Vendor:
Founded:
Headquarters:
Zoho
1996
Pleasanton, CA
Customers:
Deployment Model:
Free Trial:
50 million users
Cloud
Yes
Zoho Desk At A Glance
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.
Target Market
Zoho Desk targets customer service departments in companies of all sizes in retail, hospitality and other industries. We’ve listed 10 of its customers below.
- Bancolombia
- Daimler AG
- Jaguar
- McAfee
- Mercedes-Benz
- National Health Service (NHS)
- Quick Response Roadside Assistance
- Rutgers University
- ST Engineering
- Tata Chemicals Limited
Implementation/Integration
Companies that select any of the paid plans will first get a 15-day free trial. They simply sign up and can begin using Zoho Desk within minutes. After the trial period, they can purchase the plan via credit card.
Zoho Desk integrates to Zoho’s other apps, such as Zoho CRM, Zoho BugTracker, Zoho SalesIQ and Zoho Creator. It also integrates to telephony providers (e.g., RingCentral, Amazon Web Services), marketing automation software (e.g., Mailchimp), Google Apps, project management software (e.g., Asana, Trello, Jira), Salesforce, Slack and Zapier.
Customer Service & Support
Zoho Desk has a knowledge base where users can browse articles, submit a support ticket and participate in a community forum. There’s also a user guide and webinars for new users to get familiar with the software.
In its specific pricing plans, Zoho Desk offers additional support: email support for all users, phone support for all paid users and chat support for Professional and Enterprise plan users.
Pricing
Zoho Desk’s free version accommodates up to three agents and includes email ticketing, customer management, a private knowledge base, predefined SLAs, macros, a multilanguage helpdesk and a mobile app.
There are three paid plans that accommodate an unlimited number of agents. Note that they’re billed annually. The three plans are:
Standard – The Standard plan costs $12 per agent, per month and includes all the features in the free version, plus social and community channels, product-based ticket management, a help center themes gallery, a public knowledge base, SLAs and escalations, rules for workflows, assignments and supervisors, customer happiness ratings, reports and dashboards, integrations and the ability to embed self-service tools within a website.
Professional – The Professional plan costs $20 per agent, per month and includes features in the Standard version, plus multidepartment ticketing, team management, telephony, automatic time tracking, basic process management, round robin ticket assignment, agent collision detection, ticket templates, private marketplace extensions, SLA dashboards, ticket sharing and mobile SDK.
Enterprise – The Enterprise plan costs $35 per agent, per month and includes features in the Professional plan, plus live chat, the Zia AI tool, help center customization, a multibrand help center, advanced process management, custom functions, multilevel IVR, global reports and dashboards, scheduled reports, contract management, validation and layout rules, role-based data sharing and field watching. The plan also accommodates up to 50 free light agents, which allows internal employees to work on the ticket but not respond directly to it.
For each plan, there’s an add-on Light Agents feature that costs an additional $5 per light agent.
And each plan is pay-as-you-go, so users can upgrade, downgrade or cancel their plans at any time.
Shortcomings
While the interface can be intuitive, there’s an initial learning curve. Some users have also mentioned that integrating Zoho Desk with third-party applications can be cumbersome and that the vendor’s tech support team can be slow to respond.
Screenshots
About
Zoho began in 1996 as a network management company called AdventNet. In 2009, it rebranded itself as Zoho Corporation. In addition to Zoho apps, the company has two divisions: IT management and network management.
Over the years, it has added more solutions, such as Zoho CRM (2005), Zoho People (2008) and Zoho Connect (2013). Zoho One, an all-in-one suite of more than 35 integrated applications, was introduced in 2017. The company reached the 50-million mark in number of users and rolled out the Zoho MarketingHub, a marketing automation software, in 2019.
Zoho has offices in Pleasanton (CA) and Austin (TX) and in other countries, such as India, China and Japan.
