Running effective early access programs using Zoho CRM for Everyone
Process
Why do early access programs matter?
Customer-centric companies that develop products to make their customers' lives easier often aim to bridge the gap between their internal development and real-world usefulness through early access programs (EAPs). Such companies rely on their core users—their strategic test beds—to use their products in depth, explore new features, and deliver real-world insights that go beyond internal testing. This customer-driven product refinement is a collaborative win-win strategy for companies as well as their customers.
EAPs offer interested customers the chance to use products before their official releases. They're a structured way by which product management teams can validate their ideas, identify bugs, uncover usability issues, and refine their products based on actual user feedback to make them more reliable and market-ready. Such early insights from the customers help reduce the risk of costly post-launch fixes, ensure that products meet real-world users' expectations, and foster a sense of collaboration with early adopters—often turning them into long-term product advocates.
About Zoho's EAP
As a customer-centric company, Zoho decided to streamline its EAP, which used to be a manual and siloed process. The product management team at Zoho wanted to ensure its products met market needs while minimizing launch risks and usability challenges by streamlining internal collaboration.
The early access program process
Feature addition to the EAP
A feature's early access starts with its addition to the EAP. Zoho's product management teams inform stakeholders across multiple teams—such as marketing and support—when the feature is ready to be rolled out for early access.
Avenues to invite the early access requests
Upon setting a launch date for an EAP, the marketing team creates various channels to send EAP invitations to customers who have requested early access. Interested customers submit their requests to participate in EAPs by providing the necessary information.
Providing early access to customers
Zoho's marketing team consolidates early access requests over a specific period and passes them on to the product management team to enable it. The product management team, in turn, provides early access to customers who have requested it—who are then notified about their early access permissions via automated notifications.
Feedback collection
Feedback from EAP members is collected through various channels, including surveys, in-app feedback forms, and direct interactions with the customer-facing teams. These responses are then segmented based on key criteria such as sentiment and topic, which enables targeted follow-up actions. These insights gathered are then consolidated into a dashboard to highlight emerging trends and support data-driven decision-making. Positive feedback is further curated and used as customer testimonials for marketing and promotional purposes.
Dashboard management
Dashboards are created to actively manage key program metrics, including the number of members added to the EAP, their activation statuses, and evolving feedback trends. These visualized insights enable the team to monitor engagement levels, track user behavior, and identify areas for improvement in real time.
Challenges
Managing EAPs at scale posed several operational challenges for Zoho CRM's internal teams:
Lack of centralized tracking
There wasn't a unified system in place to monitor member enrollment or track rollout progress, which resulted in disconnected workflows across the product, support, and marketing teams.
Siloed team communication
The lack of a centralized communication channel led to misalignments in Zoho's rollout strategies, as well as delays in execution among internal stakeholders like product managers, developers, marketers, and support agents.
Manual onboarding process
Member onboarding was time-consuming, error-prone, and lacked automation—all of which slowed down the overall program flow.
Scattered feedback collection
Zoho collected user feedback through multiple unlinked channels, such as emails, chats, and forums, which made it difficult to consolidate, analyze, and act on insights effectively.
Ineffective reporting and limited visibility
Program performance data was often incomplete or distributed across different platforms, which resulted in inefficient and inaccurate reporting. Due to these fragmented systems and processes, stakeholders lacked a clear view of each EAP's overall performance and impact.
Solution
To streamline EAP management, the team created a dedicated teamspace in Zoho CRM for Everyone centered on three core modules: Programs, Members, and Feedback.
The Programs module as the rollout hub
The Programs module serves as the central hub for all EAP rollouts. Each program record captures essential details like timelines, owners, linked documents, and engagement metrics (e.g., number of active users, feedback submitted, and testimonials received). This gives stakeholders a single, organized view by which they can plan, execute, and monitor every stage of the EAP rollout efficiently.
Managing participant information with the Members module
The Members module serves as a centralized directory for all EAP participants, including internal users, partners, and customers. It tracks each participant's lifecycle stage, such as "Invited," "Activated," or "Exited." It also includes key operational details like whether the welcome email was sent, whether product access was granted, and whether surveys were completed. With pre-configured tagging and segmentation, the team could easily group participants based on region, role, or cohort, and thereby enable more targeted communication and personalized program management.
The Feedback module as the insight engine
This module acts as a central feedback repository, collecting input from various sources such as emails, community posts, in-product forms, and internal discussions. Each feedback entry is linked to the relevant EAP program and the respective participant to provide complete context. Feedback is also categorized by type, such as a bug, suggestion, or testimonial, and assigned a priority level, all of which makes it easier for teams to triage, respond, and take action quickly and systematically.
Based on these modules, the team created a centralized dashboard where every stakeholder can keep track of an EAP's progress.
Setting up the teamspace and assigning users
Zoho created a dedicated teamspace named Early Access Program, with role-based access for teams across product management, engineering, marketing, and support functions. Subsequently, they added the Programs, Members, and Feedback custom modules to this teamspace, and added internal users to the teamspace with the appropriate access privileges and permissions for these modules.
Logging programs with key details
Every new EAP initiative is added as a record in the Programs module, where information like the program's name, owner, timeline, and key resources generated (e.g., guides and videos) are documented. Zoho also created custom fields to track engagement metrics, like active users, feedback count, and testimonial submissions.
Onboarding participants efficiently
Participants are onboarded using a combination of manual entry, CSV imports, and webforms. Automated workflows trigger welcome emails, update lifecycle fields like EAP Feature Status, and tag records appropriately to ensure every participant enjoys an easy and automated.
Managing the participant lifecycle
Each participant progresses through stages, including Invited, Activated, and Feedback Given. These transitions are tracked through custom fields, while internal notes document specific conversations or support interactions to help teams maintain context and continuity in the program.
Capturing and linking feedback appropriately
Participants submit their feedback through CRM-linked email aliases, embedded product forms, community threads, and internal calls. The Feedback module serves as a centralized repository to track and manage participant feedback. Each entry is tagged, prioritized, and linked to both the relevant member and program to create a complete view of user sentiments and issues.
Reporting and analytics
Custom dashboards provide real-time insights into each EAP's performance. Key metrics include:
Total users invited vs. activated
Volume and types of feedback submitted
Implemented suggestions
Collected testimonials
These reports support Zoho's go-to-market strategies and provide leadership with visibility into product readiness and user reception.
Result
Onboarding time was reduced from three days to just a few hours through automation.
100% of feedback is captured, categorized, and made actionable.
Repeatable processes have been established for future early access programs, including external-facing initiatives.
Foundations for case study development are embedded directly into the system.