A few weeks ago, we wrote about choosing a CRM (Contact Relationship Manager) for a law practice client of ours. We promised to report back with the results, and here we are. We were setting up HubSpot on our client’s computer, and during the setup process, we were asked to download her contacts from Outlook as a .CSV. What? No! We need a CRM that syncs contacts both ways. We were so excited about HubSpot’s Outlook compatibility and its plugin that allows you to pull from a library of built-in email templates and documents, or schedule a series of timed emails inside the familiar Outlook interface. Based on the elegance of this integration, contact syncing seemed like it would be a given. Apparently not.
In returning to the drawing board, we had already eliminated several candidates because of how much work they wanted you to do in their CRM dashboard. Since we had made an assumption that two-way contact syncing was a standard feature and were surprised to find out it wasn’t, we decided to use that as our top search criterion and work from there.
And that’s how we found Zoho. Or rather, we found it again. It was quite similar to HubSpot in all the comparison charts, but we really loved the Outlook templating abilities of HubSpot, so it got pushed aside. Zoho offers a plugin for Outlook that synchronizes contacts AND tasks AND events, and it’s available for both Windows and Mac, though the PC version has more features. The PC plugin lets you
- Synchronize contacts, calendar events and tasks automatically from Microsoft Outlook to Zoho CRM.
- Associate MS Outlook inbound and outbound emails with Leads, Contacts, or Potentials in Zoho CRM.
- Add email message and file attachments to the Lead or Contact in Zoho CRM without modifying the original message in Microsoft Outlook.
- Export contacts, calendar (events) and tasks from Microsoft Outlook to Zoho CRM.
- Add emails as Cases to Zoho CRM.
- Resolve conflicts while synchronizing contacts, calendar and tasks with Zoho CRM so that there is no duplication of customer data
Do note that the Outlook plugin is only available for the Professional level of Zoho CRM and above.
That all sounds great. The next critical feature we needed to see in Zoho was email templating. Fortunately, Zoho offers an array of built-in email templates to choose from, or you can make your own from scratch or modify an existing template. You can sort and search these templates, or even designate some as favorites so that they’re first at hand when you’re working. We were also impressed that you can view analytics data for your various templates to see how well they’re performing. Learn more about Zoho’s email template features here.
The next factor that was important to us was document templating. We wanted to be able to create documents in Microsoft Word and use Word’s built-in mail merge functionality to keep documents personalized, but as automated as possible. Fortunately, Zoho CRM offers a plugin for Microsoft Word as well—available for Professional level and above. You can learn more about templatizing documents here.
And lastly, we needed to consider price. Zoho CRM does offer a fairly full-featured free version, but to get the Outlook and Word plugins we want to use, we’ll have to recommend the Professional version. The Professional version runs $20 per month per user, which seems quite reasonable to us, given the amount of time and energy it has the potential to save.
Just look at how workflow can be automated with Zoho CRM, and you’ll see why it has the potential to lighten your workload.
One tool we came across that might be useful if you’re looking for a CRM but don’t have a preconceived notion of how you need it to work is the SmallbizCRM Finder. Answer a survey filled with lots of business jargon and they’ll suggest a few products that fit the bill. When we did our survey, they proposed 3 products specifically designed for the legal field. They all looked good, particularly PracticePanther, though ultimately PracticePanther didn’t quite accommodate the needs of our client.
Choosing specialty software like this is always a bit of trial and error, as there’s invariably some kind of need you won’t have anticipated in your exploratory process. If Zoho doesn’t do the trick, we’ll be back to report on more CRM possibilities.
