Founded in 2015, Pypestream created the Customer Engagement Center (CEC), a conversational AI solution where the core product, the Customer Engagement Center (CEC), is an all-in-one, cloud-based suite of 12 components designed to transform any business into a fully automated digital brand. With headquarters in New York, Pypestream has a customer base that includes Shell, Chase, Procter & Gamble, Google, Sling, and HBO Max. Pypestream provides customer engagement in several key industries,…
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Zoho CRM Plus
Score 8.7 out of 10
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Zoho Corporation offers Zoho CRM Plus, a customer experience management platform that features a virtual AI assistant, process automation and business rules engine, and customer behavior analytics.
Pypestream is suited for standard chatbot and conversational flows versus more multi-departmental scenarios. They do very well with guided flow bot services which are great for agent bots within a contact center, but less so for those implementations that have a large document management implementation for FAQs. They do well with service integrations; however, at times troubleshooting edge cases that are impacting performance and adoption can take a while to remedy. I want to believe that better monitoring tools on the platform side would alleviate this for them.
Starting with campaigns, once we send the campaign out, prospects who open it are moved into the sales funnel; the sales team then calls or emails the prospect. Our VOIP works in conjunction with Zoho CRM Plus, so phone calls are logged into the contact. And generates another call, letter, or appointment with the client on the Zoho calendar. Emails are sent through Gmail since Zoho CRM Plus does not work with Gmail. The client's email must be copied and pasted into Gmail. (responses are tracked in the Zoho CRM Plus). Once the sales team meets with the client and starts the process, it turns into an "opportunity" where all stages in the sale are tracked. We mail merge the contact info to the correct letter template, then download it into "Word," where the letter is proofed and corrected as necessary (Zoho merge does not allow you to work in "Word" 2019). When finalized, it is then uploaded back into Zoho CRM Plus under the Opportunity. The sale then continues through the process, and once signed off on, all the details of the job are logged into the Zoho CRM Plus. When the job is completed and closed out, Zoho CRM Plus automatically sends the client a thank you email. The client will then can biannual automatic emails reminding them to set up their bi-annual inspection.
I use Zoho Social the most. There is a feature called "Bulk Scheduler". By uploading a spreadsheet with a number of posts I can schedule out up to 300 social posts to our Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Google accounts at once. Then on the specified day and time, the posts go live. I typically only do a couple of weeks at a time so that I can keep the posts relevant to topics we are concerned with.
Pemco sells surgical instruments to hospitals. The end users are the surgeons. Surgeons may have privileges at multiple hospitals. In order for us to accurately reflect the information about our doctors and hospitals, Zoho CRM Plus has a "many-to-many" feature. This allows doctors to be associated with multiple hospitals, and hospitals to have many doctors associated.
I use the territory management feature to track sales by representatives. This is also a feature unique to Zoho CRM Plus. This helps us track commissions for the reps.
I think that Outlook integration with Zoho CRM is horrible. You have no control over where the emails get attached and IMAP does not always work as it should. One reason we are considering leaving the platform.
Having all emails show up on an account vs having to go to each contact would be great. It used to do this but no longer with IMAP.
I personally started off as a CRM novice. But in a matter of 2 months, I was writing my own custom workflows, playing with modules and fields, and training my sales and operations teams to manage leads and accounts. Simply put, the system is intuitive after a brief introduction. The level of customization is staggering until you change your mindset. Zoho CRM Plus excels where you're able to attack your goals as problems already solved in the platform — you just need to locate the feature to make what you want to happen... happen! I equate it to the Adobe Creative Suite. You don't pick the fun filter before you lay out what exactly you want to draw. With that mindset intact, you can dial in the system to meet your and your team's needs based on your proposed SOLUTIONS, not just leaning heavily into a single feature to "force" some ROI.
Every account representative I have worked with has been extremely helpful and nice. You can tell the account reps and support staff truly care about the product and want to provide you with the resources that you need. The response time is also fast for support inquiries and that has been a massive help for us.
In comparison to Microsoft Bot Framework or now Azure AI service structure, where Pypestream is better suited is in those organizations who want to truly have a partner in development. Pypestream allows the flexibility for your Dev teams to do it themselves, or to be in a managed service where you provide requirements and information and they build and allow you to test and give approvals. They are more willing to work directly with you versus a Microsoft where you will eventually get pushed off to a 3rd party partner to help with advanced implementations.
Zoho CRM is very customizable but compared to Salesforce it is a lot more buggy. Support is lacking but you get what you pay for. Overall we are happy but only because we are not paying a fortune!
Cut down our CRM costs by 50% + without losing any functionality that we needed.
Helped us increase our win percentages by helping us following our unique sales and marketing processes. (doubled sales bookings up until COVID and then still grew 10% in the COVID year)
