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

• Select a balance sheet account when creating an invoice

  Hi, it would be very helpfull to be able to select a balance sheet account when invoicing clients. We bill 30% of the job at signing and we would like to add to deferred revenues.  I have to create a transit revenue account and then tranfer to the right

• How to work out commission in zoho commerce based on coupons

  HI There Is there any way to produce report based on coupon name in zoho commerce We need to pay commission to various channels who are helping us to increase the online sales so we have number dedicated coupons assigned to the above mentioned channels

• Request for Subform Styling Feature in Zoho CRM Canvas

  Dear Zoho CRM Team, We have observed that in the Zoho CRM Canvas view, it is currently not possible to set presets or manage the styles of subform fields. Additionally, the ability to edit subform data directly within the Canvas view appears to be limited

• How to Delete Old Tasks/Streams Assigned by Deactivated Users? 'Operation Not Permitted' Error

  Hello, I’m using Zoho Mail and have several old tasks assigned to me in Tasks and Streams. These tasks were created by former employees whose accounts are now deactivated. When I try to delete these tasks, I get an "Operation Not Permitted" error. These

• Zoho Books - Sales Person Contact Details on Quotes

  Hi Zoho Books Team, I've had various clients ask me about showing the phone number and email of the sales person on Quotes to help eliminate any barriers to closing sales. When I tell them that it is not possible they are always surprised and say something

• Related products category instead recommended products.

  Hi there, It is possible to show related products of the same category (as it works in the rest of the ecommerce) instead of showing recommended products.

• Uploading PDF files

  How do I upload a PDF file to my ZOHO site?

• How to send invoices to 2 emails?

  Hi! We are sending invoices to the "Customer email" field that is defined Zoho Books and is obtained/synced from a custom email field in Zoho CRM. But in some clientes, the invoices have to be sent to 2 emails and we are wondering how this could be accomplished.

• It returns 1 record

  Var1= Tools_Request[Liability_Receipt == input.Liability_No]; for each rec in Var1.Tool_Request_Description { Var2= (ET_Inventory[SKU == rec.Tools_SKU].SKU).getAll(); } info call for Var2 It only fetch 1 record On record file

• Narrative 5: The essential role of SLAs

  Behind the scenes of a successful ticketing system - BTS Series Narrative 5: The essential role of SLAs Every organization that interacts with customers establishes a timeframe within which agents should respond to queries as part of a service level agreement

• Nextdoor Integration

  Does Zoho social work with Nextdoor? www.nextdoor.com? Are there any plans for an integration?

• My email sending has beed blocked due to high bounce rate. NEED HELP

  User ID: 886739811 Dear Zoho Team, I hope this message finds you well. My account (User ID: 886739811) was blocked from sending emails last week due to an unusually high bounce rate. This spike was caused by a bot attack on our platform, which led to

• Can Zoho CRM Emails be used in Zoho Analytics in any capacity?

  We're wanting to display details about Lead Activity in regular reports through Zoho Analytics but we're having difficulty integrating Emails at all. We'd like to be able to note when an email is received and when it is sent somewhere other than just

• IF Statement in Zoho CRM Formula Field

  Hi, I am attempting to write a formula field that will give me one result if one statement AND another statement are true, then a different value if the first statement AND a different statement are true, else 0. Stated differently: if account = destination

• Scheduled Maintenances

  Hi, Why is adding scheduled maintenance so arduous. It should be a simple process and take very little time for basically a recurring job. Creating 3 records with similar data seems crazy to me. Is there a easy way to do this? I have to create hundreds

• Subform Fields for Form Rules & Subform Fields as a Condition with Form Fields as the Action

  Hi, The Subform in Field Rules is great, but it is missing completley from Form Rules and it lacks being able to have Subform Fields in the Condition while having Form Fields in the Action, it works the other way around. Thanks Dan

• Power of Automation :: Implementing Deadline-Based Task Scoring with Custom Fields

  Hello Everyone, A custom function is a software code that can be used to automate a process and this allows you to automate a notification, call a webhook, or perform logic immediately after a workflow rule is triggered. This feature helps to automate

• Zoho Forms - Subform Integration with Zoho CRM?

  I created a form in Zoho Forms that includes a sub-form for information that I want to integrate with the CONTACTS module. I am unable to find a way integrate/map the fields in the sub-form with the Contacts module in Zoho CRM. Is there a way to do this

• Filter by user in Pivot Chart

  I have a Pivot chart where the data should be filtered by user. The user enters the system and should see only the data that correspond to it. Can anyone help me?

• Is ZeptoMail Still Supported? No Response to API Query in Over a Week

  Is ZeptoMail Still Supported? No Response to API Query in Over a Week I’m posting here to express my growing frustration and concern over the lack of professionalism I’ve experienced with Zoho's ZeptoMail support. On July 21st, I received a response asking

• Add ID to the recycling bin page

  Feature request to add the ID to the recycling bin page. This would be helpful for reference when trying to recover things. This is the long zoho ID for each item. - ticket ID - contact ID - account ID - etc.

• Remove System Defined Ticket Layout

  Hi ZohoDesk, I have created a new Ticket Layout and made it the default and I want to remove the original default one so there is only one to choose from. It won't allow me to do this, or go into the options and take the tick out of the show in Help Center.

• ZOHOLICS Japan 2025 開催のお知らせ

  ユーザーの皆さま こんにちは、Zoho コミュニティチームの中野です。 年に一度の自社最大イベント、「ZOHOLICS Japan 2025」（ゾーホリクス）の開催が決定しましたので、こちらでお知らせします。 今年の開催回は、特別ゲストやZoho のエキスパートが、 最新のDX事情や皆さまのビジネスプロセス改善、業績アップのヒントとなる情報をお届けします。 Zoho コミュニティからは、Zoho Championの西尾さん（@西尾　真言）、 コミュニティアンバサダープログラム（ZCAP）メンバーの箕輪さんにご登壇いただき、

• Unable to connect Zoho Learn to other Zoho Tools

  Hello Zoho, Can you work on Zoho Learn. I am unable to connect it with other Zoho tools like Zoho people or even Zoho SalesiQ. This is needed, especially if I am connect Ai to my systems. Please work on connecting your applications better, especially

• Chatbot for Urdu language

  Hello, I have successfully set up Zoho Desk and integrated it with Moodle using ASAP. I am now looking for a chatbot that supports the Urdu language to enhance student support. My goal is to enable the chatbot within ASAP so that students can ask questions,

• Multi Level Hierarchical Query

  Hi guys I have a situation where i am trying to extract the descendants of a particular entry. So long story short, i have the Account table with Agency (A) id = 1, and that has child Agency (B) id = 2. This child agency (B) has a child agency (C) id

• AI-Powered Grouping and Tagging of Related Issues and Tasks in Zoho Projects

  Dear Zoho Projects Team, Greetings, We would like to suggest a feature that would greatly enhance how we manage feature requests and bug reports submitted through the Zoho Desk to Zoho Projects integration. Use Case: Our support agents handle customer

• How to change side bar from dark mode to light mode?

  The side bar on the left side in workdrive doesn't appear to have a way to fix it from dark mode - is there a way to? I can't read in dark mode without excessive headaches, and I would really like to be able to see while I have workdrive open, as workdrive

• How to see history on Bulk send of Customer Statements

  Hi, We bulk send statements to customers every month via Books - every month we have customers emailing requesting a statement. Currently I have no visibility on if a customer was sent the statement or not and if our process is being followed or overlooked

• How to add buttons elements in the Header

  I am trying to add CTA (Call to Action) buttons in the right side of the main navigation menu. This is a common practice for sites but I can't seem to figure this out for Zoho Sites. Is there a custom workflow that could be shared with me? 

• Automatic back up - Zoho Recruit, books, people,crm, analytics

  Hello, Has anyone found a good way of automatically backing up Zoho (CRM, expense, recruit, people, books, analytics).? I have found with tool that does, but it doesn't include recruit or analytics It's a bit annoying and time consuming having to go to

• delete departments on zoho desk

  I created test departments on zoho desk. how can i delete them now?

• Validation, checking if a file has been attached to the ticket

  A very useful option would be to allow checking, under specific conditions, whether the user has attached a file to the application, e.g., a bug report. Some applications require files to be attached, and the system could enforce this after the system

• AI & Zoho Recruit

  Hello, I guess we all are using AI in our personal and professional lives. Now, let's imagine. Recruitment is just a succession of stages and steps. For which step would you like to see AI implemented into Zoho Recruit ? I'll start : - Automatic translation

• Zoho Flow not handling Boolean properly

  Hi, I have a checkbox in one system that I'm trying to sync with a checkbox in Zoho CRM. The value from the source system comes in as blank (unticked) or 1 (ticked). I've written the following custom function to convert the output to either boolean false

• Quotes Module - import data

  Hello Zoho, is it possible to import Quotes records? I was trying and i have no results. Raport shows no data imported. Could you help me please how to do it?

• Balance Sheet - Zoho Analytics

  Hi Team, I’m looking to implement a feature that captures the conversion rate based on the filters applied. By default, it should fetch the most recent conversion rate, and when a filter (such as a timeline filter) is applied, it should return the conversion

• files sent will not open for recipient

  work files (done in writer) which previously opened will not open for the recipient

• How to Print the Data Model Zoho CRM

  I have created the data model in Zoho CRM and I want the ability to Print this. How do we do this please? I want the diagram exported to a PDF. There doesnt appear to be an option to do this. Thanks Andrew

• Cisco Webex Calling Intergration

  Hi Guys, Our organisation is looking at a move from Salesforce to Zoho. We have found there is no support for Cisco Webex Calling however? Is there a way to enable this or are there any apps which can provide this? Thanks!

• Next Page