Zoho Desk Review

Zoho
Product:
Vendor:
Founded:
Headquarters:
Zoho Desk
Zoho
1996
Pleasanton, CA
Ownership:
Customers:
Deployment Model:
Free Trial:
Private
50 million users
Cloud
Yes

Zoho Desk At A Glance

Good: Blueprint feature that customizes a team's unique processes, ability to set up multibrand help centers, automated tools that improve agents' productivity.
Bad: Initial learning curve, integrating with third-party solutions can be cumbersome, slow response from tech support.
Bottom Line: Cloud-based solution that empowers customer service agents to resolve tickets faster and build better customer relationships.

Product Overview

Zoho Desk is a cloud-based help desk software that enables agents to respond quickly to support tickets for better customer service overall. Agents can manage all of their open tickets from one screen and prioritize any that are critical, while managers can track agents’ performance and customer satisfaction ratings. Because Zoho Desk integrates with Zoho CRM, agents can get contextual information into a customer’s ticket, like their purchasing or interaction history, so they can better understand the nature of the ticket.

The software has numerous benefits, including:

  • Ability to offer self-service functionality to customers
  • Automated tools that streamline repetitive tasks
  • Mobile functionality for accessing features away from the office
  • Customization to fit an organization’s unique processes
  • Intuitive software with minimal training required
  • Flexible pricing plans, including a free version for smaller teams

Features

Zoho Desk has many features. Here are a few of its key ones.

Automation – The software allows managers to set up workflow automation that streamlines tasks. They can create and edit rules, alerts and notifications for tasks, such as round robin ticket assignments and ticket escalation. In addition to workflow automation, the Blueprint process automation feature defines all of the actions associated with a ticket from submission to resolution. Managers can use the drag-and-drop Blueprint Builder to create unique sequences and assign them to specific individual agents or teams. Since it’s important to ensure that the ticket resolution time aligns with a customer’s Service Level Agreement (SLA), managers can use the Blueprint dashboard to monitor any bottlenecks in their processes.

Multichannel ticketing system – With this type of ticketing system, agents can collect tickets from different channels (e.g., email, live chat, phone, social media) and manage them all in one place. They can even respond to the customer through their preferred channel directly from the help desk.

Customer self-service portal – Companies can set up a help center so that their customers can find answers before submitting a ticket. They can create a searchable knowledge base that contains how-to articles, FAQs, a support ticket submission form and other content, and they can create a community forum for customers to participate in discussions. Additional features include SEO-friendly tools, the ability for customer to rate articles, an ASAP plugin for embedding the self-service portal within a website or mobile app and a dedicated help center for each brand (if a company has multiple brands).

Agent productivity – Zoho Desk offer several features that help agents work more efficiently. The Work Modes feature lets them view tickets by priority, due date or status, so they can quickly decide which tickets to prioritize. The Ticket Peek feature previews the ticket’s content, customer interaction history and other relevant information for verification, and the agent can send out tailored responses to customers with the advanced response editor. In addition, there are features that enhance agent collaboration including the Team Feed, Ticket Sharing and a Notification Center. Finally, the Agent Collision Detection feature ensures that multiple agents aren’t working on the same ticket simultaneously.

Zia – Zia is an AI-enabled sales assistant similar to Alexa that provides answers to questions. Users can either text or use voice commands. Zia can also make sales predictions by assigning a score based on how close each deal is to a conversion, as well as detect sales anomalies, notify users of incorrect or outdated data and suggest the best dates and times to reach out to a customer.

Reporting/dashboard – Managers can track various metrics, such as the ticket traffic per channel or ticket resolution, within the dashboard. In addition, they can run reports on time-based metrics that can be filtered by agent or date. Managers can also track agent performance with the Agent Scorecard feature on criteria like average response time and customer satisfaction. The Headquarters (HQ) feature empowers managers to track agent availability and monitor negative feedback from customers. Finally, the Radar mobile app allows managers and agents to monitor real-time analytics on the go.