Kustomer vs. Zoho CRM

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Kustomer
Score 8.7 out of 10
N/A
Kustomer is a customer service CRM platform built for managing high support volume by optimizing experiences throughout the customer service journey. Kustomer was acquired by Facebook in late 2020, but spun out in 2023 and re-launched as an independent entity, Kustomer, LLC.
$89
per month, per user
Zoho CRM
Score 8.6 out of 10
N/A
Zoho CRM is a simple, very low-cost CRM option for the smaller end of the SMB segment. The product has several useful integrations with other products, including QuickBooks, and Google Apps and Google Docs. The product also has an integrated project management module.
$14
Per User/Per Month
Pricing
KustomerZoho CRM
Editions & Modules
Enterprise
$89
per month, per user
Ultimate
$139
per month, per user
Standard
$14.00
Per User/Per Month
Professional
$23.00
Per User/Per Month
Enterprise
$40.00
Per User/Per Month
Ultimate
$52.00
Per User/Per Month
Plus
$57.00
Per User/Per Month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
KustomerZoho CRM
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup fee$14 /user/month
Additional DetailsAll plans require an annual subscription and 8 users minimum.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
KustomerZoho CRM
Considered Both Products
Kustomer
Chose Kustomer
I think that Kustomer is the most user friendly BUT I think the other platforms are built to do a lot more and can be much more customized
Chose Kustomer
I find it baffling how little data can be stored or associated with a customer in many other systems, and how difficult that can be to set up. It is fine if you already have a robust CDP that you can hook up and use to power your CRM, but it is rare that an organization has the …
Chose Kustomer
It has improved a lot of the training time needed for our new hires to understand the Kustomer interface and how to handle communications fully. The time invested went significantly down, and the learning curve improved a lot as well.
Chose Kustomer
Apps like Intercom, Zendesk, and Gorgios all treat customer inquiries as tickets, just tracking that one issue or interaction with a customer. Kustomer treats each customer as an individual, which allows us to provide top-notch customer service. Customers love that we're able …
Chose Kustomer
Kustomer is more modern and capable of so much more any of my other systems have compared to in technical support customer interfaces.
Chose Kustomer
Kustomer is a great fit for our organization because we can cut down on multiple contacts from the same customer and see all their information in one place. It's also infinitely customizable, so if we need changes made we can make them while still using the same platform. This …
Chose Kustomer
Kustomer is different from slack since Slack is just for communicating with the whole team while Kustomer is more on communicating with our customers.
Chose Kustomer
I have never used anything besides Kustomer and I don't know if I ever will because Kustomer is just so helpful!!
Chose Kustomer
The UI of Kustomer is a lot cooler than what we are using before. There are a lot of features that Kustomer has that make things easier and more convenient than Desk.com.
Chose Kustomer
I use both in my role with the company. Our social media channels are managed through Khoros, but we use Kustomer to notate and contact customers outside of social media. I'd much rather bring our social media channels into Kustomer, to help with efficiency.
Chose Kustomer
I have not had any experience with other programs like Kustomer.
Chose Kustomer
Kustomer has a great team that is easy to work with. They are always there to support and are pleasant, as well.
Chose Kustomer
Zendesk: In my opinion, Kustomer is more powerful when used to its full potential due to its workflows/automations.
Chose Kustomer
Kustomer is far more intuitive, personal, and holistic than Zendesk. As a company who has a lot of interaction with a single customer, it is such an advantage to take the customer approach rather than a single ticket approach. Zendesk was very limited in a lot of the actions …
Chose Kustomer
All other systems I have used have been internally-made programs that were a lot more basic order-taking systems, no notes or call functions outside of when order was placed. Doesn't really compare here.
Chose Kustomer
Kustomer simply does more than any other platform I've been able to work with. Sure some others will give you a handful of neat tricks built in for managing a channel or two but those rarely offer any external integrative capacity or limit what you can do in connections. …
Chose Kustomer
Intercom, Kayako, Zendesk, Freshdesk have all been used by myself in the past, and were evaluated before we chose to go with Kustomer.
Chose Kustomer
I was not personally involved in the decision-making process when selecting a new CRM and ultimately settling on Kustomer. That said, I'm happy with the decision to partner with them. Compared to our previous CRMs, it is much easier to work with everything in one place and we …
Chose Kustomer
Kustomer was better suited to the personalized nature of the service that we're trying to provide.
Chose Kustomer
Glovo was using Zendesk before. Kustomer is much more flexible in terms of integration capabilities and customisation.
Chose Kustomer
Moving from Zendesk to Kustomer was driven by the clarity that the customer timeline brings for advocate engagement alongside the custom workflow abilities.
Chose Kustomer
Zendesk did not give a big picture of the customer. It was more of a ticketing platform, and only gave statistics of those conversations. We were unable to track customer sentiment, or other attributes of the customer.
Chose Kustomer
Kustomer is far more scalable and flexible than Zendesk, and it provides a real omni-channel experience far from the "Zendesk for mails, Zendesk chat for chats" we were used to. On the automation and customisation features, it gets even clearer how Kustomer can deal with a lot …
Chose Kustomer
I've used Desk and other platforms in the past and none of them are as interactive or user friendly as Kustomer.
Zoho CRM
Chose Zoho CRM
After thoroughly evaluating leading CRM solutions, including Salesforce, HubSpot, and Microsoft Dynamics, we selected Zoho CRM for its exceptional value, versatility, and customer-centric approach. Zoho CRM stands out us in term of comprehensive feature support, Integration and …
Chose Zoho CRM
We required a full-featured corporate working tool, and Hubspot wasn't the most excellent alternative. We were guaranteed that Zoho CRM may fill up the holes in our earlier framework. Furthermore, Zoho is fantastically cost-effective for indeed the most minor endeavors, giving …
Chose Zoho CRM
An affordable, comprehensive suite of tools suitable for small to enterprise-sized businesses.
Chose Zoho CRM
Free user access was one reason to use it more than any other software. Also, for a mid-size organization, the Salesforce cost was a little higher, and Pipedrive was almost similar to Zoho. As we were already using Zoho, we found no urgency to switch.
Chose Zoho CRM
Overall top quality and great features! Fantastic!
Chose Zoho CRM
I love campaigns, very user friendly. Synching with Zoho CRM is easy and it's a nice feature to not have to update 2 programs, when we update a contact record in Zoho CRM, it's nice to know that that contact info is also updated in campaigns. We never have to worry about emails …
Chose Zoho CRM
We used to use Hubspot before Zoho. I think Hubspot is a great tool and contains a lot of very nice features, but Zoho stacks up quite well against it as it offers most of the same features at a significantly reduced price. We could also migrate our data from Hubspot to Zoho …
Chose Zoho CRM
Salesforce CRM would have been my go-to if I had the budget for it. Zoho CRM goes 90% of the way for a much decent price.
Chose Zoho CRM
Sugar was great when we first got started. Zoho CRM allowed us to take things to the next level and get the support that we needed along with that transition. Zoho CRM's customization was mush easier to setup and use without having to rely on developers to create custom code …
Chose Zoho CRM
We have only looked into other CRMs but Zoho is our first one. I think we chose it because of price not necessarily because it was better than any of the other options. It was our first CRM system so we didn't have anything to base it off of.
Chose Zoho CRM
It is decent against what is offered in the market, it follows certain philosophy of CRM which may not be a perfect fit for everyone.
There are not so many guides and new updates push for differentiation.
Formatting and bugs appearances are often an issue.
Chose Zoho CRM
Overall Zoho CRM is great. It might not be the best CRM but if you compare the price difference, i think Zoho CRM does wonders. I ll not line it up in the same position with Salesforce and Hubspot but it is full full-capacity CRM. If they add AI capabilities and add more …
Chose Zoho CRM
Hubspot and NetSuite are much better solutions in my mind, I've used both and enjoyed both.
Chose Zoho CRM
While Zoho CRM was not as feature rich as Salesforce.com, it was definitely more affordable. We looked at upgrading our current CRM, Goldmine CRM, but it was too limited and the upgrade offered was not cloud based. We were already a Zoho customer, using Zoho Projects, and …
Chose Zoho CRM
HUbSpot Is not Effective . Even though it has all Option its not user Friendly to Create Report and filter the leads like that so i switch to Zoho
Chose Zoho CRM
For our organizations requirements, Zoho CRM fits for it and pricing to less than other products and it also has all suite plan where accounts team and marketing team use.
Chose Zoho CRM
All in one stack with Zoho One has helped us to make the decision to choose CRM
Chose Zoho CRM
I am using both at the same time, due to lack of performance on Zoho CRM marketing toolset (lack of different unsubscribe pages, forms, language support for users) we needed to find another alternative.
Chose Zoho CRM
We selected ZOHO over the above - specifically salesforce - initially because of the price. Secondly, we do not have the technical expertise and budget to do a lot of customization at this time. So, we needed a product that had a good user interface, and that was flexible and …
Chose Zoho CRM
Zoho is cheaper and simpler but not that efficient as compare to HubSpot CRM. I think HubSpot has 100 more features than Zoho.
Email deliverability is also better on HubSpot in my experience. I think but it does the job though. It all depends on what you want to do.
Chose Zoho CRM
Zoho has an all-in-one solution called Zoho One which combines most of the solutions a company of our size requires. Thanks to this, we were able to consolidate our solutions into a single ecosystem while saving money. Zoho also has sales and marketing automation features that …
Chose Zoho CRM
Zoho CRM provide the end to eend solution for the end users as well as the zoho users. It provide the solution for the developer, management and billing as well invoice for the clients
Features
KustomerZoho CRM
Incident and problem management
Comparison of Incident and problem management features of Product A and Product B
Kustomer
8.1
Ratings
1% above category average
Zoho CRM
-
Ratings
Organize and prioritize service tickets8.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Expert directory8.30 Ratings00 Ratings
Subscription-based notifications8.50 Ratings00 Ratings
ITSM collaboration and documentation8.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Ticket creation and submission8.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Ticket response8.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Self Help Community
Comparison of Self Help Community features of Product A and Product B
Kustomer
8.5
Ratings
8% above category average
Zoho CRM
-
Ratings
External knowledge base8.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Internal knowledge base9.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Multi-Channel Help
Comparison of Multi-Channel Help features of Product A and Product B
Kustomer
8.0
Ratings
3% above category average
Zoho CRM
-
Ratings
Customer portal8.60 Ratings00 Ratings
IVR8.30 Ratings00 Ratings
Social integration7.30 Ratings00 Ratings
Email support10.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Help Desk CRM integration6.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Sales Force Automation
Comparison of Sales Force Automation features of Product A and Product B
Kustomer
-
Ratings
Zoho CRM
8.5
Ratings
10% above category average
Customer data management / contact management00 Ratings8.50 Ratings
Workflow management00 Ratings8.30 Ratings
Territory management00 Ratings8.70 Ratings
Opportunity management00 Ratings8.70 Ratings
Integration with email client (e.g., Outlook or Gmail)00 Ratings8.70 Ratings
Contract management00 Ratings8.70 Ratings
Quote & order management00 Ratings8.10 Ratings
Interaction tracking00 Ratings8.10 Ratings
Channel / partner relationship management00 Ratings8.40 Ratings
Customer Service & Support
Comparison of Customer Service & Support features of Product A and Product B
Kustomer
-
Ratings
Zoho CRM
8.3
Ratings
10% above category average
Case management00 Ratings8.40 Ratings
Call center management00 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Help desk management00 Ratings8.50 Ratings
Marketing Automation
Comparison of Marketing Automation features of Product A and Product B
Kustomer
-
Ratings
Zoho CRM
8.5
Ratings
11% above category average
Lead management00 Ratings8.50 Ratings
Email marketing00 Ratings8.50 Ratings
CRM Project Management
Comparison of CRM Project Management features of Product A and Product B
Kustomer
-
Ratings
Zoho CRM
8.4
Ratings
10% above category average
Task management00 Ratings8.50 Ratings
Billing and invoicing management00 Ratings8.30 Ratings
Reporting00 Ratings8.40 Ratings
CRM Reporting & Analytics
Comparison of CRM Reporting & Analytics features of Product A and Product B
Kustomer
-
Ratings
Zoho CRM
8.4
Ratings
10% above category average
Forecasting00 Ratings8.40 Ratings
Pipeline visualization00 Ratings8.40 Ratings
Customizable reports00 Ratings8.60 Ratings
Customization
Comparison of Customization features of Product A and Product B
Kustomer
-
Ratings
Zoho CRM
8.3
Ratings
10% above category average
Custom fields00 Ratings8.40 Ratings
Custom objects00 Ratings8.10 Ratings
Scripting environment00 Ratings8.20 Ratings
API for custom integration00 Ratings8.40 Ratings
Security
Comparison of Security features of Product A and Product B
Kustomer
-
Ratings
Zoho CRM
8.4
Ratings
1% above category average
Single sign-on capability00 Ratings8.30 Ratings
Role-based user permissions00 Ratings8.40 Ratings
Social CRM
Comparison of Social CRM features of Product A and Product B
Kustomer
-
Ratings
Zoho CRM
8.3
Ratings
12% above category average
Social data00 Ratings8.30 Ratings
Social engagement00 Ratings8.30 Ratings
Integrations with 3rd-party Software
Comparison of Integrations with 3rd-party Software features of Product A and Product B
Kustomer
-
Ratings
Zoho CRM
8.6
Ratings
16% above category average
Marketing automation00 Ratings8.70 Ratings
Compensation management00 Ratings8.50 Ratings
Platform
Comparison of Platform features of Product A and Product B
Kustomer
-
Ratings
Zoho CRM
8.6
Ratings
16% above category average
Mobile access00 Ratings8.60 Ratings
Best Alternatives
KustomerZoho CRM
Small Businesses
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Score 9.0 out of 10
Salesmate
Salesmate
Score 10.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Score 9.0 out of 10
Creatio
Creatio
Score 9.7 out of 10
Enterprises
SysAid
SysAid
Score 9.1 out of 10
Creatio
Creatio
Score 9.7 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
KustomerZoho CRM
Likelihood to Recommend
9.0
(0 ratings)
8.5
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
7.9
(0 ratings)
7.6
(0 ratings)
Usability
10.0
(0 ratings)
7.8
(0 ratings)
Availability
9.1
(0 ratings)
8.8
(0 ratings)
Performance
6.4
(0 ratings)
8.5
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
9.4
(0 ratings)
6.1
(0 ratings)
In-Person Training
7.6
(0 ratings)
8.0
(0 ratings)
Online Training
8.3
(0 ratings)
5.6
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
7.9
(0 ratings)
5.6
(0 ratings)
Configurability
7.9
(0 ratings)
5.1
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
7.2
(0 ratings)
7.2
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
9.1
(0 ratings)
5.7
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
8.7
(0 ratings)
7.7
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
9.1
(0 ratings)
7.8
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
KustomerZoho CRM
Likelihood to Recommend
It works really well for you to ask a teammate to review a case/email/message and provide some input since you can all review the same conversations and client accounts. They can also cover your inbox using your email handle in case you are out of the office suing some well deserved PTO.
Read full review
This is very useful and handy software for initial use and sometimes later on. Its low price and rich features make it one of the most suitable software for small and midsize organizations. Customer management and tracking make your daily tasks easier.
Read full review
Pros
  • All customer data (past orders, communication with customer service, rewards account data) is in one place. This helps agents avoid confusion and reduces the number of tabs they need to open.
  • The Knowledge Base (or K Base) is very helpful. Any time we roll out a new policy or have a limited-time promotion, we can add all the relevant information and worksheets there for the convenience of the agents. That way they can stay in a chat while looking up the answer to a question.
  • We can seamlessly move from chat into email if the customer leaves or the queue times are too long. All the interactions will stay on the customer profile page, so they are kept up to date.
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  • Zoho CRM has so much space to capture lots of information.
  • Zoho CRM can be customized for your organization's needs.
  • Zoho CRM is great for running reports to help make business decisions.
  • We love all the different dashboards we can create.
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Cons
  • For our team, the feature that defaults all notes to begin in "done" status is difficult. Throughout each day we need to have notes open and assigned back and forth to different teams, and we have to remember to manually "open" each note. There is too much room for human error with this setting, and it is easy for important notes to be missed if a user forgets to open the note.
  • Similarly, it can be hard to remember to assign emails/notes to a particular team in addition to a user. We almost exclusively work out of team inboxes, and if someone on Care writes an email to a customer, the email will automatically be "done" when it is created, and it will be assigned to the user who wrote it, but not also to the user's team. There are instances where an email needs to be snoozed for several days/hours with further action needed, and unless the user remembers to assign the email to their team it may "awake" from the snooze and not be visible to anyone except the user who created it. Similarly to my first comment, this leaves a lot of room for human error and is not very intuitive.
  • Personally, I do not love that all tickets/emails/notes are jumbled together in the same inbox. While this gives visibility to everything on the "to do" list at the same time, it can be visually overwhelming. We have created unique folders for certain types of projects or categories of work, but have experienced tech glitches or just the awkwardness of another step to manually read the note, determine what type of category it is, and then manually assign it to another folder. Would love to have things auto-sort and take out this manual lift.
  • I love the idea of the autopilot setting, but we have not been able to use this for our work because it sorts items based on time, and not based on priority. In our line of work, we may have an urgent situation arise that needs attention before an email that was sent in 60 minutes ago. The autopilot feature would push the email to my associates sooner than it would the urgent situation from 5 minutes ago. Due to this, we manually monitor inboxes and assign work to ourselves and others.
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  • Need some way to switch a field type without losing the pre-existing data.
  • The settings controls should be broken out differently - I don't like that I can't keep some users from exporting all contact records (i.e., the entire Contacts module) because if the export function is turned off, the export function of Reports for those same modules is also blocked.
  • Frustrating that only 3 custom lookup fields are allowed per module in our license.
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Likelihood to Renew
Because there's no other tool like Kustomer
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We are generally very satisfied with the zoho crm. Some extras are just added to improve productivity but overall Zoho CRM is highly recommended over many competitors. You can start with a few clicks to configure your needs. As you become an expert, you will be able to activate and configure the modules and integrations that you require. I know we still have a lot to discover so we're sticking with Zoho CRM, we're not interested in new options at the moment
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Usability
There is a learning curve, but it is more than worth it, especially to have a dedicated resource pointed at Kustomer and any other software it interacts with. The basic implementation is useful, and powerful - certainly a MASSIVE upgrade over taking care of your customers in an email inbox or shuffling between multiple windows and applications! It is also set up really well to grow and reconfigure with your business. I'm a big fan.
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Compared to our previous CRM, Zoho is a breeze. I can look up customers and reports with no issue. There are times when it may be difficult to find something, but I assume that is because I am not in Zoho every day like the sales team is. It does everything we need very simply, so I would definitely recommend it to others.
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Reliability and Availability
Because Kustomer is available when you need it
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In my many years using Zoho, I think there were only 1 or 2 days when there was something happening and I was not able to log in. Sure, it wasn't fun and we all panicked a bit, but right after that, all was well and work-life continued. Being cloud based, I'm never worried about losing my iPhone, iPad or Laptop as I know I can log in anywhere on any device and workflow won't stop.
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Performance
Because ages load quickly, reports complete in a reasonable time frame, given their complexity
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I don't recall every having any issues with a page not loading due to it being a Zoho issue. Anytime I've had any issues with something being wonky, I clear cache and that has always solved the problem. Or a simply computer reboot and we're back, hard at work. Look, I don't expect any product to delivery 100%, 100% of the time but if I had any consistent ongoing issues, I would have left many years ago. I still keep my eyes open to what is new but after a quick evaluation, I know Zoho will long be my home.
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Support Rating
It’s a great tool that has helped our company and overall customer service. I believe if we were able to edit certain setting for our specific company that would be hopeful. We have been told before that certain desires of ours would make a change throughout all of Kustomer. Which is not something we would want, we would just want that to change for our business.
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We did the training and that was a huge waste of money. The information provided was basic and the instructor was sloppy (he even forgot to turn off his mic when he used the restroom - no one should ever hear what we heard). I offered up a 9 because we were able to find what we needed on your website.
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In-Person Training
Because they are very hands-on in training us and very approachable
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I attended a Zoho-Holics event in Austin, TX, several years ago, and it blew my mind. So many industries were represented using Zoho in so many different ways. It was unbelievable all that I learned from that experience, as there were features that I wasn't aware of that I immediately started using. Best of all, the trainers were patient and knowledgeable
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Online Training
It was very easy to understand.
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There is an endless supply of YouTube videos from Zoho and the many Zoho partners/consultants. Plus, Zoho has it's own library of training videos and webinars to learn from plus an entire community at the ready to answer any questions. While Zoho has been available for many years, there are constantly new training videos and webinars available for the novice and the experienced users.
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Implementation Rating
Nothing really because it is easy to use. After an hour of using it, we're already getting the hang of it.
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This should have been a project run by IT and implemented by IT but instead was implemented by Sales team and managed by them. Since this was the case our implementation has had many issues. Starting at the company required me to dig in and correct a lot of stuff within the initial set up.
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Alternatives Considered
I find it baffling how little data can be stored or associated with a customer in many other systems, and how difficult that can be to set up. It is fine if you already have a robust CDP that you can hook up and use to power your CRM, but it is rare that an organization has the resources or the customer-focus to rally behind setting up their customer service/experience team up for success. With a platform like Kustomer, you can actually evolve the relationship over time, or use the past experiences (number of contacts, purchases, previous issues, etc.) to power your next steps with a customer, making for a much more nuanced relationship with a human, not just a ticket.
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We required a full-featured corporate working tool, and Hubspot wasn't the most excellent alternative. We were guaranteed that Zoho CRM may fill up the holes in our earlier framework. Furthermore, Zoho is fantastically cost-effective for indeed the most minor endeavors, giving everything they need. All things considered, Zoho CRM has upgraded our client intelligent and assisted our operations.
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Scalability
Because customer is flexible and scalable
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We're still in the early stages of scaling this across departments. We have high aspirations of doing this, but it takes time to migrate to the new system and to help people get acquainted of doing their work in a different way thru Zoho.
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Return on Investment
  • We’re getting so much positive feedback — which is not something you traditionally associate with a customer care team — because we’re making it effortless for customers to deliver both positive and negative feedback, and we can now resolve the bad feedback really really quickly.
  • Primarily from our increased efficiency with Kustomer, we’ve seen a significant reduction of $3 to $4 for every cost per contact.
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  • It is very cost-effective. It has all the features we need at a significantly lower cost than the alternatives.
  • It is also very customizable; we created our own set of objects, etc., based on our workflows.
  • It is easy to integrate into your systems.
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ScreenShots

Kustomer Screenshots

Screenshot of Example of a customer profile within Kustomer.Screenshot of Example of how Kustomer’s automated chats can save agents time by handling less complex requests automatically.

Zoho CRM Screenshots

Screenshot of Deals - Cash in on all opportunities. Close more deals. Great sales management is all about prioritizing, tracking, and monitoring the deals in your pipeline. Zoho CRM gives you everything you need to manage deals across territories and sales structures.Screenshot of Activities - Keep track of all the tasks, meetings, calls, events, or activity records. Neatly organize the numerous records along with the activities associated to them such as follow-up, pre sales and post sales activities, phone conversations etc.