Finding My Zen with Zoho Desk

In the world of customer experience there is no more important tool for data analytics than your case management system. Over the years there has been so many changes in the space that many have just stuck with what they have known rather than risking something new. Full transparency that was me till earlier this year when I found Zoho Desk.

Before we talk about Zoho Desk let’s do a quick history lesson. Having grown up in the Call Center Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) industry as a second gen has provided me a front row seat to back office technology. I have used technologies like Wilke and Astute to Right Now Technology and NetSuite all trying to be the best tool possible. Each of these companies brought a new unique opportunity to businesses and customers. Then in the majority of cases bought or merged into other technologies and became a lesser version of themselves. Then from these companies came a solution that I was a HUGE fan of for a long time, ZenDesk. 

ZenDesk became my chosen replacement for Right Now Technology when they were destroyed by their acquisition by Oracle. I helped countless companies get set-up on ZenDesk with success for their CX team. The problem we quickly discovered through was with cross data comparison for customer success mapping. The solution ZenDesk provided early on was through their partnerships with Sugar and SalesForce, but that just led to massive cost issues. That final piece is what put me on the hunt for something new, and this little tool on the Zoho Desk website is where I found my solution.

The world of customer experience is a hard place to demand budget. Most businesses still, incorrectly, view customer service as a pure cost center of their business and do everything possible to cut costs. That is why many of us CX executives have learned quickly to always look to find the best tools we can at the best price. I think the image above speaks for its self on why I had to look at Zoho Desk for my team.

Beyond cost savings Zoho was quick to push to me their standard list of things they do better which I have shared above. But, for me though this was great the real win came from a creative question we asked that changed the way our whole company operates. The question I asked was, “how do you guys use Desk internally?”

I learned long ago when you can find out how a software company eats their own dog food you can find the key to use the software to the full potential. Zoho did not let me down when the sales engineer shared with me that they use it for both internal and internal support tickets through department separation. 

Now I know this may not mean much to most of you, but the ability for internal team members to put in tickets on a customer that can be tracked and managed separate from external tickets is a HUGE opportunity to become “PROACTIVE”! A term that is very rare in the CX world as most of CS is reactionary. 

We can get proactive in CX through internal ticketing as many times most issues are discovered prior to a customer even knowing they exist. The problem is most businesses do not have an easy way for internal staff to enter these issues and route them to the people who can fix them quickly and effectively. On top of all that most case management systems expose the full history to companies whereby exposing a company’s dirty laundry when most of us would prefer to handle that without anyone seeing it. Plus, the ability to tie all this back natively into my CRM for a full customer record allows for Business Intelligence data like never before.

Yes, I know you can do all this with ZenDesk but where my issue came in was the cost and time to integrate is all. When I take the costs of ZenDesk at $149 ($89 for basic) plus Salesforce $150 ($30 or $75 for basic) I am not at $300 /user and not even gotten into my agent’s telephony needs. In the end I was looking at a price tag closer to $400 per agent vs. $35 per agent with Zoho One. Let’s just be real there was no discussion I could have in the world that would get my executive team to not go Zoho.

​If you would like to see any of what I am speaking about above in person message or comment as I would be happy to show you. Zoho One has changed the way my customers and I do business and I want to help others see it.

To Your Success & Prosperity,

Michael McMillan 

• Topic Participants

• mmcmillan

• Sticky Posts

• How to reach the official Zoho Support channels and avoid fake ones.

  Dear Customers, Thanks a lot for choosing Zoho! Our applications are built to help achieve your day-to-day business goals. We are committed to engaging with you, to understand and develop solutions that enhance your productivity.  We are happy and ready to help you use our services effectively. Understanding and avoiding fake support Just like using popular bank names and financial applications for phishing purposes, using Zoho and claiming to be providing Zoho Support or services with false numbers

• Function #35: Close all tasks associated with a lead and create a new task.

  Welcome back everyone! Last week, we learnt how to close all tasks of a deal depending upon the deal stage. This week, let's look at a custom function that lets you close all of the tasks associated with a lead while simultaneously creating a new task, like when you need to halt all progress towards a lead while the lead is not available at the moment but create a reminder task. Business scenario: The success of a company, in one way or another, is determined by the leads it gets. Each lead is just

• Zoho CRM Webinar - Redesigning Daily User Experiences with Canvas

  <br> Your users across roles use the CRM for day-to-day tasks that are necessary. Whether they perform their tasks on time, the right way, or at all depends on a lot of factors, including User Experience. Many businesses struggle with rigid layouts,

• Join us at the Canada ZUG Meetup: What’s New in Zoho CRM

  Hello Zoho Community! Start your year with fresh insights into Zoho CRM’s latest updates and tools. Whether you're a CRM beginner or a experienced user, this meetup is crafted to help you optimise your processes and leverage new features. Explore practical

• CRM Hack #2: Automate sending of birthday greetings to your customers.

    Hello everyone! What sets you apart as a sales person is your ability to add that personal touch to your business relationship with your customers. Sending a gift on a special day, or leaving a note wishing them on their birthdays, are small, yet significant actions that show your customers that you care. And these are actions done without any expectations :) You must be engaging with a lot of customers and it is highly unlikely that they all are your friends on Facebook or some social channel,

• Recent Topics

• How to create a Service Agreement with Quarterly Estimate

  Hello, I'm not sure if this has been asked before so please don't get mad at me for asking. We're an NDIS provider in Australia so we need to draft a Service Agreement for our client. With the recent changes in the NDIS we're now required to also include

• Change Currency symbol

  I would like to change the way our currency displays when printed on quotes, invoices and purchase orders. Currently, we have Australian Dollars AUD as our Home Currency. The only two symbol choices available for this currency are "AU $" or "AUD". I would

• Zoho Social - Post Footer Templates

  As a content creator I often want to include some information at the end of most posts. It would be great if there was an option to add pre-written footers, similar to the Hashtag Groups at the end of posts. For example, if there is an offer I'm running

• Allow to pick color for project groups in Zoho Projects

  Hi Zoho Team, It would be really helpful if users could assign colors to project groups. This would make it easier to visually distinguish groups, improve navigation, and give a clearer overview when managing multiple projects. Thanks for considering

• Zoho Books - Quotes to Sales Order Automation

  Hi Books team, In the Quote settings there is an option to convert a Quote to an Invoice upon acceptance, but there is not feature to convert a Quote to a Sales Order (see screenshot below) For users selling products through Zoho Inventory, the workflow

• Can't find imported leads

  Hi There I have imported leads into the CRM via a .xls document, and the import is showing up as having been successful, however - when I try and locate the leads in the CRM system, I cannot find them.  1. There are no filters applied  2. They are not

• Custom Button Disappearing in mobile view | Zoho CRM Canvas

  I'm working in Zoho CRM Canvas to create a custom view for our sales team. One of the features I'm adding is a custom button that opens the leads address in another tab. I've had no issue with this in the desktop view, but in the mobile view the button

• The connected workflow is a great idea just needs Projects Integrations

  I just discovered the connected workflows in CRM and its a Great Idea i wish it was integrated with Zoho Projects I will explain our use case I am already trying to do something like connected workflow with zoho flow Our requirement was to Create a Task

• Zoho Projects MCP Feedback

  I've started using the MCP connector with Zoho Projects, and the features that exist really do work quite well - I feel this is going to be a major update to the Zoho Ecosystem. In projects a major missing feature is the ability to manage, (especially

• email template

  How do I create and save an email template

• Enhancements in Portal User Group creation flow

  Hello everyone, Before introducing new Portal features, here are some changes to the UI of Portals page to improve the user experience. Some tabs and options have been repositioned so that users can better access the functionalities of the feature. From

• Can I add Conditional merge tags on my Templates?

  Hi I was wondering if I can use Conditional Mail Merge tags inside my Email templates/Quotes etc within the CRM? In spanish and in our business we use gender and academic degree salutations , ie: Dr., Dra., Sr., Srta., so the beginning of an email / letter

• email moderation issue when email is sent in the name of a mail group

  Symptom: an email that is sent by a mail group moderator in the name of a moderated mail group is held back for approval. Reproduction: Create a moderated mail group with members and moderators. Allow that mails can be sent in the name of the group (extended settings). Send an email to the group as a group moderator, but in the name of the group. This mail is held back for moderation which is unexpected. Expected: A mail sent by group moderator to a moderated group are not held back for moderation

• blank page after login

  blank page after logging into my email account Thanks you

• Always display images from this sender – Is this feature available?

  In Zoho mail, I had my "Load external images" setting set to "Ask me", and that's fine. That's the setting I prefer. What's not fine though is I always need to tick "Display now" for each email I get, regardless if I've done that multiple times from several

• Function #9: Copy attachments of Sales Order to Purchase Order on conversion

  This week, we have written a custom function that automatically copies the attachments uploaded for a sales order to the corresponding purchase order after you convert it. Here's how to configure it in your Zoho Books organization. Custom Function: Hit

• Free webinar: Security that works: Building resilience for the AI-powered workforce

  Hello there, Did you know that more than 51% of organizations worldwide have experienced one or more security breaches, each costing over $1 million in losses or incident response? In today’s threat landscape, simply playing defense is no longer enough.

• Zoho Notebook Sync problem

  I'm facing a problem with syncing of notebook on android app. It's not syncing. Sometimes it syncs after a day or two.  I created some notes on web notebook but it's not syncing on mobile app. Please help!!!!

• Cant Save Gauge on Creator Page

  How to Save Gauge on Creator Page see movie https://vimeo.com/1116410860?share=copy#t=0

• Apply Advance option not shown in report

  We are facing an issue in Zoho Expenses. While approving an Expense Report, the "Apply Advance" option is not appearing under the three dots (More Options). Details: Module: Expense Reports Issue: "Apply Advance" option not visible Status of Report: Awaiting

• Auto Capitalize First Letter of Words

  Hi I am completely new to ZOHO and am trying to build a database. How can i make it when a address is entered into a form field like this: main st it automatically changes is to show: Main St Thank You

• Follow-up emails via Workflow Automation not staying in the same thread

  Dear Zoho Support Team, I am currently using Workflow Automation in Zoho Campaigns to send follow-up emails. In my test case, I noticed the following behavior: All emails in the automation have the same subject line. If the follow-up email is sent within

• Client Script refuses to set an initial value in Subform field

  I tried a very simple, 1 line client script to set a default value in a custom subform field when the "Add Row" button is clicked and the user is entering data. It does not work - can someone tell me why? ZDK documentation suggests this should be doable.

• Help Center IFrame Issue

  I have had a working Help Center on my website using an iframe for a while. But now for some reason the sign in page gets a refused to connect error. Can someone please help. If I go to the url manually it works correclty

• Comment Templates

  Is it possible to add a template option for comments? We have some agents in the process who's responses require a pre-formatted layout. It would be incredibly handy to have a template for them where they can insert the template and then add their responses

• [ZohoDesk] Improve Status View with a new editeble kanban view

  A kanban view with more information about the ticket and the contact who created the ticket would be valueble. I would like to edit the fields with the ones i like to see at one glance. Like in CRM where you can edit the canvas view, i would like to edit

• Adding Markdown text using Zoho Desk API into the Knowledge Base

  Hi Zoho Community members, We currently maintain the documentation of out company in its website. This documentation is written in markdown text format and we would like to add it in Zoho Knowledge Base. Do you know if there is REST API functionality

• An Exclusive Session for Zoho Desk Users: AI in Zoho Desk

  A Zoho Community Learning Initiative Hello everyone! This is an announcement for Zoho Desk users and anyone exploring Zoho Desk. With every nook and corner buzzing, "AI's here, AI's there," it's the right time for us to take a closer look at how the AI

• Shared values: From classroom lessons to teaching moments in customer service

  While the world observes Teachers’ Day on October 5, in India, we celebrate a month earlier, on September 5, to mark the birth anniversary of Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, a great teacher, renowned scholar, educationist, and advocate for empowerment.

• Create a list of customers who participated in specific Zoho Backstage events and send them an email via Zoho CRM

  How to create a list of customers who participated in specific Zoho Backstage events and send them an email via Zoho CRM? I was able to do a view in CRM based on customer that registered to an event, but I don't seems to be able to include the filter

• Zoho Desk blank page

  1. Click Access zoho desk on https://www.zoho.com/desk/ 2. It redirects to https://desk.zoho.com/agent?action=CreatePortal and the page is blank. Edge browser Version 131.0.2903.112 (Official build) (arm64) on MacOS

• I hate the new user UI with the bar on the left

  How can I reverse this?

• Question regarding import of previous deals...

  Good afternoon, I'm working on importing some older deal records from an external sheet into the CRM; however, when I manually click "Add New Deal" and enter the pertinent information, the deal isn't appearing when I look at the "Deals" bar on the account's

• Client Script also planned for Zoho Desk?

  Hello there, I modified something in Zoho CRM the other day and was amazed at the possibilities offered by the "Client Script" feature in conjunction with the ZDK. You can lock any fields on the screen, edit them, you can react to various events (field

• One person/cell phone to manage multiple accounts

  Hi. I have a personal Free account to keep my own domain/emails. Now I need to create a Business account to my company's own domain, but I have only one mobile phone number I use to everything. How do I do to manage this? Can I manage a Free domain and

• Tracking KPIs, Goals etc in People

  How are Zoho People users tracking employee targets in People? For example, my marketing assistant has a target of "Collect 10 new customer testimonials every month". I want to record attainment for this target on a monthly basis, then add it to their

• Zoho Desk: Ticket Owner Agents vs Teams

  Hi Zoho, We would like to explore the possibility of hiding the ‘Agents’ section within the Ticket Owner dropdown, so that we can fully utilise the ‘Teams’ dropdown when assigning tickets. This request comes from the fact that only certain agents and

• Can not Use Attachment Button on Android Widget

  this always pops up when I touch the attach button on android widget. going to settings, there is no storage permission to be enabled. if I open the app, and access the attach feature there, I can access my storage and upload normally.

• Announcing new features in Trident for Mac (1.24.0)

  Hello everyone! Trident for macOS (v.1.24.0) is here with interesting features and thoughtful enhancements to redefine the way you plan and manage your calendar events. Here's a quick look at what's new. Create calendar events from emails. In addition

• Mass Mail Statistics - Number of unsent emails

  How do I find out which emails were not sent?

• Next Page