I am writing this article as it is surprising how few of us use MS Outlook effectively, and even fewer of us take advantage of the excellent integration with Zoho CRM!
Whilst other forms of customer engagement are gaining in popularity (I have written a separate blog on WhatsApp integration here), there is no doubt that emails, as proven by our inundated inboxes, very much remains the bane of our working lives!
Outlook has some great Email Filters & Rules and hopefully you have leveraged functionality to ensure your Inbox is stripped off Junk & Spam messages. So, I want to focus on the emails that make it through, and contain relevant conversations that should be in your CRM.
Wouldn’t it be great if from within Outlook, you could highlight a message and create a Lead or Contact in your Zoho CRM? Or have your emails automatically linked to existing records in your Zoho CRM? Surely, you would then want the ability to see your Calendar Activities sync across so you could make the best of both worlds!
Well, all of this and more already exists and guess what, it is available at no extra charge if you already use Zoho CRM Professional upwards. Referred to as the plug-in for Microsoft Outlook, please note that it is not available in the Free or Standard editions of Zoho CRM. Nor is the integration with Microsoft 365 (in case you were wondering!), which also comes with Zoho CRM Professional, Enterprise and Ultimate.
You can find the plug-in from your Zoho CRM->Set Up->Marketplace->Microsoft->Zoho CRM Plug-in for Microsoft Outlook, but be sure to have logged in as an Admin user. Follow the process and once installed, you get a similar ribbon to that shown below, in your Outlook:
The next important step is to ensure the integration is set up to meet your objectives and I give below a screenshot to illustrate. There are separate Tabs and this one is to manage your Emails to either automatically link to existing Contacts or Leads, or indeed create a new Lead if there is no match:
When you use two different platforms there is potential for conflicts so be sure to resolve them peacefully using the ‘Conflict Resolution’ Tab shown below, where you can have an alert pop-up to help you decide, or allow Outlook or Zoho CRM to win every time!
I hope that has been useful, so happy integrating and be sure to get in touch if you feel a no-obligation discussion would be beneficial.
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