Zoho Desk: What's new in 2024 | Feature release

Zoho Desk's 2024 release is here!

This year, we are bringing you a range of highly-anticipated features, including some that are designed to meet unique and industry-specific needs. With solutions for personalization, automation, AI, ticket management, and more, we're committed to offering you an enhanced and highly customizable help desk experience.

Here are some of the areas we've improved.

Ticket management
Customization
Automation
Zia
Privacy and Security
Data administration
Personalization and multilingual
Mobile experience

Webinar: What's new in Zoho Desk - A 2024 Release Overview' webinars. Registration links at the end of the post.

Ticket Management

Easily link and manage related tickets with parent-child ticketing (early access available on request)

Tickets can be related to one another by subject, or by the customer who raised them. Related tickets can be linked through a parent-child relationship that:

Provides clear context during ticket handling
Promotes efficient ticket management
Improves agent productivity
Contributes to an organized ticket database

Help Document and Availability

Understanding parent-child ticketing | Professional and above

Reduce response time and improve customer satisfaction with mass and scheduled replies

Send bulk responses to similar tickets that require the same response. This improves time management and enhances agent productivity by reducing repetitive tasks and inadvertent errors. Schedule responses at a more convenient time for recipients, promoting faster resolution.

Help Documents and Availability

Sending mass replies to tickets | Professional and above

Sending scheduled replies to tickets | Professional and above

Mass reply

Scheduled reply

Bring more context to tickets with ticket ID customization (coming soon)

Ticket IDs are unique, auto-generated identifiers that are used for reference. Businesses can customize the ID to make it relatable and contextual. Alphanumeric prefixes or suffixes can be added, such as a country code, ticket channel, product name, or even the ticket due date. This also makes it easier for customers to identify the tickets they've raised.

Customization

Meet custom requirements with custom modules

Build custom modules to map your business with Zoho Desk. From real estate to finance, IT, and retail, every business has unique methods for handling customer tickets.

For example, to resolve a transaction question, the agent will need to request context to provide a timely resolution.

All business and customer data can be stored right inside the Desk account using custom modules, eliminating the need to switch between applications. This can help with providing customized travel plans, connecting educators to students and universities, understanding asset utilization in the organization, monitoring vendor and supplier information, and more. With relevant data easily accessible across teams, ticket handling becomes easier and decisions become more contextual.

Help Document and Availability

Creating custom modules | Enterprise

Interlink modules using Custom Lookup fields

Bridge two modules by adding Lookup fields that allow users to find records from module A while creating records in module B. For example, creating an Asset lookup in the Tickets module will allow users to select the asset they want while raising a request.

Help Document and Availability

Creating custom lookup fields | Professional and above

Data validation with RegEx in Validation and Layout Rules

Maintain data authenticity and acceptable data formatting with the help of RegEx validation. Users can create and set acceptable patterns or formats for necessary fields. For example, the alphanumeric arrangement or the pattern required for passwords can be set using RegEx.

Help Document and Availability

Use RegEx for layout and validation rules | Enterprise

Identify and segregate records easily with color coding (coming soon)

Picklist values can be assigned different colors for easy identification. This allows you to differentiate records at a glance, categorize them, and easily analyze a large quantity of data. It also allows users to personalize their experience by choosing the color palette that suits their brand or preference.

Automation

Optimize support services with tailored Support Plans

Customer requirements vary. While some want to receive a first response within an hour, others demand that a certain number of tickets be resolved weekly. They may even require dedicated support for one specific product.

As a service provider, it is imperative to segregate and categorize customer requirements and build tailored support plans that address various needs. This process also ensures that the agents are not overworked.

For example, a ticket-based plan can provide optimum support to enterprise customers. It can specify an upper limit on the number of tickets that will be addressed for a defined period, such as 100 tickets per week. These 100 tickets will adhere to the SLA specified by the plan. Based on their credit limit, customers can gain real-time insight into the number of tickets they have already raised, as well as the remaining balance for the week. Once the upper limit is reached, further tickets can be charged based on the customer's request, ticket type, and other parameters, as defined by the contract.

Help Document and Availability

Scope, Purpose, and Benefit of Support Plans, Understanding and working with Support Plans | Enterprise

Extend the capabilities of Blueprint with extension-based operations

The blueprint guides support agents through a ticket's lifecycle, helping them make the right decisions and follow a systematic approach to handling tickets.

With Blueprint widgets, you can link your marketplace extensions to a Blueprint flow. This will allow agents to schedule a meeting, share their location, and send surveys to gather customer feedback right from the Blueprint.

Help Document and Availability

Blueprint - Widgets | Professional and above

Zia

Improved data accuracy and agent productivity with Zia's field predictions

Zia can detect patterns in existing tickets and use the information to auto-update field values in incoming tickets. This helps customer support teams maintain data accuracy, ensure data validity, and minimize manual intervention. For example, Zia can predict the severity of a ticket and assign it to the most suitable agent or team for a faster resolution.

Zia can be retrained as new tickets with diverse data enter the system. She identifies changes, recreates patterns, and suggests values based on new trends.

Help Document and Availability

Zia - Field Predictions | Enterprise

Privacy and security

Enhance data and system security

Encrypt system-defined fields (early access available on request)

Predefined fields, such as name, email address, and contact number, can be secured from unauthorized access using the Advanced Encryption Standard method.

Help Document and Availability

Encrypting standard fields | Enterprise

Secure download of email attachments (coming soon)

Admins can prohibit agents from downloading certain types of files, preventing inadvertent access to malicious content or software. This helps organizations maintain their confidentiality and privacy standards.

Data Administration tools

Monitor daily activities across the Desk account with an audit log

The audit log provides a complete overview of what actions were taken, when, and by whom, in chronological order. By monitoring every activity, admins can take necessary measures to revert any action that was unintended, pinpoint problem areas, and prevent large-scale issues.

Help Document and Availability

Monitoring audit log | Enterprise

Test and validate configurations before implementation with a sandbox

Businesses can test, evaluate, and make modifications to existing configurations without disturbing the live account in a sandbox. Based on the result, they can deploy only valid changes to the live account, ensuring they achieve the desired behavior and eliminate flaws in existing process flows.

Help Document and Availability

Working with Sandbox | Enterprise

Personalization and multilingual features

Enhancements to accessibility controls (coming soon)

This year, we have made a few more enhancements to visual accessibility.

Focus ring: Highlights elements of focus on a webpage or user interface, making the element more prominent for users. It is particularly helpful for individuals who navigate digital content using keyboards or other non-mouse input methods, such as screen readers or voice commands.
Skip navigation: Jump past repeated navigation elements to the main content area of the webpage.
Custom cursor: By default, the cursor is arrow-shaped. Users can customize the size and color of the cursor.
Toast notifications: Toasts are short and time-sensitive notifications used to display alerts, warnings, information, and success or failure messages. They appear in small rectangular boxes at the top-right corner of the screen. Users can set toast notification time and display preferences, including:

The duration of notification display before auto-closure
Whether to close warning manually and alert notifications
Whether to display notifications as a stack or list

New languages

We have introduced three new languages to the list: Vietnamese, Arabic, and Hebrew, Zoho Desk now offers solutions in 23 global languages.

Help Document and Availability

Language preferences | All editions

Marketplace and Developer tools

Monitor API usage to make informed decisions

The API dashboard will provide a detailed visual representation of API usage patterns, including information on call volume, daily averages, and the top apps, services, custom functions, access points, and users. These statistics help in analyzing and monitoring API usage effectively.

Help Document and Availability

Working with API Dashboard | All paid editions

Locate important and relevant applications inside Tickets with the Extension Starter Pack

For quick navigation, the marketplace app can be accessed from the top bar. In addition, to facilitate improved decision-making, the system will display your most relevant apps right on the Tickets Detail page.

Customer insights
Ticket insights
Print tickets for Zoho Desk extension
Geolocation extension
My Followed tickets
Checklist extension

Help Document and Availability

Navigating extensions from placeholders | Standard and above

Mobile experience

Create dashboards and pin important items in the Radar app

Create dashboards using charts, graphs, tables, and other data visualization components to represent business data in a more comprehensible manner. Also, add the most-used dashboards to the dashboard grid for quick access from anywhere, at any time.

Pin frequently-accessed information, like filtered dashboard views, follow-up tickets, calls, or events to the top of your menu for easy access and quick action.

Help Document and Availability

Creating Dashboards in Radar App | Standard and above

That's a wrap!

Upcoming Webinars

We are planning to schedule webinars for all these release features soon. The upcoming webinars that you can register for are:

What's new in Zoho Desk - A 2024 Release Overview on 27th Feb, 2024 - Register here

Exploring Custom Modules in Zoho Desk on 1st March, 2024 - Register here

Please Note: All the new 20+ features will be released in batches in the next couple of weeks. Give them a try and share your feedback here. For further inquiries, you can write to support@zohodesk.com

Regards,

Anumita Gupta
User Education | Zoho Desk

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