Zoho CRM x Freshsworks: Which AI CRM is the best?

AI has evolved beyond a mere feature; it now serves as the driving force behind more intelligent pipelines, quicker decisions, and enhanced customer relationships.

With advancements in predictive insights and automated workflows, CRM platforms compete on the extent to which they integrate AI into each customer interaction.

While both Zoho CRM and Freshworks offer intelligent sales assistance, their levels of AI integration, usability, and impact on business outcomes differ significantly. For teams that prefer simplicity over complicated interfaces and cluttered dashboards, folk provides robust AI integration that assists in timely follow-ups and extracts valuable insights from calls and emails. It represents the most effective application of AI within a CRM.

Why Is AI Integration Important?

AI revolutionizes CRMs, transforming them from static databases into proactive sales assistants. Rather than waiting for representatives to sift through contacts or compose follow-up messages, AI automates essential tasks, predicts outcomes, and enriches data in real-time.

• Faster decision-making. AI identifies which leads to prioritize based on intent signals and deal velocity.
• More effective outreach. Tools recommend message templates, optimal timing, and can even recognize tone or sentiment.
• Improved data quality. Say goodbye to manual data entry; AI automatically fills in missing information and flags duplicates or outdated entries.
• Enhanced sales forecasting. Predictive models enable teams to identify pipeline risks before they arise.
• B2B data enrichment. AI supplements lead records with company size, job titles, LinkedIn profiles, and contact details instantly.
• Automated AI-powered sequences. Personalized cold emails are generated and scheduled automatically based on deal stage, persona, or interaction history.

With AI seamlessly integrated into a CRM, representatives can devote less time to administrative tasks and more to actual selling. This distinction is what elevates a good CRM into one that genuinely boosts revenue!

What is Zoho CRM?

Zoho’s Zia is an integrated AI assistant that allows you to chat or speak for immediate CRM updates—request reports, record modifications, or task creations without sifting through menus. Beneath the surface, Zia provides dynamic deal-win predictions, anomaly detection, and churn forecasting to maintain your pipeline's health. It enhances records using email signature data, alerts you to competitor mentions in real time, and recommends workflow automations based on your team's patterns. With a custom Prediction Builder, you can easily create personalized AI models for any module—no coding skills required.

What is Freshworks?

Freshworks’ Freddy AI serves across sales and support, functioning as a copilot, agent, and analyst. In Freshsales, Freddy evaluates leads, categorizes deals as “Likely to Close” or “At Risk,” and provides a Kanban-style pipeline overview alongside auto-generated email sequences. In Freshdesk, Freddy Copilot generates response suggestions, translates and summarizes tickets in real time, and powers chatbots for self-service assistance. Freddy Insights offers proactive alerts, root-cause analyses, and trend identification, enabling you to address service issues before they escalate.

Feature comparison of Zoho CRM and Freshsworks

AI Follow-ups

Zia utilizes Workflow Rules to streamline your follow-up tasks. After defining triggers like deal stage changes or task completions, Zia monitors which follow-up actions yield the best results and can automatically generate tasks or send notifications when it's time to reconnect. Additionally, Zia's 'Best Time to Contact' feature analyzes previous interactions to recommend the ideal moment for your call or email. For more complex workflows beyond the built-in options, you can integrate with Zoho Flow or Zapier.

Freshworks' Freddy keeps an eye on your inbox for mentions of meeting requests or dates and instantly suggests a task or calendar event when it detects them. When a prospect says, 'Let’s chat Tuesday' or 'I’ll get back to you next week,' Freddy interprets the message, identifies the correct date and time zone, and prompts you to schedule the follow-up—eliminating the need for manual copy-pasting. You can easily modify the reminder or meeting invite as needed, ensuring you never miss a critical follow-up after an important email.

Automated Contact Enrichment

Zoho’s native Zia Data Enrichment enhances your leads by automatically adding company size, industry, key contacts, and financial information through a match with public records. For additional firmographics or technographics beyond Zia's scope, you can install marketplace extensions like Clearbit or InsideView; once integrated, these tools automatically populate your selected fields in real time, eliminating the need for manual lookups or CSV imports.

Freshsales offers built-in auto profile enrichment that utilizes public records and social profiles to enrich every new lead instantly. Freddy AI automatically adds names, titles, company details, phone numbers, and even social media links to your contact records as soon as they are created, ensuring your CRM remains organized without the hassle of extra imports. For more comprehensive firmographic or technographic insights, such as tech stacks or funding rounds, simply add marketplace enrichers like Clearbit or InsideView for seamless, hands-free data management.

Smart Fields

With Zia for Emails, simply ask Zia to draft or refine your message—including subject lines, body text, and tone adjustments—and it will provide polished email snippets in seconds. You can save these as templates and combine them into a sequence using Zoho’s workflow rules. For complete automation, link Zia-generated templates to Zoho Flow to trigger actions based on opens, clicks, or field updates.

Although Freshsales doesn't specifically use the term 'Smart Fields,' you have full control over custom fields, and Freddy can keep them updated. Create any custom property you need, and let Freddy auto-fill those fields by analyzing incoming emails, public data, and your CRM history. The outcome? Dynamic forms and records enriched with AI-sourced values, ready for segmentation, scoring, or personalized outreach.

AI-Powered Message & Sequence Generation

With Zia for Emails, simply prompt Zia to draft or refine your messages—whether it's subject lines, body copy, or tone adjustments—and it quickly provides polished email snippets. You can save these as templates and arrange them into a sequence using Zoho’s workflow rules. For complete automation, connect Zia-generated templates to Zoho Flow, allowing each step to be triggered by opens, clicks, or field updates.

Activate Freddy’s Email Generator and the “Generate Sales Emails” feature to create subject lines, email bodies, and follow-up sequences with just a few prompts. Specify the persona and goal—like “5-step outreach to ISVs” or “post-demo recap email”—and receive refined, on-brand templates in seconds. Save them as templates or integrate them into Freshsales’ workflow automation to execute each step based on opens, clicks, or field updates—achieving full-funnel outreach without any copy hurdles.

Next Best Action

Zia’s Next Best Experience widget evaluates deal health, engagement signals, and historical win patterns to suggest your most impactful next step—be it a call reminder, sharing a pertinent PDF, or sending a personalized follow-up. These recommendations are integrated directly into your CRM and can be included in workflows, ensuring that representatives always know the precise action to take next.

Freddy’s Deal Insights and AI View analyze your pipeline data—such as deal size, stage, past win rates, and recent activity—assigning tags to each opportunity like “Likely to Close,” “Trending,” or “At Risk.” These insights fuel Next Best Action recommendations visible on your deal board as task suggestions: call reminders, content shares, or personalized nudges aimed at driving progress. Incorporate them into your workflow rules so that reps are consistently informed on the next step to take, eliminating uncertainty and enhancing win rates.

folk CRM: The Best AI CRM

folk serves as the ideal sales assistant that every team dreams of. This intuitive, integrated, and proactive CRM handles the mundane tasks, allowing sales representatives to concentrate on nurturing genuine relationships. With an impressive 4.5/5 rating on G2, folk is recognized as one of the most reliable AI-powered CRMs tailored for lean teams.

Crafted specifically for startups, agencies, and sales teams, folk simplifies the use of AI, making it practical and accessible.

Extract intel from calls and emails

Among folk's standout features is its AI-driven call transcript analysis, which enables sales and investment teams to extract vital insights from recorded talks. By integrating seamlessly with dialers like Ringover and Aircall, or call recording tools such as Grain for Google Meet, users can automatically import transcripts into folk. They can then create Magic Fields, an inbuilt AI tool that allows you to define prompts for extracting specific details from the transcript. For instance, sales teams can automatically gather information like contract value, user counts, decision-makers, budgets, or next steps—eliminating the need for manual note-taking. Investment teams can access insights about founder backgrounds, fundraising stages, or what a startup seeks. These fields are fully customizable: just write a prompt, map it to the transcript, and let folk’s AI handle the rest. This results in a structured, searchable CRM enriched with high-value data from your calls, streamlining follow-ups, qualification processes, and reporting.

AI-Powered Follow-Up Reminders

folk's AI Follow-Up feature ensures that no opportunity is overlooked. Built directly into the platform, this smart assistant evaluates your email exchanges to determine when a follow-up is necessary. For example, if you posed a question in an email and received no reply, folk will automatically recognize the lack of response and remind you to follow up at the appropriate time.

Moreover, the feature also works to uncover leads you may have forgotten or conversations that have grown cold. By reviewing past interactions, folk helps you focus on the right contacts to re-engage and advance deals. This intelligent, contextual follow-up system saves time, minimizes manual tracking, and enhances your chances of closing more deals.

AI features in folk CRM summary

• Suggested actions: Receive proactive reminders and AI-driven suggestions based on recent activities or deal stages.
• Extract intel from calls: Utilize AI to unearth next steps, decision makers, your leads' budgets, and all the information you need.
• AI-generated messages: Save time with context-aware outreach suggestions tailored to each contact.
• Duplicate management: AI identifies duplicates and organizes contact lists to maintain a tidy CRM.

folk starts at just $20 per user per month, offering a 14-day free trial with no credit card needed!

Conclusion

In summary, Zoho CRM excels with its AI-driven Zia for dynamic deal predictions and workflow automations, while Freshworks leverages its Freddy AI for lead evaluation and real-time support responses. However, for teams seeking a user-friendly interface with powerful AI capabilities, folk stands out as an exceptional alternative. Its intuitive design simplifies follow-ups, extracts insights from calls and emails, and provides actionable reminders, allowing sales teams to focus on nurturing relationships and closing deals effectively.

Start your 14-day free trial or book a demo today.