Zoho CRM vs Zoho Desk

2020. Zoho introduced Bigin - pipeline-centric CRM for small business



In addition to popular Zoho CRM, Zoho unveiled Bigin - new pipeline-centric CRM that is built and priced for the needs of small and micro businesses. Bigin brings spreadsheet-like simplicity to CRM so that anyone can use the tool. You don’t need prior knowledge of CRM, or have to spend additional resources to actually make your software work. While working on the new product, we also noticed that small businesses were being taken for a ride by vendors who removed essential CRM features from their basic plans but still called it the right choice for small businesses. With features like multiple pipelines, built-in telephony, and workflow automation, Bigin contains just the right feature set to help small businesses run a full-scale customer-facing process inside their CRM. Bigin is the most affordable CRM system in the market right now, priced at $7 per month, per user, when billed annually.


2018. Zoho CRM enables to convert website live-chats to phone conversations



Zoho updated its unified customer experience platform Zoho CRM Plus. The new version doesn’t just allow your customers to reach out to you through the channel of their choice, it also helps your business teams switch across channels at will. Your sales reps can convert website live-chats to phone conversations, support agents can make or answer calls from within their ticket interface, and your marketers can convert social media interactions into tickets to get problems solved faster. With the bew ASAP plug-in for Desk plug-in, customers will be able to quickly find answers sourced from your business’s knowledge base, raise tickets directly, and even chat with your support agents from within your company website or mobile app. New Blueprint lets you build and automate processes that run across your sales, marketing, and support teams. Take your daily sales orders, for example: You can set up a Blueprint for your sales orders that involves both your sales and support teams so that approving a sales order in CRM will automatically create a ticket in Desk, and conversely, the sales order will be marked as “Delivered” in CRM when the delivery is completed in Desk.


2018. Zoho Desk adds AI assistant for customer service



Service management software Zoho Desk is getting new capabilities that allow businesses to elevate agent productivity, manage cross-functional service processes, and contextually integrate customer service with other business functions. Voice and Chat Assistant: Zia helps reduce the load on customer service teams. Through Zia Voice, customers can speak or chat with Zia to receive answers from a knowledge base. Agents can also speak or chat with Zia to receive response suggestions while helping customers. Zia suggests specific sections of a knowledge-base article rather than the entire article. Agents can also speak or chat with Zia to receive response suggestions while helping customers. Zia suggests specific sections of a knowledge-base article rather than the entire article. Agents can add these suggestions to a response with a single click and send the same to the customer.


2018. Zoho's Zia learned to speak like Cortana


Zoho CRM 2018 update added voice to its AI-powered sales assistant - Zia. Zia can now interact with you through both voice and chat messages to perform any action inside Zoho CRM.  Want to know your schedule for the day? Just ask Zia. On the go and want to check if you have enough inventory of a particular product before your next customer visit? Just ask Zia. Want to quickly mark a deal as Closed-Won after hanging up with the customer? Just ask Zia to do it for you. You interact with Zia either through the voice interface in the Zoho CRM app in iPhone or Android, or through the chat bar in Zoho CRM in your desktop web browser. Recall that Microsoft embedded voice assistant Cortana into Dynamics CRM almost 3 years ago.


2017. Zoho CRM Plus gets fresh new design



Zoho rolled out update to its Zoho CRM Plus, the all-in-one customer engagement suite. The developers refreshed the whole interface and cleared out the clutter. The app selector is now replaced with an all-new navigation bar to the left side instead of the top. When you know exactly which part of the product you want to access, you can use the new Quick Links feature to go straight there. Besides, Zoho CRM Plus automatically adapts to your usage patterns by putting the records you last accessed to the front under Recent Items. Also now you can configure the settings of all your Zoho CRM Plus apps in one place and search across all apps with advanced filters to get relevant data from different teams in your organisation.


2017. Zoho CRM gets a Chrome extension for Gmail



Zoho developed Chrome extension that intelligently extracts details from your Gmail that you can save as leads or contacts in Zoho CRM. Zoho CRM for Gmail shows you a complete customer profile immediately upon opening an email from the customer. Just open a message and you can perform a lot of operations. Choose to push details as leads or contacts, or see whether an email has attached data like tasks, previous call details, or notes from Zoho CRM. It also displays details about existing leads or contacts when you click on an email from them.  Available in 21 languages, Zoho CRM for Gmail will help you increase your ROI by entering timely and accurate information about your leads and contacts to your CRM system.


2017. Zoho CRM gets sticky notes



Post-it notes are one of the most successful accidents of our time. Many companies are trying to replicate the persuasive power of sticky notes on the digital platform. And now Zoho made them available right inside Zoho CRM. These digital sticky notes stay on top of your dashboard, which acts as your workspace.  Go here if you need to write down ideas that pop up in your mind, set up your schedule for the day, or note down tasks and reminders for yourself. Sticky notes store all information that you think you might need to reference later. Available in all editions of Zoho CRM, any sticky notes you create are not visible to other users in your CRM account.


2017. Zoho partners with LinkedIn to integrate Sales Navigator into Zoho CRM



Zoho CRM has a new advantage over alternatives. It now allows to network, prospect and build relationships inside the system. With LinkedIn’s Sales Navigator for Zoho CRM you can view all of your prospect’s professional information from your CRM window - no more switching between tabs. The integration allows Zoho CRM users to directly find information about their prospects—like their profile details, company information, and recent activity updates—on LinkedIn, without having to leave their CRM.


2017. Zoho Desk introduced Compact Mode, Ticket Peek, and Snippets



Zoho Desk, the service that helps customer service teams take advantage of context to improve the quality of their support, is adding more tools to take on alternatives. The new Compact Mode brings you all the functionality of the classic ticket list, but shows you nearly twice the number of tickets without navigating to a second screen. Another new feature - Ticket Peek is a lightweight response screen for agents to respond to tickets quickly. When agents ‘peek’ into a ticket, they can see all of the interactions within that ticket, as well as all of the ticket’s properties and applicable solutions. Besides, agents can now use Snippets - pre-written phrases that can be invoked in a response by hitting the Tab key.


2017. Zoho CRM got AI assistant



Zoho has introduced Zia - the Artificial Intelligence-powered Sales Assistant for Zoho CRM. Zia lets you know when something is going extraordinarily well –or wrong- in your sales operation, knows what you want to do – and helps you do it faster and bring the end of voicemails and unread emails. Zia is capable of learning, over time, the most frequent actions a particular user takes on Zoho CRM. Besides, Zoho introduced Blueprint, a sales process automation platform and upgraded two features to platforms: Zoho PhoneBridge, which connects a customer's PBX system to the Zoho CRM system, and SalesSignals, which provides real-time information about the activities of customers and prospects.