Zoho launches new AI-powered sales assistant, Blueprint process automation tool

CHENNAI: US-headquartered cloud based CRM solutions company Zoho has unveiled Zia, the new Zoho CRM intelligent sales assistant, powered by AI that detects anomalies, suggests workflows and macros, and also advises salespeople the best time to contact a prospect.

Zoho also launched Blueprint, a Zoho CRM tool for building and implementing business processes. In addition, the company has included a host of new features in its customer relationship management software, Zoho CRM, such as scoring rules and the SalesSignals platform, to help boost sales productivity.

“Salespeople put work into their CRM. But does the CRM work in return to make it easy for salespeople?" said Raju Vegesna, chief evangelist of Zoho. "Debuting with Zoho CRM now, Zia, Zoho’s intelligent assistant, is designed to do exactly that. Zia will contextually suggest ways to automate workflows and macros and detect anomalies, based on the sales rep's CRM usage patterns. Soon Zia will expand her skills to other Zoho apps.”

Zoho has said that Zia is capable of analysing the CRM usage of salespeople to identify sales patterns and predict where an anomaly may occur. This feature lets salespeople know when they're doing well, and when they're not.

With Zia, salespeople can automate tasks that they manually do every day by creating macros and workflows. Now, Zia notices the repetitive tasks for them and suggests macros and workflows, which they can create in a click.

Zia also studies CRM data and customer interactions to let salespeople know the best time to contact a prospect. This feature saves them time and increases their chances of closing deals.

With the launch of SalesSignals platform support can be extended upto ten out-of-the-box integrations - SurveyMonkey, Eventbrite, SMS Magic, DocuSign, and others. The platform can be extended to receive signals from any third-party application making CRM the central hub to capture all customer activity.

Zoho has also unveiled Blueprint that helps Zoho CRM build and execute sales processes from within CRM. This ensures compliance from the entire team, making the process both systematic and repeatable.

Zoho has also released Zoho PhoneBridge Platform, where cloud PBX and call center management solutions can build telephony integrations for Zoho applications. Zoho has partnered with 15 new telephony vendors to provide its users with integrations that offer powerful call management features, including single-click dialling and automatic call logging. Zoho PhoneBridge Platform is open to all cloud PBX and call center management solutions, and it will be made available on request.

While Zia and Blueprint will be available in the Enterprise Edition and above, scoring rules will be available in the Professional Edition and above. The SalesSignals platform will be available across all paid plans, from the Standard Edition and above.

Zoho CRM is free up to 10 users. Paid plans begin at $12/ user/month for the Standard Edition, increase to $20/user/month for the Professional Edition and $35/user/month for the fully featured Enterprise Edition.

A completely customer-centric product suite, Zoho CRM Plus, is available for $50/user/month. There's also a new Ultimate Edition, catering specifically to large businesses with features like dedicated database clusters, service level agreements and dedicated support staff.