New Capabilities, Including Team Pipelines, Toppings, and Developer Center, go Beyond Sales to Manage all Types of Customer Operations for Small Businesses
Zoho Corporation, a leading global technology company, is unveiling the latest version of Bigin, the company’s CRM solution for small businesses. As the preferred CRM solution for small businesses, Bigin offers a simple yet powerful CRM without the high barrier of entry and cost. Today’s product updates further support small and micro businesses by providing users the tools and insights they need to maintain and grow meaningful and high-value relationships with customers in a challenging economic environment.
Since Bigin’s launch in 2020, it has stood out as a robust, easy-to-use, and welcoming CRM solution thanks to its 30-minute set up promise. Zoho has observed that around 65% of Bigin’s customers have never used a CRM previously, making it the ideal choice for business owners who are looking to move away from spreadsheets. When they outgrow Bigin, Zoho also offers them an easy migration to Zoho’s full-fledged CRM solution. Bigin now boasts 20K customers and continues to help small and micro businesses manage all of their customer-facing operations within a unified platform.
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According to Laurie McCabe, co-founder of SMB Group, “In my years working closely with SMBs it is evident that they simply can’t manage multiple tools for customer operations or afford the solutions that are more robust due to limited resources and budget. It’s frustrating to see that many CRM solutions available to SMBs offer limited functionality — where interoperability with third party apps, data sharing, and pipeline management aren’t included. As a result, they are unable to deliver the level of value SMBs want and need. This problem is so prevalent that 58% of small businesses (with 1-100 employees) say that figuring out what tech solution will work best for them is a top tech challenge, and half note that they struggle to integrate new applications with existing ones, according to our latest research.”
Bigin’s latest version includes the introduction of Team Pipelines, which allows customer-facing teams to manage their distinctive operations using a distinct set of pipelines and sub-pipelines within a single Bigin account. Competitive offerings often cater only to a single function — like sales — whereas Bigin is an efficient solution for all customer-facing teams. New features compile customer operations into one place, and enable tighter alignment and collaboration between individuals and teams without compromising the simplicity that makes Bigin stand out.
“Small businesses face challenges in choosing the right technology for managing their customer-facing operations because of constraints related to time, cost, and software implementation,” says Mani Vembu, Chief Operating Officer, Zoho. “Bigin is the only solution that brings together all customer operations like sales, onboarding, delivery, training, advocacy, and more into an intuitive interface that takes only 30 minutes to deploy. By bringing together all the facets of customer operations into a single view, Bigin allows small businesses to have a more accurate understanding of the customer’s journey. These insights help them attract and retain customers, ultimately growing the business. The fast-growing adoption of Bigin shows the expanding appetite of small businesses who want and need CRM technology suited to their particular needs, helping them move beyond old-school spreadsheets.”
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Key Product Updates
- Team Pipelines: The most significant addition to Bigin, Team Pipelines brings together various customer operations into a single 360-degree view. Businesses can connect key customer processes such as deal management, onboarding, delivery, training, ticket management, refund requests, customer testimonials, etc. thereby ensuring small businesses manage their day-to-day processes in an easier way. Businesses can now enjoy a complete CRM that goes beyond sales management and offers them a single source of truth when it comes to analyzing customer data.
- Connected Pipelines: Alongside Team Pipelines, Bigin introduced a new way of connecting customer records across different processes. With Connected Pipelines, businesses can automate the movement of customer data across various pipelines, enabling them to deliver seamless end-to-end customer experiences. For example, once a deal is won, sales teams can automate the creation of a connected record in the customer onboarding pipeline. This way, businesses spend less time entering repetitive customer information and have more time to focus on actual customer conversations.
- Toppings: Additional functionalities and third-party integrations can be added on-demand to address business needs that go beyond the standard offering. For example, the ‘Email-In’ topping ensures emails sent to different email aliases in an organization are automatically mapped to the relevant customer records in each pipeline. Similarly, the ‘File Cabinet’ topping automates the process of file collection where customers can manage all their documents through unique, secure links.
- Mobile Capabilities: In response to the increased adoption of Bigin’s mobile app, Zoho is ensuring all new features are available across iOS, iPadOS, Android, and macOS. This makes for seamless employee experiences and is further enhanced with a new Dynamic Display which helps users customize the look, style, and visibility of records in their pipelines. Bigin also recently updated its apps for the Apple’s iOS16 and Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 4 launches, where it was an exclusive launch partner.
- Developer Center: Bigin now opens its developer platform to a network of global app developers and partners who are looking to create custom solutions for unique business needs. With various developer tools and components like custom fields, buttons, links, widgets, related lists, and REST APIs, developers can create new Toppings which can be monetized in the Bigin Marketplace.
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Pricing
Bigin by Zoho CRM starts at $7/user/month (billed annually) for the Express edition and goes up to $12/user/month (billed annually) for the Premier edition. There is also a free edition available.
Zoho Privacy Pledge
Zoho respects user privacy and does not have an ad-revenue model in any part of its business, including its free products. The company owns and operates its data centers, ensuring complete oversight of customer data, privacy, and security. More than 80 million users around the world, across hundreds of thousands of companies, rely on Zoho everyday to run their businesses, including Zoho itself.
