receive updates from.

For instance, in case you wish to only see updates on progressing deals and not on leads then you can just uncheck the leads from the Feed Preference settings. This will help in blocking out all Feeds related to the important modules. The Feeds Preference settings are set up by the administrator and are also applicable to all users of the CRM organization account.

Adding Auto- Follow Rules

Just as the name suggests, the auto-follow rules help in automatically following records that are important. Anytime a record meets the criteria specified in the Auto Follow Rule, the record gets automatically followed by you. If you make changes to the records followed by you that are listed in the Feeds tab of Zoho CRM then you can keep a track of all activities and updates of important records.

Let’s say that you are heading the sales department in your organization and you wish to get updates on all important deals that have an opportunity of generating more than a defined amount. Rather than manually asking your team to send updates on important records, you can follow the records automatically using the Auto-Follow rules and get updates within the Feeds tab. This way, you can become well informed whenever a note is added to it, some details are added or any other activity is associated with the record.

See Any Inactive Records

The Zoho Feeds slider shows the number of days and is also used to set the count between 1 to 180. On the basis of selected numbers in this slider, the records that are not updated for more than the specified number of days get listed. This helps in keeping a track of all important leads that have been inactive for a period of over 6 months.

In case you wish to view the records without activities or updates for the past five days then you have to set the Feeds slider to 5. The records that have not really been updated for more than five days will get listed in this way.

View Records That You Follow

All records that you own will be followed by you automatically. These records that you follow manually or on the basis of the auto-follow rule will get listed in the Followed By Me section. This will regularly help you get all the updates that you are interested in.

Features of Zoho Feeds

1. All Announcements in One Place

It doesn’t matter if you wish to congratulate a team for performing well on closing a deal or you wish to send a routine update about the status of a contact, you can do anything much faster while using Feeds.

All you have to do is just notify your colleagues or groups by using the @mention feature. You can mention them so that they can get the message timely. When you keep the communication inside the CRM, you will spend less time looking for the information and also have an easy time knowing what your team is working on.

2. One On One Interactions

Zoho Feeds also allows you to create groups where teams can collaborate with each other and work together. The teams can close big deals way more quickly by sharing insights, answering every question, and sending updates for keeping everyone on the same page.

This also allows the team to understand when each assignment is completed while acting fast. The Zoho Feeds can be used for sending private messages directly to teammates. When the interaction becomes one on one, there is no lag in getting things done at the right time.

3. Getting Notified in Real-time

With Zoho Feeds, it also becomes possible to stay up to date on all deals that matter the most because you can get notified when something changes with a contact that you feel responsible for.

Anytime you will see a contact in the Zoho Feeds, a detailed record of all feeds that have been mentioned in the contact will appear along with the notes. The thing is that real-time notifications can play a very important role in keeping the sales operation on the right track because you will be prompt in taking action.

4. Share Sales Documents

To make sure that the sales process goes on as planned, it is necessary that you and your team have the right sales collateral. In case either of the team members does not have anything then important documents can be shared on direct messages.

There is no need to switch over to the email or chat window for sending attachments. All you have to do is just drag and drop the pictures, sales collateral, presentations, and spreadsheets for adding them to your post. In this way, you will be able to send any required sales documents to your team members easily.

5. Streamline Your Page

Zoho Feeds gives you an option that allows you to choose what updates to follow. There is no need to clutter your page with any kind of unnecessary updates. This way, the page can become highly streamlined.

You can instead choose the records that you want and update them by either following them manually or by setting rules for automation. When you track the big deal records and the details of a specific customer, you can also keep the conversations focused and retrieve the information that is needed just at the right time.

6. Geotagging Sales Appointments

Your team can be kept in the loop by checking in for meetings with locations so that the colleagues can be informed about the whereabouts of your teammates. This helps in maintaining records so that your team knows what happened at the time of interactions with your prospects.

If you have been going ahead in your sales approach on the basis of location then this is even more helpful because with geotagging, the sales team can know about your progress based on the locations. The more deals you keep closing in a location, the closer you will get towards achieving your location-based sales targets.

Conclusion

Zoho Feeds is one of the best forums where the teams of your organizations can communicate and collaborate with each other. Once your team gets used to using Zoho Feeds, all communication will become very simple and effective at the same time.

In case you need any further support in knowing more about the use of Zoho Feeds, get in touch with our expert Zoho consultants for assistance. They will guide you at every step.

Collaborate and Communicate Effectively With Zoho CRM Feeds Read More »

Zoho Implementationcustomer satisfaction, sales cycle process, sales pipeline, zoho consulting partner, zoho crm feeds

Sell on the Go with Zoho CRM

Abhishek Sharma / lead management system, lead nurturing strategy, sales funnel, zoho consultant, zoho crm implementation / Zoho CRM, Zoho Implementation

Sales are all about closing deals and generating revenue. It is not something that can only be accomplished by making calls or sending emails from a desk. Many times, you have to travel as well. When you are on the road, you will need a CRM mobile application that is both powerful and intuitive.

The mobile version of a CRM application helps in doing a lot more in much less time while staying ahead of your work and following up with the prospects to get more deals. Don’t get this wrong. A mobile CRM is not like the low-sized version of desktop CRM.

It is actually a more specialized and dedicated platform that is aimed at higher productivity. It lets the professionals focus on what matters the most. Most companies understand that maximum internet usage is through mobile phones and tablets as compared to desktops. This actually shows that the mobile versions of software and applications also lead to much more productivity.

In this blog, we will discuss six ways in which you can sell on the go using the Zoho CRM while empowering your sales team when they are on the move.

1. Smart Planning

You must be able to access your schedule within a moment’s notice. Opening up your laptop while you are commuting to see a prospect for finding your calendar is not something that is practical.

This is why Zoho makes it simple for you to view and track your schedule from the Zoho CRM mobile app. You can add tasks, create events, invite participants, and schedule calls from the Home Screen. In case you enable notifications, you will also be able to receive reminders of calls, events, and tasks that you have coming up in the future.

2. See Your Key Sales Metrics

The Zoho CRM implementation helps you see dashboards in the desktop version which further enable you in tracking trends in your sales, support, and marketing departments. This dashboard can help you see how many sales deals your team is making each month, glance at deals you have in the pipeline, record campaign success rate, and see the generated revenue per quarter.

The same information can also be accessed in the mobile application. You can also use the mobile dashboard to classify your CRM information into different dashboards on the basis of Leads, Accounts, Contacts, Campaigns, Deals, Products, Inventory, Cases, and Solutions. Each segment differentiates information so that it becomes easy to find what you need quickly.

3. Locating Nearby Customers

Using the mobile Zoho CRM, it becomes possible to locate nearby customers. The lead management system can become remarkably enhanced with the use of this feature. There is a Map View in the Zoho CRM mobile application that helps in finding prospects near you wherever you go.

With the use of this feature, you can easily locate the leads, contacts, and accounts in your area while scheduling meetings when you are on your next business trip. There is another significant use of the Map View. By using this feature, you can use where your leads are located and figure out the best time to contact them at any time.

4. Keep Track of Meetings

The sales professionals meet their customers almost on a daily basis but when the need comes, it is not so easy to recall all those customers. The Zoho CRM helps to check in at a customer’s location and log in all visits while adding more metrics to the reports.

This helps the managers to improve their sales strategy by generating reports based on the number of meetings that get logged in at a given period. You can track the number of customers and places a sales professional has visited each day, the total distance traveled by the agent, the total time taken to travel, etc.

This thing becomes much easier by recording information as a voice note instead of typing it as a text. The voice notes can be downloaded at any time.

5. Work On the Go

Using Zoho CRM, you can take your work anywhere you go. There is no need to sit behind a desk just for being productive. This feature helps in nurturing your lead nurturing strategy as well.

Basically, Zoho CRM does not let you sit behind a desk for being productive. You can instead stay connected at any time and anywhere with the offline mode in your Zoho CRM mobile application.

You can easily update a note, log a call, complete a task and add an event to your calendar even when you do not have internet access. All changes made in an offline mode will be synced automatically as soon as you go back online.

6. Follow Up Instantly

Zoho CRM allows you to follow up with leads instantly. With features such as MailMagnet, you can get notified instantly about important emails from leads and customers.

In addition, MailMagnet can also be used to scan your inbox and bring the emails from prospects and customers to your focused attention. Not only does it allow you to prioritize attention, but it also helps in sending emails, adding notes, and adding follow-up tasks right away. You can do all tasks single-handedly.

7. Real-time Collaboration

You can never expect all of your team members to be at one location when you have to make a collective decision. With the use of features such as feeds, you can keep everyone on the same page and increase your chances of winning a deal.

It allows you to see the work done by your team, comment on it, and also post a status to keep your team updated on the work. Being a sales representative, it is not easy for you to be everywhere. In case you have a team of sales representatives, they will be in different locations at different times.

However, the Zoho CRM mobile app helps you and your team centralize the CRM data. You can stay up to date on all of your tasks and handle your work in a way that you feel comfortable so that productivity increases.

Conclusion

Take your CRM wherever you go and sell immediately. Getting in touch with a Zoho Consultant can help you in getting real-time updates, receive notifications, access customer information, find your customers nearby and do much more.

Encaptechno has a wide experience of supporting many customers by offering Zoho consultancy services. You can get Zoho mobile CRM today and begin selling on the move while making your business dreams a reality. Contact Encaptechno today!

Sell on the Go with Zoho CRM Read More »

Zoho CRM, Zoho Implementationlead management system, lead nurturing strategy, sales funnel, zoho consultant, zoho crm implementation

PRODUCTS

Zoho One

Zoho Book

Zoho Creator

Zoho CRM

Zoho Bigin

Zoho Workspace

SERVICES

Zoho Partner Services