Getting started with CRM Plus

Getting started with CRM Plus

When you sign up for any application, there are always key user details you need to enter during the setup phase. When you set up a CRM Plus account for your organization as an administrator, you will need to enter some general information about your company which will be visible to all departments and then map your employees to their teams and assign them permission to the applications they need to use for work.

These initial settings not only help establish your organization's profile and hierarchy in CRM Plus, but also help the software understand the functioning of your company. You can perform these settings in the Admin Panel in CRM Plus. 

Admin Panel

The Admin Panel in CRM Plus is a centralized user management console that lets you frame your organization's hierarchy by adding and managing users. With centralized control, you can ensure that your customer data is secure by limiting access to user-specific applications.



This guide will discuss the key settings to help you get started with your Zoho CRM Plus account.

Organization account setup

When you sign up for CRM Plus, it is important that you set up the account to reflect how your organization works. Adding company-specific details helps personalize your CRM Plus account and makes it easier for you and your users to familiarize yourselves with the software.



The Organization section in CRM Plus helps you establish a business profile for your organization where you can add your company's details. This includes the company's name, phone number, website, logo, location, time zone, and the account owner's email address. 

These settings apply to the entire organization and will be displayed to all users in the organization's account.

The organization section can be accessed in two ways. Directly from the Admin Panel in your CRM Plus and also under the setup menu in CRM module. 

Accessing the organization page
  1. Open the Admin Panel. 
    The Users page is displayed with the Users tab selected by default.
  2. Click the Organization tab to access the Organization page.
Note
The admin can set or change the company details at any time.
This page can also be used to manage the details of your Zoho CRM Plus subscription, such as upgrading or downgrading it.

Business hours and shift hours

It is important to define your organization's business hours when setting up your account. Business hours are the overall hours of operation for your organization, and you can set separate shift hours for individual users or departments.



Setting shift hours for individual users or departments allows users to be assigned activities, reminders, and alerts based on their availability.

Shift hours are also useful if your organization operates in multiple geographical locations. For example, let's say your organization is based in India and its business hours are set to 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM IST. Your organization also has offices in London and Washington. You can create shift hours for the time zones used in these cities. Creating shift hours helps CRM Plus know when your employees will be at work based on their location. 

Set business hours

  1. Go to  Setup  >  Company Details  >  Business Hours. 
  2. In the  Business Hours  page, click Create Business Hour . 
  3. Select a  Business Hour  from the following list.
    1. 24 Hours x 7 Days: Select this option if your company operates 24/7.             
    2. 24 Hours x 5 Days: Select this option if your company operates 24/5.               
    3. Custom Hours: Select this option if you want to customize the business days or hours. 
  4. Same hours every day -  Select this option if the business hours of the organization is same everyday and choose the timings from the drop-down list. 
  5. Different hours every day - Select this option if the business hours of the organization varies each day and choose the timings from the drop-down list. Click Save. 

Set shift hours

  1. Go to Setup> Company Details > Business Hours. Click Create Shift Hours.
  2. In the Create Shift Hours page, enter the Shift name.
  3. Select the timezone from the drop-down list.
  4. In Shift hours, you will have the following options.
    1. Same Hours Everyday: Select this option if the shift hour is same everyday and choose the timings from the drop-down list. 
    2. Different Hours Everyday: Select this option if the shift hour varies each day and choose the timings from the drop-down list.
  5. Click Save. 

Assign shifts

  1. Edit the shift that your created.
  2. Select the users from the  AssignTo drop-down list. 
  3. Click Done and then Save.
Note
Business hours of an organization define the working days of the organization. 
Shift hours define the working hours of individual employees. 

User Management 

Now that your account has been set up at an organizational level, it's time to get your teams onboarded into your organization's CRM Plus account. To do this, you'll need to add users from different departments in your company and define their roles and permissions based on the applications they need. 

Adding users

Users can be added in the Users section of the Admin Panel and given different levels of access to the services that are included in CRM Plus. Once a user has been added, an email invite will be sent to them. Users will only be added as active users upon accepting this invitation. Until then, their status will show as pending.

Each user can sign in to their account with a dedicated email address and password for CRM Plus. The total number of users you can add depends on the number of user licenses you have purchased. For example, if you have purchased 40 licenses, you can add a total of 40 unique users to Zoho CRM Plus, regardless of how many applications each user has access to.

To add a user,
  1. Access the Admin Panel. The Users tab will be selected by default with the Users page displayed on the right side of the page.
  2. Click Add User. You'll see the Add User page.
  3. Enter the new user's Email Address in the text box.
  4. Select the checkboxes corresponding to the applications you'd like that user to have access to. You will only see applications for which you have administrative privileges.
  5. Fill in the required application fields for all applications you would like to assign.
  6. Click Add. An invitation will be sent to the user.
Note
If Zoho Motivator is configured for your CRM Plus account, when you select CRM for a user, the user will be automatically added to Motivator as well.

Setting up roles and assigning permissions

Now that you have added users to CRM Plus, the next step is to define the role of each user and set their permissions for individual applications in Zoho CRM Plus.

The role you assign users in CRM Plus reflects their hierarchial position within the organization. The default roles are CEO and Manager. You can add more roles and set up a role hierarchy based on your company's structure. For example, you could add sales leads and sales reps reporting to sales managers, who would in turn report to people further up the hierarchy. 

Roles and permissions make it easy to control who can access different applications and aspects of CRM Plus's features and functions. For example, your customer support agent will primarily use Desk to handle support tickets and will also need access to CRM and Survey to view customer information, follow up with customers, and send survey emails.

The administrator can provide the users access by just clicking on the enable/disable option, which is available for all services listed on the Admin Panel. Learn more
Note
CRM Plus Administrators or users with user management permissions in the Admin Panel can manage user access for your organization. 

Multichannel communication 

In every business, effective communication with your customers is key to customer satisfaction and ensuring long-time customer retention. From direct emails to posting on social media, customers could approach you in various ways, and ideally you will required to respond to all of them. CRM Plus helps you do just that—engage your customers via phone, email, social media, and live chat, by having access to all of these channels inside one interface. 

Visitor tracking with SalesIQ 

SalesIQ in one of the many channels supported in CRM Plus. It helps you monitor and chat with visitors on your business website and start assisting them from the web interface. 

Every visitor to your website is a potential deal. This is why CRM Plus helps you make the most of every web visit by directly adding the visitors who chat with you to CRM as leads. Each record added to CRM gives you the required sales context for that particular lead, making it easy for you to distinguish between repeat customers and random visitors. This ultimately lets you identify and priortize the visitors that matter to you the most.  

To add the tracking code to your website, follow these steps:
  1. Click the SalesIQ application in your CRM Plus account.
    Copy the SalesIQ code from the SalesIQ welcome page.
  2. Check the Add Live Chat box below the code snippet. 
    This option is enabled by default. Uncheck the option if you just want to track your website visitors and not have the chat widget enabled on your website. 
  3. Paste the code snippet into the existing code in your website's source file anywhere before the </body> tag. 
  4. Save and publish the changes made to your website. 
  5. SalesIQ Chat is now configured for your website. 

Configure your social channels

Apart from gathering visitors via your business website, another way to acquire leads and learn what your customers have to say about you is through social media. 



A brand is a collection of social media channels that are all managed through a single dashboard. You can add one of each type of channel to a brand. 

To link your social media accounts, follow these steps. 
  1. Access the Social module in CRM Plus. 
  2. Click on the social media channel (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or Instagram) that you want to link with CRM Plus. 
  3. Click Connect.
  4. Log in to the social media account with your credentials. 
  5. Your social media page is now linked with CRM Plus. 

Email

Email is still the most common and effective channel for business communication. Zoho CRM Plus allows you to either use its built-in email functionality or set up your existing email account in CRM Plus. 

You can set up an email account from popular email clients like Outlook or Gmail or use POP3 or IMAP protocols to create custom email 
accounts. With this integration, you can also share emails with other users in your organization's CRM Plus account. A copy of all outgoing and incoming emails is associated with the corresponding CRM records.

Set up your business email account in CRM Plus with IMAP or POP3.

IMAP: IMAP lets you work with emails without having to download them on your computer, by storing them on remote servers. This two-way protocol also allows synchronization of emails across multiple devices.



POP3: With POP3, emails are downloaded to your computer and deleted from the remote server. This protocol does not allow synchronization of emails across multiple devices. When you read your email on multiple devices, the read emails might still be marked as 'unread' with no indication of which ones you read, deleted, or flagged. Also, folders you create on one device will not be added on other devices.

Telephony

Although emails are usually the preferred method to communicate with your customers, connecting with them via telephone can help engage them on a personal level. Telephony in CRM Plus lets you connect a Private Branch Exchange (PBX) system with CRM Plus, allowing you to be available to your customers via different touchpoints and make and answer calls from any service inside CRM Plus.
Once you are done with a sales call, you can log it in your CRM and enter relevant notes so that you will have the relevant context when you come back and visit the record. You can also pick up customer calls while you are looking at your ticket or social interface.

This simplifies the process of integrating your call information into the system. Your calls can now be automatically logged that not only lets you manage your incoming and outgoing calls within the system, but also helps in assigning follow up tasks while maintaining complete customer context. List of PBX systems you could connect with CRM Plus

Strengthen your website presence

Webforms

Web forms are a crucial link between your company's website and your CRM, since they do not just capture customer information but also convert it into leads in your CRM system. CRM Plus helps you create simple, easy-to-use forms and embed them on your business website. These web forms can be customized using the drag-and-drop interface.

Web forms can include basic information like name, phone number, address, and details of what the customer is looking for. 
Visitors to your business website are captured through these embedded web forms. Every value entered in this web form is automatically stored in your CRM database and the new records created can be automatically assigned to sales reps.

To embed web forms, follow these steps. 
In your CRM Plus,
  1. Navigate to Setup > Developer space > Webforms in your CRM Plus account.
  2. Select the module you want the web form to be created for from the Module dropdown. 
  3. Click Create Webform.
  4. Build your form and specify the form details and other options. Copy the web form code and embed options. 

Customer surveys

Valuable feedback from your customers helps improve your service, ensuring more business in the future. Survey in CRM Plus helps you create customized surveys for gathering customer feedback.



Survey helps you access customer and survey data in the same place. You can send survey emails created in CRM Plus to your leads and contacts without having to access the customer database. This makes it easier for a sales agent to follow up with the respondents to a survey. 

The responses that you receive from contacts and leads are recorded in their record details page to view later and add further context to each customer's profile. Updating your CRM data with the survey responses helps your business gain better insights and more effectively meet your customer's requirements.You can also convert negative survey responses to tickets in Desk or mark promising responses as leads in your CRM. 

With CRM Plus, you could create surveys of the following types:

Blank survey: A survey form that you could create from scratch with questions pertaining to your business type. 
Template gallery: Ready-to-use templates that you could choose from, to help create professional looking surveys. 
Copy from existing: Surveys that can be cloned from the existing format, with additional details that you would want to have in the new versions.
In-mail survey: Short surveys that are embedded to your emails in the form of a single question.
Click here to know the steps for creating each survey. Learn more.



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