Customer service is the heart of every business—always on, always humming. It's where questions find answers, frustrations ease, and smiles blossom. But maintaining that constant rhythm can be challenging. That's where we step in to help you simplify customer service and ensure that it's always on. We are thrilled to present Zoho Desk '24, with new and updated features that empower you to deliver customer service that never stops. Let's make 2024 the year you resolve faster, retain customers better, and make them happier. Here's everything that's new!

AI and automation

Customer support is no longer solely reliant on humans. Whether you're deploying self-service chatbots, utilizing data to deliver a more personalized experience, or routing tickets to the appropriate person, AI and automation power customer service today. And Zoho Desk can help you achieve all of these objectives. Read on to learn about the advancements we've made in our AI and automation features.

Zia field predictions 

Zia, Zoho's interactive AI assistant, can now train on your existing ticket data to find patterns and regularities. Armed with this knowledge, Zia updates the fields of incoming tickets using field predictions if the prediction accuracy score exceeds the threshold you set. Once Zia has analyzed at least 500 tickets, Zia can perform tasks like identifying the ticket's priority level, determining the ticket's category, assigning the right ticket owner, and more.

If Zia fails to predict a value or predicts incorrectly, you can manually update the ticket or override the suggestion. This feedback you provide fuels continuous improvement and is added to the AI's training data, helping Zia get smarter over time.

Edition availability: Enterprise

Blueprint widgets

Blueprint in Zoho Desk helps your support team stay on track even when nobody's actively monitoring. You can create Blueprint flows to define specific stages and actions that tickets must go through as they move through the support process. For example, when you receive a return request, you can mandate the workflow for returns and refunds to tell you to attach proofs and submit them to the finance team before you can proceed.

You could previously prompt agents to perform certain actions that were standard to Zoho Desk, such as updating fields, leaving comments, and replying to all. Now, you can mandate actions through Zoho, third-party, or custom widgets. By adding a widget to your flow, you can define your own parameters for the process. Imagine streamlining your return and refund processes with these widgets:

• Calendar: Schedule the pick-up date of the item to be returned.

• Map: Mark the pick-up address.

• Survey: Prompt the user to share their reason for the return.

• Language translator: Ensure seamless communication with your customers, no matter their language.

• Cost of return: Provide cost estimates with a custom app.

Adding these widgets to your return and refund processes further streamlines your Blueprint flow from request to resolution.

Edition availability: Professional & Enterprise

Round-robin sequential assignment

In Zoho Desk, the round-robin sequential ticket assignment method evenly hands out incoming tickets to the available agents in a particular order. Agents take turns to resolve and every agent gets their fair share of tickets, keeping the workload balanced.  

The rule setup and the agents selected during configuration determine the sequence in which agents receive tickets. For example, if Holly, Mike, and Ali are added in that order, Holly receives the first ticket, followed by Mike, and then Ali. Alternatively, if you select 'all agents' or a 'team,' tickets are assigned alphabetically to the agents - Ali, Holly, Mike. This approach avoids overwhelming individual agents, maintains a smooth workflow, and optimizes agent workloads.

Edition availability: Professional & Enterprise

Custom support plans and contracts

Customer requests are usually prioritized based on ticket creation time, severity level, deal value, and service level agreements (SLAs), which dictate expected response and resolution times.

With Zoho Desk, you can now prioritize customers based on the support plan they've chosen. You can offer your customers support plans that are customized based on the number of tickets they can submit within a specific period, or an unlimited plan with uncapped assistance.

However, providing tiered support plans introduces complexities, as monitoring distinct SLA requirements with each customer can be challenging. With Zoho Desk, when you create a custom support plan for your customer, you can automate this process to ensure you're meeting the standards agreed to with the customer. SLA automation alleviates much of the guesswork and empowers you to track progress by regularly reviewing your SLAs and monitoring their implementation.

Edition availability: Enterprise

Customization

Last year, we undertook a significant overhaul of Zoho Desk's interface, introducing new options for personalizing your workspace and enhancing the overall user experience. This year, we shifted our focus to addressing finer details that will allow you to further align Zoho Desk with your business processes. Let's see what's new.

Custom modules

Your customer service software should mirror the flexibility and dynamism of your business, and with custom modules, Zoho Desk achieves just that. Custom modules enable you to capture data in a way that makes sense for your business and accommodates information that doesn't neatly fit into standard Zoho Desk modules. You can create multiple modules tailored to your specific processes, assign them names as required, and easily customize field names through a simple drag-and-drop interface.

For instance, imagine you operate a car rental business and create a custom module called "Vehicles." Within this module, you can store essential details such as make, model, rental status, and customer information. This setup empowers your staff to efficiently track each vehicle's availability, maintenance history, and rental transactions. Consequently, when a ticket comes in stating "the car broke down," you immediately know which car it is.

Edition availability: Enterprise

Field enhancements

Fields are an integral part of Zoho Desk modules, used to capture information about tickets, customers, products, and more. Depending on the type of data you wish to store, you can either use standard fields or create custom ones. Here are some new additions introduced to fields to enhance your ability to connect field records and organize them more effectively.

Lookup field

A lookup field in Zoho Desk is a type of custom field that allows users to establish a relationship between different modules within Zoho Desk. With a lookup field, you can link records from one module to another, enabling easy access to related information.

In our car rental business scenario, you have a "Vehicles" custom module. A lookup field in the "Vehicles" module can be set up to retrieve information from the standard "Customers" module. This way, you can associate a specific rental transaction with a particular customer, and vice versa.

Edition availability: Professional & Enterprise

RegEx in layout and validation rules

RegEx (regular expression) in layout and validation rules allows you to define specific patterns for data input within fields. This enforces data validation based on predefined criteria, preventing incorrect customer data from entering the system.

Let's say you have a field for phone numbers. By using RegEx in a validation rule, you can specify a format that phone numbers must adhere to, such as (XXX) XXX-XXXX. If a user attempts to enter a phone number that doesn't match this pattern, they will receive an error message, prompting them to correct the input.

You can create custom RegEx patterns or choose from our gallery. This ensures data accuracy and consistency within Zoho Desk, helping to improve system usability.

Edition availability: Enterprise

Picklist color-coding

Picklists and multi-picklists are excellent tools for organizing data when dealing with a predefined set of values. By color-coding picklist values, you can elevate data visualization to a new level. It helps you distinguish values instantly, group and analyze data based on assigned colors, and even personalize your experience by selecting from a predefined palette or defining custom colors to align with your branding or specific requirements.

For instance, in a picklist field for "Priority," you could assign the color red to "High," yellow to "Medium," and green to "Low" to identify the priority level of each ticket quickly.

Edition availability: Professional & Enterprise

Ticket ID customization

Ticket IDs are crucial identifiers in customer support operations. They provide a unique reference point for coordination that enables easy tracking, organization, and prioritization of support requests.

Now, with the ability to customize ticket IDs, you can define your own alphanumeric format for ticket identification and go beyond the default sequential numbering. Specify the prefix and suffix of the ticket ID by choosing components such as ticket due date, priority level, channel, category, and more. You can also create custom components. This flexibility allows organizations to generate ticket IDs that are meaningful and align with their existing processes.

Edition availability: Professional & Enterprise

Ticketing experience

When you spend a significant portion of your day responding to tickets, every small improvement in ticketing efficiency can have a major impact. So here are some additions to Zoho Desk to make your ticketing experience more convenient.

Parent-child ticketing

Parent-child ticketing in Zoho Desk allows you to connect related tickets and manage them as a single unit. It's like having a family tree for your support tickets, where a main ticket (parent) can have multiple sub-tickets (children) linked to it.

Imagine that a customer reports their laptop has a problem and won't turn on. This becomes the parent ticket. However, resolving this issue might involve multiple parts:

• Child ticket 1: Assigned to the hardware team to diagnose and fix any physical components.

• Child ticket 2: Assigned to the software team to troubleshoot any potential operating system issues.

• Child ticket 3: Assigned to the networking team to investigate any connectivity issues.

By associating these child tickets to the parent ticket, each specialized team can focus on their respective areas of expertise while collaborating towards resolving the overall laptop issue. Once the correct problem is identified and resolved, closing the parent ticket will automatically close all associated child tickets, or closing all child tickets will result in the closure of the parent ticket.

Edition availability: Professional & Enterprise

Schedule reply

While prompt customer service is important, there are times when responding to a customer immediately isn't ideal. In these cases, Zoho Desk allows you to schedule the reply for later. Simply choose a future date and time, and your response will be sent automatically, no matter where you are. You can even schedule your reply based on the customer's time zone. Plus, you have the flexibility to edit, reschedule, or delete your scheduled replies at any time before they are sent.

Edition availability: Professional & Enterprise

Mass reply

The new mass reply feature allows you to address multiple tickets with a single response. For example, when you have a sudden influx of tickets stemming from a temporary order delay, rather than responding to each ticket individually, you can select all relevant tickets and send a message to all the affected customers at once. This not only saves time but also ensures consistency in communication when you're receiving high volumes of tickets.

Edition availability: Professional & Enterprise

Data administration

Data administration tools streamline data management within your helpdesk system, ensuring accuracy, security, and cost optimization in customer support operations. With Zoho Desk, you now have access to organized record-keeping and a secure environment for your teams to explore various use cases.

Audit log

When your software is doing so much every day, it's common to encounter issues like incorrect workflow notifications, accidental record deletions, or uncertainty about Blueprint flows. Audit logs serve as a chronological record of user actions that enable you to precisely identify who did what and when.

By providing this detailed insight, the audit log enables you to swiftly pinpoint errors, troubleshoot effectively, reverse unwanted changes before they cause problems, and assess the efficiency of your processes. Audit logs help you track update, add, and delete actions related to custom modules and automation. The ability to track actions in other features will be added in upcoming phases.

Edition availability: Enterprise

Sandbox environment

When deploying your customer service software, any misstep has the potential to negatively affect your customers' perception of your brand. Imagine a scenario where, due to an error with your ticket routing setup, an urgent ticket is directed to a general inquiry queue instead of being routed to the appropriate team for expedited handling. As a result, it remains unnoticed for several hours while the client becomes increasingly frustrated.

You can avoid this type of situation by testing changes to ticket routing in Zoho Desk's sandbox environment before implementing them. This empowers your team to explore ideas freely and test possible use cases without affecting your ongoing customer interactions. This replica of your live workspace lets you try features, collaborate seamlessly, train agents, experiment with customizations, and fine-tune workflows and automation rules in a secure space before you implement them in your live environment.

Edition availability: Enterprise

Security

With each new release, Zoho prioritizes delivering more secure software. Our latest updates incorporate additional layers of protection to ensure the confidentiality of your customers and the integrity of data in your Zoho Desk workspace. Here's what's new.

System field encryption

Collecting customer data is an essential part of doing business, and it comes with significant responsibility. Encrypting sensitive data is crucial for maintaining confidentiality and preventing unauthorized access, particularly in support systems. Zoho Desk offers encryption for standard fields like customer names, phone numbers, and bank details, using the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), providing a virtual lock against unauthorized access. Encrypting standard fields in Zoho Desk can reduce the risk of data breaches for companies in regulated industries, such as banks and hospitals, that must collect sensitive customer information to provide services.

Edition availability: Enterprise 

Attachment controls

You can now control which file types customers or agents can exchange as attachments through any communication channel. Zoho Desk's attachment controls allow administrators to define specific file formats that customers or agents can attach to support tickets or messages. For instance, you might opt to limit potentially harmful file formats like executable files (.exe) or compressed archives (.zip) to mitigate the likelihood of spreading malware or viruses.

Edition availability: Enterprise

Mobile experience

The Zoho Desk mobile app, along with its complementary Radar mobile app, enables you to support your customers from anywhere. We're excited to introduce new updates that enhance the Zoho Desk mobile experience, enabling you to track essential information more efficiently and deliver a more inclusive and secure support experience to your customers.

Custom dashboards in Radar

Similar to the web version, you can now create dashboards in Zoho Desk's Radar app to stay on top of your organization's KPIs, ticket trends, and agent performance. With an array of data visualization tools such as charts, graphs, and tables, you can transform raw data from your reports into meaningful dashboards in a single, convenient interface.

To streamline your dashboard management further, you can organize them into folders based on themes or projects to keep your dashboards neatly arranged. You can also pin your most important dashboards to the main menu grid for quick access.

Edition availability: Standard, Professional & Enterprise

My Pins in Radar

The Radar mobile app by Zoho Desk lets you monitor key customer service stats and follow up on issues from anywhere. To streamline tracking further, we've introduced My Pins. Now, you can pin important items to the top of your Radar app menu. Pin anything, from tickets and chats to contact details, tasks, calls, agents, and dashboards. Pins provide instant access without navigating multiple screens.

Organize your pins in a grid or list format for maximum efficiency. Pinning is more than just organization, though. It's also a powerful reminder tool. Pin items like filtered dashboards showing tickets with similar problems, important accounts or potential customers to monitor their activity, and overdue, near-due, or priority tickets, to ensure you meet SLAs consistently.

Edition availability: All editions (including free)

Text-to-speech in ASAP mobile SDK

Text-to-speech (TTS) technology has evolved significantly, offering more natural voices and improved pronunciation, benefiting visually impaired individuals and language learners alike. Integrating text-to-speech with knowledge bases enriches accessibility, enhances user experience, and ensures 24/7 availability of support. Zoho Desk now allows you to offer TTS functionality to users of your mobile app's knowledge base.

TTS is accessible through Zoho Desk's self-service portal (ASAP) mobile SDK and has been implemented for React Native and Flutter apps. Incorporating TTS into your knowledge base provides flexibility for users while consuming content, offering options for speed control, pause, and stop. With TTS, our goal is to enhance accessibility and user support by seamlessly converting text into audio with a single click.

Edition availability: Standard, Professional & Enterprise

Guided Conversations mobile SDK

Businesses today turn to mobile apps as a crucial means of engaging with customers. Now, your mobile app can have a built-in assistant capable of helping your customers without the need for direct human interaction. The Guided Conversations mobile SDK enables developers to create fully customizable automated chat flows, enabling various self-service experiences within the mobile app, such as booking appointments, placing orders, submitting tickets, and more. The SDK is compatible with both Android and iOS applications.

Edition availability: Enterprise

Database encryption

Customer service often involves the collection of sensitive customer information, and at Zoho Desk, we recognize the importance of safeguarding your customers' personal data. Database encryption is a robust security measure that shields sensitive information within the Zoho Desk mobile app. Utilizing the Advanced Encryption Standards (AES) algorithm, the app encrypts data, converting it from plain text into an unreadable format known as ciphertext. Only individuals with the "database password key" can unlock it.

Edition availability: All editions (including free)

Accessibility controls

Despite 16% of the global population having some form of disability, the digital divide persists. Undoubtedly, enhancing accessibility and inclusivity for disabled individuals is one of the greatest impacts of technology. In our ongoing effort to enhance Zoho Desk's accessibility, we are introducing new ways to help all users realize Zoho Desk's full potential.

Focus ring:

Focus ring is a visual indicator that highlights the presently focused element in the interface. It is especially useful for users who rely on keyboard or other non-mouse input methods like screen readers or voice commands. By providing a clear indication, it ensures users can easily identify the selected interactive element on their screen.

Navigation controls:

Skip navigation and page navigation controls enhance the experience for users who rely on screen readers or keyboard navigation. Skip navigation allows them to bypass sequential navigation and directly jump to the desired information. Page navigation enables quick keyboard-based navigation to specific sections of the page.

Custom cursor:  

Instead of using the default arrow-shaped cursor, users can select cursors from various styles, shapes, sizes, and colors based on their visual needs. The customization extends to different cursor types, including default, pointer, text, not-allowed, help, move, grab, no-drop, col-resize, all-scroll, zoom-out, and zoom-in.

Toast notifications:

Toasts are brief, time-sensitive notifications that convey alerts, warnings, information, and success or failure messages during an event or action. These notifications usually appear as small, rectangular boxes positioned near the top or bottom of the screen. Users can set their preferred notification viewing mode as either "stack" or "list."

New languages:

Zoho Desk's interface is now accessible in Vietnamese, Arabic, Hebrew, and Korean alongside the existing 20 languages. We're consistently working to support more languages in Zoho Desk.

Edition availability for accessibility controls: All editions (including free)

Marketplace & developer tools

With over 200 extensions for Zoho Desk currently available in the marketplace and new ones being continuously added, you can extend the capabilities of your Zoho Desk account to develop a powerful, comprehensive customer support system. Here's how this release will enhance your marketplace and developer experience!

Extension starter pack

You can choose from a variety of apps available in the marketplace to integrate with your Zoho Desk account. However, it can be time-consuming to search for the right app to perform a specific task. You may not even realize there's an app available that can help you accomplish that task more efficiently.

Zoho Desk's extension starter pack enhances your marketplace experience by facilitating the discovery of useful apps. With increased flexibility in extension installation and management, the new marketplace onboarding icon right within the tickets detail page helps you explore where extensions can be displayed across various Zoho Desk placeholders. It lists the most installed productivity apps developed by Zoho Desk, showcasing how they can optimize your current operations and also highlights opportunities for third-party integrations and creating your own extensions.

Edition availability: Standard, Professional & Enterprise

API usage dashboard

The API usage dashboard provides insights into how your applications, integrations, or custom scripts are interacting with Zoho Desk through APIs. It empowers administrators and developers to monitor and optimize API usage, identify potential performance issues or bottlenecks, and make informed decisions to enhance system reliability and efficiency.

Here are the key metrics you can achieve through the dashboard:

• API calls overview: An overview of the total number of API calls made over a specific period, allowing you to track usage trends and patterns.

• Top API access points: Identification of the most frequently accessed API endpoints, helping you understand which functionalities are being utilized the most.

• Usage trends: Graphical representation of API usage trends over time, enabling you to monitor changes and spikes in activity.

• API errors: Reporting on any errors encountered during API calls, along with details such as error codes and descriptions, to facilitate troubleshooting and resolution.

• API key management: Tools to create, delete, and manage API keys and monitor usage to ensure security and compliance with access policies.

Edition availability: All paid editions

Zoho Translate (powered by Zia)

Zoho Translate, a powerful Zoho Desk extension, closes the language barrier between customers and support agents. Often, customers submit tickets in their preferred language, and agents may not always understand them. Zoho Translate empowers agents to seamlessly translate tickets into languages they're familiar with, directly within the ticket screen. Agents can also compose responses in their preferred language, and Zoho Translate assists in translating them into the customer's language, ensuring effective communication.

Edition availability: Standard, Professional & Enterprise

Google Chat integration

Zoho Desk now integrates with Google Chat, boosting collaboration and support efficiency. This synergy empowers agents to seamlessly manage tickets from creation to resolution without switching platforms. For instance, within Google Chat, agents can perform various ticket actions such as viewing, creating, assigning, commenting, replying, updating status, and tracking important metrics simply by using commands.

Edition availability: Standard, Professional & Enterprise

Looking forward to another year of innovation!

We're excited for what 2024 holds and promise to continue innovating, learning, and growing alongside you. Thank you for letting us be a part of your journey!

We are eager to hear your thoughts on all the new features once you've tried them. Your feedback helps us improve our existing features and develop new ones. Feel free to leave a comment below! Make sure to keep an eye on our community forum to stay informed about enhancements to existing features and early access programs.

Making your customer support more accessible can have a powerful impact on your business. If you haven't already tried Zoho Desk, you can start now for free.