Today, we are announcing the release of Zoho Desk — the first context-aware customer support software — that presents customer issues against the broader context of their prior activities and interactions. But first, allow us to give you a bit of context for the release itself.
Almost twenty years ago, Zoho started out as a company that built software for modems and routers. Our customers were network engineers with deep technical knowledge who rarely reached out to us for customer support. They were likely better problem solvers than even our own support staff (or at least thought so!).
In 2004, we started building business software for the cloud. From productivity software like spreadsheets, email and word processors, we moved onto business software like CRM, marketing and finance — spanning a broad suite of business processes.
This foray led us into a very different business. Our customers, now, are mainstream users probably just like you who simply use Zoho software to get their work done, be it marketing, sales, human resources, or finance. Many need help at every stage of their engagement — from product trial to setup to use. Our customer support team had to completely reinvent itself.
With 4,500 employees and more than 20 million users across all geographies, customer support is now the glue that holds our company together. So we decided to use our own diverse experience in serving these customers to drive the evolution of Zoho Desk, the customer support software we offer your business, today.
One of the biggest lessons we learned serving customers is the need to provide contextual information to every customer interaction. This means customer history, their activities, their prior issues — anything that helps the service agent grasp the issue better and drive its speedy resolution.
Research supports us. According to Forrester, 42% of service agents are unable to resolve customer issues due to disconnected systems and multiple applications that hold relevant customer data. Customers report that service agents fail to answer relevant questions 50% of the time. It’s not just about training. Insufficient information that misses the customer’s problem context is often at fault. This is exactly what Zoho Desk is fixing by bringing context and information into the calls. Here’s how we do it:
Context-Aware Responses
Work Modes:
Zoho Desk helps agents automatically prioritize support tickets based on customer interactions. Filter tickets based on criteria like due-time, status, or customer type. Now your team will know which tickets need attention ASAP, and which can be handled later.
Unified Response Editor:
Agents respond better when they have contextually relevant information about their customers. Zoho Desk brings customer information from Zoho CRM right into the ticket. It even auto suggests possible solutions, all of which agents can see from a single place inside Zoho Desk.
Context-Aware Collaboration
Team Feed:
This valuable feature saves the day when you need a little help from your friends. Use @mentions to bring another colleague into the conversation, or to hand off the ticket to the right person. Managers can follow specific tickets or customers that need special intervention. Collaborative work can also drive actions into other products like Zoho CRM or Zoho Projects, where customer accounts or projects might be managed.
Context-Aware Decisions
Zoho Desk lets customer service managers monitor broad trends without taking their eyes off the finer details. Check in on customer happiness ratings, or examine the reason for negative feedback, all from one place. If an agent is offline, managers can reassign tickets to agents who are in, or step in to resolve issues themselves.
Time-based reports:
These help managers keep track of the time taken to respond to tickets, the average time taken to solve each ticket and filter these reports based on date, channel, and agent. With this, managers can see where and why their customer service is getting delayed, and fix the issues without wasting a minute.
Try out Zoho Desk for your business. We’ll help you serve your customers better.
Comments