Sixth Insight - The Hidden C in Data

Sixth Insight - The Hidden C in Data

The Wheels of Ticketing - Desk Stories

The Hidden C in Data

[Importance of clean data]


Data cleaning

Data cleaning ensures ticketing systems' data is accurate, consistent, and complete. This process includes eliminating duplicates, fixing errors, and addressing missing information.
Quote
Clean data is happy data.

Why is data cleaning so important?

Data cleaning eliminates errors, inconsistencies, and duplicates within data, resulting in increased accuracy. Tools are available to help you swiftly address data issues. Enhancing accuracy enables the extraction of reliable insights. Inconsistent or inaccurate data can lead to misleading results, poor decision-making, and ineffective strategies.

Data hygiene

Data hygiene in a ticketing system refers to the processes and practices involved in maintaining accurate, complete, and consistent information. This is crucial for ensuring that customer support operations run smoothly and effectively.


  • Data accuracy
  • Data completeness
  • Data consistency
  • Data deduplication
  • Regular data audits


By prioritizing data hygiene, organizations can improve the efficiency of their support teams, enhance the quality of customer service, and gain valuable insights from reliable data analytics.

A story for better interpretation

Scrub your data clean

Once upon a time, a small but dedicated team in a tech company managed customer support through a ticketing system called "HelpNow." As the company grew, so did its customer base, leading to an overwhelming influx of support tickets. Although the team worked diligently, the increase in tickets created clutter. 
 
Once efficient, the HelpNow system became cluttered with old tickets, unresolved issues, and duplicate requests. Customer satisfaction started to decline as users waited longer for their problems to be resolved. Frustration lingered not only in the hearts of customers but also within the support team, which they found increasingly challenging to navigate through the cluttered ticketing system.
 
One day, the team lead, Joey, called for a meeting to address the urgent situation. "We need to scrub our data clean," he announced. The team discussed various strategies, but he had a vision of what needed to be done and a systematic approach to decluttering their HelpNow system.
 
The initial step entailed thoroughly reviewing and categorizing all existing support tickets utilizing a custom view. The team reached a consensus to archive tickets over six months old and lacked follow-up, as these were likely associated with resolved issues. To ensure efficient progress, they established a clear deadline for this undertaking, fully aware that collaborative effort and focused teamwork were essential for effectively addressing the backlog. Their strategic approach aimed to organize the current workload and foster a more streamlined process for ticket management.
 
Joey organized a “Scrub-a-thon” a week later, encouraging everyone to join forces. Each team member was assigned a category of tickets to review. Deleting duplicates became a friendly competition. Teams found ways to delete tickets using mass updates and automation, rewarding those who could clear the most entries. They quickly learned that many tickets had been created multiple times due to customers submitting the same request across different channels.
 
During this process, the team discovered an unexpected treasure trove of information. Many old tickets contained insightful feedback about the product, creating a new FAQ section that addressed common user questions. They also realized that some bugs needed urgent attention, leading to prioritized fixes for the product.
 
As the Scrub-a-thon continued, the team also acknowledged the importance of customer communication. They crafted an email update to inform customers about their efforts to improve support quality. Customers appreciated the transparency and felt confident that their concerns were being taken seriously.
 
After two weeks of hard work, their system was transformed. The volume of tickets had been dramatically reduced, and the remaining tickets were prioritized and categorized effectively for quicker solutions. Customer agents could easily navigate the system and focus on resolving issues rather than wading through a digital maze.
 
Reports generated from the cleaned data helped Joey and her team identify trends in customer inquiries and revamp their product support resources accordingly. Inspired by their findings, they implemented a new self-service help widget to empower users with immediate solutions. 
 
The results were incredible: response times dropped, customer satisfaction surged, and the support team thrived in their more organized environment. The HelpNow system became a case study in transforming mess into clarity, demonstrating the power of scrubbing away the unnecessary to unveil the valuable.

Best practices

Scheduled data audits

Scheduled data audits are the systematic process of regularly reviewing and analyzing data within a specific timeframe to ensure accuracy, compliance, quality, and relevance. This practice is essential for businesses and organizations to maintain the integrity of their data, identify errors, and ensure adherence to regulations and standard policies.

Removing inaccurate data entries

Removing inaccurate data entries means eliminating incorrect, erroneous, or misleading information entered into a system. These inaccuracies can occur for various reasons, including human error, technological glitches, data migration issues, or a lack of standardized procedures. 

Setting up field validations

Setting up field validations is crucial in ensuring data integrity and enhancing the user experience in any application. Field validations check users' input to ensure it meets specific criteria before being processed or saved. Validation rules in Zoho Desk help you overcome this problem by arresting incorrect data even before it can enter your help desk. Refer here for more details.

Detecting duplicate data

Duplicate data detection is crucial for maintaining data integrity and accurate records. The deduplication feature in Zoho Desk helps you find duplicate records in bulk and merge them.  Refer here for more details.

Addressing data security

Addressing data security involves implementing measures and practices to protect sensitive information from unauthorized access, breaches, and other cyber threats. Encryption takes the final stand against attempts to steal your data. It completes data protection by ensuring your data can neither be damaged nor stolen in the unfortunate event of a security breach.. Refer here for more details.

Inactive record management

Inactive record management involves managing records that are no longer in active use or required for daily operations. This encompasses outdated documents, files, or data that must be preserved for prospective reference, even though they do not require frequent access. In Zoho Desk, ticket management is simplified by automating the archiving of follow-up-less tickets over six months old by a deadline.. Refer here for more details.

Integrate data with analytics

Data analysis helps identify inconsistencies. Data analytics can automatically identify and flag inconsistencies within datasets. This helps agents quickly pinpoint errors or anomalies that might go unnoticed, improving the overall data quality. Data analytics can assess the quality of the data in real-time. It can provide metrics on completeness, accuracy, and consistency, giving agents the insights needed to ensure that the data they are working with is reliable. Refer here for more details.

Summing up

Ensuring a clean and accurate database is crucial for the effective operation of Zoho Desk. Data cleaning is not simply a one-time task; it requires a continuous effort to maintain the integrity and reliability of customer information. 


Establishing clear protocols and guidelines for data cleaning will ensure that agents understand their responsibilities and take accountability for upholding data quality. Mastering data cleaning practices will enhance your success.


Please stay tuned for more Desk Module stories.

 

Cheers,

 

Kavya Rao

The Zoho Desk Team

    • Recent Topics

    • Changing Account in Quote form does not update address information.

      I am trying to update the address information in a quote I've created. I corrected the address in the "Account" but that did not change in the quote. If I re-enter the Account Name in the Quote form, nothing updates. How do I fix this?

    • Zoho One Backup of entire account

      Hello, When using Zoho one is there a way to backup your entire account of all apps that you are using \ activively using in a single step or do you have to backup each applications data individually? Thanks,

    • Issue with “CC” and “Subject Details” of the initial mail when reply / replied all / forward using Zoho Mail Client (Desktop / Web Mail / Mobile App)

      It is observed that when I reply / reply all / forward a mail using Zoho Mail Client (Desktop / Web Mail / Mobile App), the “CC” and “Subject Details” are omitted from the mail which was replied/forwarded. However this is not the case with outlook mail

    • Unable to send Emails - 452 4.3.1 Temporary System Error

      Whene ever i request smtp server to send the email (without attachment). i recieve error "452 4.3.1 Temporary System Error"

    • I can't receive email

      I cannot receive any email sent to my Zoho email after the free upgrade plan trial is finished.

    • Help for the alisa adding

      Sorry, I would like to add a paypal alias on my domain email address. However, the system blocked it. How can I do it?

    • Lite plan attachment said 250mb but actually 25mb ?

      Lite plan attachment said 250mb but actually 25mb ? I can't attach over 25mb files, and can't receive mails has attached files over 25mb too

    • Any update on much requested feature, to delete attachments without deleting the e-mail body?

      People have been requesting the ability to delete e-mail attachments without deleting the e-mail for more than ten years now. The latest I see is marked "Working On It" and a year ago it was supposedly being added, see here: https://help.zoho.com/portal/en/community/topic/is-there-a-way-to-delete-mail-attachments-without-deleting-the-text

    • Old vs New Value for Deleted Lookup Values

      Suppose the following scenario, where a value in a lookup is deleted: 1. User has countries form 2. Form A has a lookup to countries form 3. User selects Italy in Form A and saves it with the Italy ID 4. Form A report shows Italy 5. Italy is inadvertently

    • Zoho email using a python or html template

      # main.py import smtplib import csv from email.mime.text import MIMEText from email.mime.multipart import MIMEMultipart from config import SENDER_EMAIL, APP_PASSWORD, SMTP_SERVER, SMTP_PORT # email Subject email_subject = "🎉 Python + Zoho Mail HTML Email

    • customize payment page

      Is there a way to customize, other than the theme colour, the payment page that customers are taken to from invoices? I can't seem to find a way. I just don't like the formatting of the current page and would like to make it look better. I've looked at

    • Solution: How to send email using a python follow up this

      # Step One Setup Your App Password For this url {https://accounts.zoho.in/home#security/app_password} #How to genarate App password {https://help.zoho.com/portal/en/kb/bigin/channels/email/articles/generate-an-app-specific-password#To_generate_app_specific_password_for_Zoho_Mail}

    • Are Environments Worth It?

      In concept, Environments in ZC is a great idea. I think the flow is pretty smart when you compare it to GitHub, especially for a low code audience. However, in practice, I've found it to be unpredictable, and I've only used it a few times. Aside from

    • Enhanced duplicate check for Leads in CRM

      Hello Everyone, We are excited to announce that you can now check for duplicate entries in leads by comparing them with similar records in the Contacts Module. Previously, when you added a lead, only the converted leads were checked for duplicates. This

    • Pause(1);

      I'm using scheduler to invoke an interaction via http post with an external service. The schedule code uses a for-each loop that runs so fast my external application's log files get messed-up (they are named by date-time stamp). What I'm suggesting is

    • Integration Request: Elementor

      Integrating Zoho CRM forms with Elementor, the most popular page builder on Wordpress, would be great. I use it for our site, goenergylink.com, and I have had to use Zapier webhooks to be able to connect it with Elementor. The one issue I have run into

    • Ability to Change Visibility of Published YouTube Videos

      Hi Zoho Social Team, How are you? We would like to request an enhancement in Zoho Social regarding the management of already published youtube videos. Currently, after publishing a youtube video through Zoho Social, there is no option to change its visibility

    • Adding anchor links in Zoho CRM email templates

      I know you can add anchor link in Campaigns, but I dont see the option to that in the CRM email template. Am I missing something?

    • openUrl in blueprints

      My customer wants to open a URL at the end of a blueprint transition. Seems this isn't possible right now but it would be very useful. In this thread, https://help.zoho.com/portal/en/community/topic/openurl-not-working the Zoho agent said that it's logically

    • Ability to Add YouTube Video to Playlist During Publishing

      Hi Zoho Social Team, How are you? While publishing YouTube videos through Zoho Social, we noticed that the platform currently does not allow selecting a playlist at the time of publishing. Instead, we can only add the video to a playlist after it has

    • Introducing Zoho Creator's 2025 Release Projection 2

      Hello Creators! I'm Prakash, from the Creator product management team, and today I'm delighted to unveil our next set of features as part of Release Projection 2 for 2025. With thoughtful analysis and planning, we've curated powerful new capabilities

    • Sharing Form Ownership Among Multiple Users

      I would really like the ability to share form ownership among multiple users. It's frustrating to me that if a co-worker wants to make an edit to a form, I have to transfer ownership to them. It would be great if forms could act like google forms, where multiple people can edit a form and view responses. 

    • Marketer’s Space - Ace Your Spooky-Season Marketing with Pre-designed Templates in Zoho Campaigns

      Hello marketers, Welcome back to another post in Marketer’s Space! We’re in Q4, which means that you have endless opportunities to connect with your audience, starting with Halloween campaigns! In this post, we’ll show you how to design the perfect Halloween

    • Zia expands to China with native features and DeepSeek-powered generative AI features

      Hello everyone, We are glad to support Zia native features and Zia generative AI features for our customers in China. From hereon, all AI-features in Desk will be accessible in China data center with the integration of DeepSeek generative AI model. DeepSeek

    • Email in each module

      We have a contact ,module which then has a link to customer assets which in turn the asset has a multiple link to service visits. When we link assets to customers we choose by name and it brings over the associate email via the lookup. Great feature.

    • Global Search placement in the new UI

      Having a hard time with the global search placement in the UI redesign. Surely I can't be the only one. Previously global search placement was perfect. A bar at the top/center of the page. Exactly where you would expect it to be. Since the new UI has

    • Introducing Skill-Based Ticket Assignment

      The goal of every support team is to provide great support, and to do so as fast as they can. To make this possible, it is important that agents spend their time judiciously, especially when they're dealing with a large number of tickets of varying urgency

    • Kaizen #213 - Workflow APIs - Part 1

      Welcome to another week of Kaizen! If you have ever managed complex business processes, you know that Workflows are the quiet backbone of any well-run business process. They keep things moving; assigning owners, sending alerts, keeping deals on track,

    • Browser and address bar hide

      Hi, How i can do hide the address bar with browser headline when i am working on the sheet, because i am using (freeze panes) which i want visible for full work. For your reference here i am attached the screen shot and marked yellow lines which really

    • Cells Border

      Hi I am using Zoho Sheet on S Tab , is there any option to make all border of any cell at once. I think this is very basic which we are missing. This is available in mobile but not in tab or suggest if i am missing this function. And for Tab can you give

    • Credit Management: #2 Configuring Right Payment Terms for Credit Control

      Think about the last time you ordered something online and saw that little note at the checkout, "Pay on Delivery" or "Pay later". It's simple, but it actually sets the tone. As a business owner, you know exactly when payment is expected. Now, imagine

    • Zobot and Sales IQ

      What will happen to the Zoho Sales IQ being integrated to the website after creating the Zobot on the website too

    • Help Center and SEO: Any Benefit to My Domain-Mapped Website Ranking?

      First of, I love the Help Center which I've just decided to integrate into my website to replace its old-fashioned FAQs. So much more to achieve there now! Lots of new benefits to the site visitors and to me in terms of organizing and delivering all the

    • Support french language options

      Greetings, I want to use Zoho with the french language portal, however the supplied translation is not very good (google translate). There are many basic mistakes on the main most important sections (my requests, submit a request). Is there a way for

    • Automation #7 - Auto-update Email Content to a Ticket

      This is a monthly series where we pick some common use cases that have been either discussed or most asked about in our community and explain how they can be achieved using one of the automation capabilities in Zoho Desk. Email is one of the most commonly

    • Introducing the Workflow and Actions APIs for Zoho CRM

      We are absolutely thrilled to announce the release of Workflow APIs and Actions APIs in Zoho CRM’s v8 API suite! This powerful new set of endpoints gives developers unprecedented programmatic control over business automation. For years, Workflow Rules

    • Zoho CRM Analytics - Allow To Reorder Dashboards

      I would like to suggest that you add the ability to reorder dashboards in the Analytics Module. I can see that this has been requested some time ago, the latest 9 years ago. I am not sure if this is a big or small endeavor, but such a small fix can go

    • Zoho Form URL displays incorrect name

      Hi, I have a form I created called "Design Request form". It displays this way everywhere I look. However, in the URL, it shows up as "DesignJobRequestFormFINAL011325PROOFV1B" and I'm not sure why. I can't find where to fix this. Does anyone have any

    • Consumers are talking about your business. Are you listening?👂

      A loyal customer might be praising your product in a forum. A frustrated user could be posting a harsh review on a public site. An excited partner may have left a comment on your campaign. A domain expert might be deconstructing your product. A prospect

    • What counts as a Temp for Billing Purposes in Workerly

      I'm considering trying this product but am not sure how the temp count is used for billing purposes. For example, if we keep a large data base of 500 potential workers.....are we billed for that or only if they are assigned to a client at a given point

    • Next Page