Narrative 10: Assignment Rules - Streamlining Ticket Management

Narrative 10: Assignment Rules - Streamlining Ticket Management

Behind the scenes of a successful ticketing system: BTS Series 

Narrative 10: Assignment Rules - Streamlining Ticket Management

In the complex world of customer support, a flood of incoming tickets can hit the help desk in seconds. Businesses must do more than solve problems. They need to manage tickets quickly, consistently, and smartly to maintain customer trust and keep operations running smoothly.

Old manual assignment methods struggle under this pressure. They can lead to backlogs, mistakes, and uneven work for agents. Forward-thinking organizations utilize layered assignment rules that rely on automation and intelligent routing algorithms. These systems consider factors like agent skills, real-time workload balancing, topic tagging, sentiment analysis, and urgency. This approach changes ticket management from a chaotic response to a proactive system.

What is Ticket Bombardment?

Ticket bombardment refers to a situation in customer support where a large number of support tickets are submitted in a short time. This surge can overload support teams, making it hard to handle and respond to each ticket appropriately.

Every day causes

Product Issues

A common bug or issue with the product or service can lead to a surge of ticket submissions from users simultaneously.

Misinformation

Miscommunication or a lack of information about changes can lead to confusion, resulting in multiple tickets for the same issue.

Promotional Campaigns

Launching a new feature or running a promotional campaign can increase the number of customers seeking help or clarification.

Downtime

Technical failures or system outages can lead to an increase in support requests as users seek assistance.

Types of Assignment Rules

By using ticket assignment rules, organizations can manage incoming requests more effectively, preventing any single team member from becoming overwhelmed. This ensures that tickets are resolved efficiently and everyone on the team can contribute without stress.

Consider implementing a direct assignment rule to streamline ticket allocation across the entire organization. This method enables tickets to be assigned directly to agents, groups, or teams, regardless of the department to which they are assigned. For example, if a ticket concerns an order or delivery issue, it should naturally be directed to the team that handles such inquiries. A support admin can set up the rule to look for keywords like "orders," "delivery," "shipment," and "consignments." This way, tickets related to those topics will automatically be sent to the appropriate department, ensuring that the right agents, who are trained to handle such matters, can step in and provide assistance.

On the other hand, round-robin assignment rules work differently. These are focused within a specific department and distribute tickets evenly among team members. Imagine a group of agents all handling support requests; it wouldn't be fair for one person to receive all the tickets while others have none. With round-robin, when a new ticket comes in, the system assigns it to the least busy agent first. There's even an option for support admins to set a cap on the number of tickets a single agent can manage at one time, keeping workloads balanced and ensuring no one feels overwhelmed.

Then we have a skill-based assignment, which takes it a step further. This method not only looks at the agent's workload but also their expertise. If a ticket requires technical assistance, it seeks to find someone knowledgeable in that area. For example, if a customer from a specific country needs assistance and there's an agent fluent in their language, the system will prioritize that agent to handle the ticket. This way, customers receive help from someone who truly understands their needs.

With an Assignment Rule configured, each incoming ticket is checked against predetermined criteria and assigned to the most appropriate agent, resulting in advantages such as immediate attention, a lower backlog, and increased efficiency.

Benefits of Assignment Rules

  • Load balancing
  • Skill matching
  • Better priority handling
  • Multiple types of assignment options
  • Notifications for transparency

Auto-close tickets

Auto-close tickets are essential during busy periods because they help prevent system clutter, keep agents focused on active issues, and maintain smooth workflows.

When a help desk faces a surge of tickets, often due to major incidents or product problems, many tickets can stay inactive or unresolved for days. Auto-close automatically closes tickets after a set period of inactivity. This reduces the backlog, allowing agents to focus on tickets that truly require assistance. It also keeps the ticketing system organized and current, improves response times for urgent cases, and reduces stress for both agents and customers.

Ultimately, enabling auto-close during busy periods prevents inactive tickets from accumulating. This helps teams focus on addressing genuine support needs and maintaining a productive support environment.

What is Ticket Scheduling?

Ticket scheduling is a process in Zoho Desk that helps organize and prioritize incoming support requests. By scheduling tickets based on urgency, complexity, and available resources, support teams can more effectively manage their workload. This method helps prevent ticket bombardment, which occurs when a support team is overwhelmed by a sudden increase in tickets.

Automation as the foundation  

By creating clear assignment rules that balance direct, round-robin, skill-based, and priority-based methods, organizations can succeed in the fast-paced world of modern support. Automatic ticket closure, detailed scheduling, and data-driven prioritization help keep support operations running smoothly. This approach empowers agents and ensures that customers receive genuine care, even when faced with a high volume of tickets.


Please stay tuned for more in the Desk behind-the-scenes series.


Regards,

 

Kavya Rao

The Zoho Desk Team


    • Recent Topics

    • How to send certain invoices for Approval based on condition?

      To streamline operations, I need the invoices to go for approval when certain conditions are met. For example, if my staff gives a discount of x amount, it must go for approval. If there is no discount, then the invoice will be approved automatically.

    • Unable to continue payment

      Hi, I want to make a payment for my email subscription, but I cannot proceed with the payment because my NITKU is invalid. In Indonesia, the NITKU consists of 22 digits, but Zoho only provides 20 digits, causing my NITKU to be invalid. Please help me

    • Is there a way to show contact emails in the Account?

      I know I can see the emails I have sent and received on a Contact detail view, but I want to be able to see all the emails that have been sent and received between all an Accounts Contacts on the Account Detail view. That way when I see the Account detail

    • Massive spam pretending to come from our address – is this a Zoho security issue?

      Hi, We’ve been receiving more and more suspicious emails lately — many of them clearly look like scams. But yesterday, we got an email that appeared to be sent from our own address, which was very concerning. We're starting to wonder if this might be

    • Cant recieve mails

      I’m having an issue with my external IMAP account not fetching any emails into Zoho Mail, even though the connection test says “Success”. I can send, if someone sends an email to me. my original directory (home.pl host) recieves it in their portal but

    • Zoho Sheet Autofit Data

      While using Autofit Data function in Zoho Sheets with Devnagri Maratji or Hindi Fonts, a word or a number, it keeps couple of characters outside the right side border.

    • Enhancements to finance suite integrations

      Update on the migration (October 28, 2025): Starting this week (October 29 tentatively), we’ll begin migrating Zoho CRM users to Zoho Books as integration users. This means actions will now run under each user’s own Zoho Books access, instead of the admin’s.

    • Edit 'my' Notes only

      The permissions around Notes should be more granular, and allow to user to be able to edit the notes he created only. The edit Notes permission is useful as it allows the user to correct any mistakes or add information as needed. However, with this same

    • How do I filter contacts by account parameters?

      Need to filter a contact view according to account parameter, eg account type. Without this filter users are overwhelmed with irrelevant contacts. Workaround is to create a custom 'Contact Type' field but this unbearable duplicity as the information already

    • Job Alerts for Candidates

      hi All, I have 2 questions relating to sharing job details with candidates. 1. is there a way to notify candidates that meet certain criteria of current jobs available? eg. I run a candidate search, and identify 50 candidates that might be suitable. Can

    • Add multiple users to a task

      When I´m assigning a task it is almost always related to more than one person. Practical situation: When a client request some improvement the related department opens the task with the situation and people related to it as the client itself, the salesman

    • Enhancing Task Accuracy: Automatically notify the owners upon Task duplication.

      Hello Everyone, A Custom function is a user-written set of code to achieve a specific requirement. Set the required conditions needed as when to trigger using the Workflow rules (be it Tasks / Project) and associate the custom function to it. The requirement

    • Show/ hide specific field based on user

      Can someone please help me with a client script to achieve the following? I've already tried a couple of different scripts I've found on here (updating to match my details etc...) but none of them seem to work. No errors flagged in the codes, it just

    • Where are Kanban swimlanes

      So i've been playing with Zoho Projects Kanban view a bit more. It appears that task lists are being used as the Kanban columns, which makes sense from the implementation point of view but not the logical one.  Kanban columns are statuses that a task can flow through, while a task list has been a logical way to organize related tasks and relate them to a mislestone. In other words a task in a particular task can go through several stages while remaining in the same task list. After doing some research

    • Tip 19: How to display images in Pages using ZML snippets

      Hi folks, We're back with another tip on how to use Zoho Markup Language (ZML) to create interactive pages in Zoho Creator. You can use ZML snippets to add various kinds of components to your pages and structure them in meaningful ways. That's not all, though—using ZML you can ensure your application is automatically compatible with all kinds of devices without any inconsistencies. We often get questions from users about how to invoke Deluge scripts within ZML code. Here's a simple use case for adding

    • Can zoho swign format block text spacing automatically when prefilled from zoho crm?

      I'm sending zoho sign template from zoho crm, so that zoho crm pre-populates most fields. I have existing pdf documents that i am having signed. I have no ability to change the pdf documents, they are standardized government forms. The problem I am facing

    • Zoho Inventory / Finance Suite - Add feature to prevent duplicate values in Item Unit field

      I've noticed that a client has 2 values the same in the Unit field on edit/create Items. This surprised me as why would you have 2 units with the same name. Please consider adding a feature which prevents this as it seems to serve no purpose.

    • Reference lookup field values in Client script

      hello all, I'm using a "ZDK.Apps.CRM.Products.searchByCriteria" function call, which is returning the matching records correctly; however, one of the fields is a lookup field which I need the associated data. I believe there is a way to get this data

    • In App Auto Refresh/Update Features

      Hi,    I am trying to use Zoho Creator for Restaurant management. While using the android apps, I reliased the apps would not auto refresh if there is new entries i.e new kitchen order ticket (KOT) from other users.   The apps does received notification but would not auto refresh, users required to refresh the apps manually in order to see the new KOT in the apps.    I am wondering why this features is not implemented? Or is this feature being considered to be implemented in the future? With the

    • Every time an event is updated, all participants receive an update email. How can I deactivate this?

      Every time an event is updated in Zoho CRM (e.g. change description, link to Lead) every participant of this meeting gets an update email. Another customer noticed this problem years ago in the Japanese community: https://help.zoho.com/portal/ja/community/topic/any-time-an-event-is-updated-on-zohocrm-calendar-it-sends-multiple-invites-to-the-participants-how-do-i-stop-that-from-happening

    • How can I filter a field integration?

      Hi,  I have a field integration from CRM "Products" in a form, and I have three product Categories in CRM. I only need to see Products of a category. Thanks for you answers.

    • How to implement new online payment gateway?

      Hello, Can you tell me how to proceed to implement my local payment gateway? DIBS has an open avaiable API that should be easy to implement into ZOHO BOOKS. http://tech.dibspayment.com/dibs_payment_window

    • Zoho CRM - Portal Users Edit Their Own Account Information

      Hi Community, I'm working on a client portal and it seems like the only I can make the Account record editable to the Contact, is if I add another lookup on the Account to the Contact record. Am I missing something as the account already has a list of

    • Connecting Zoho Mail with Apollo.io

      Hi, I am trying to connect my Zoho Mail account with my Apollo.io account to start sending cold email for prospecting purposes. I have activated the IMAP setting but I am still unable to connect to the Apollo account. I am using my email credentials but

    • Where does this report come from in the Zoho One ecosystems?

      Is this directly from MA, Analytics or ??? ???

    • Contact's title in "Contact Role Mapping"

      When I'm creating a deal, I'd like to see the contacts title in the listing. Right now, I only see this: How can I get the contact's title in there?

    • Zoho CRM - Client Portal - Hide Notes Related List

      Hi Community, I'm building a customer portal and I can't find a way to hide the notes related list. I don't want the client to see the notes I have about them. Is there a way to do this as it is no bin/trash icon when I hover over.

    • "Pivot Table" Conditional Formatting

      Team, I there a way to use conditional formatting a "Pivot Table"  report? Thanks, Arron Blue Pumpkin Hosting | Solutions Made Simple

    • How many clients can be added to Zoho Practice?

      How many clients can be added to Zoho Practice without having their zoho app?

    • Stage History

      when viewing a ticket , and you look at stage history tab (kanban view) and look at the stage duration column in days, it shows the current stage of the ticket as " current stage ". Should it not rather show the amount of days it has been in that current

    • Automating Ticket Responses Using Zoho Desk's AI Features

      We’re looking to set up an automation within Zoho Desk that can analyze incoming emails or tickets and automatically respond with relevant knowledge base articles based on the content of the request. Could you please guide us on how to configure this

    • Optimising CRM-Projects workflows to manage requests, using Forms as an intermediary

      Is it possible to create a workflow between three apps with traceability between them all? We send information from Zoho CRM Deals over to Zoho Projects for project management and execution. We have used a lookup of sorts to create tasks in the past,

    • Service locations are tied to contacts?

      Trying the system out. And what I discovered is that it seems that the whole logic of the app is, I'd say, backwards. There is a Customer - a company. The company has contact persons and service locations can be associated with different contact persons.

    • Enhancements to Zoho Map integration tasks

      Hello everyone, We're excited to announce enhancements to the Zoho Map integration tasks in Deluge, which will boost its performance. This post will walk you through the upcoming changes, explain why we're making them, and detail the steps you need to

    • Bug in Total Hour Calculation in Regularization for past dates

      There is a bug in Zoho People Regularization For example today is the date is 10 if I choose a previous Date like 9 and add the Check in and Check out time The total hours aren't calculated properly, in the example the check in time is 10:40 AM check

    • Narrative 12: Sandbox - Testing without the risk

      Behind the scenes of a successful ticketing system: BTS Series Narrative 12: Sandbox - Testing without the risk What is a sandbox environment? A sandbox environment is a virtual playground that allows you to test freely and experiment with various elements

    • Announcing new features in Trident for Mac (1.27.0)

      Hello everyone! Trident for macOS (v1.27.0) is here with new features and enhancements to improve scheduling and managing your calendar events. Let's take a quick look at them. Stay aligned across time zones. Both the scheduled and original time zones

    • Branding of native system emails

      Make system emails adjustable in terms of branding. We want our system to be completely white label, because it is not a CRM anymore, it's way more than that. We are following the strategy of "CRM for everyone" to use the CRM in all departments, not only

    • Slow uploads of large files

      I'm wanting to use Workdrive for transferring large images and video (we're talking things from 100MB-5GB). I'm running solo on a 500MBit/sec fiber connection. I'm getting upload speeds to Workdrive of no more than about 1-3Mbytes/sec when going through

    • Migrate Your Notes from OneNote to Zoho Notebook Today

      Greetings Notebook Users, We’re excited to introduce a powerful new feature that lets you migrate your notes from Microsoft OneNote to Zoho Notebook—making your transition faster and more seamless than ever. ✨ What’s New One-click migration: Easily import

    • Next Page