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

      • You have reached the maximum limit of bank accounts that can be connected to Zoho Books through token.

        I can no longer connect to my bank account to download transactions into Zoho Books. I egt the error message: "You have reached the maximum limit of bank accounts that can be connected to Zoho Books through token. To connect more accounts, write to us

      • First Name in Mail

        While sending a mail/message to the user, I want only the first name to be displayed—for example: “Hi John” instead of the full name using "Hi ${Name_Field}"

      • Can you import projects into Zoho Projects yet?

        I see some very old posts asking about importing project records into Zoho Projects. But I can't find anything up to date about the topic. Has this functionality been added? Importing tasks is helpful. But we do have a project where importing projects

      • Connectivity issues with Google Calendar and third-party integrations

        Description: We are currently experiencing a critical failure with Zoho CRM third-party connections. This issue is heavily affecting our primary workflow. Symptoms: Sync Failure: Existing Zoho CRM to Google Calendar connections have been failing for approximately

      • Add Reauthentication Option for Zoho Bug Tracker Integration in Zoho Desk

        Hello Zoho Desk Team, We hope you're doing well. We would like to request an enhancement to the Zoho Bug Tracker integration within Zoho Desk. Current Limitation: At the moment, there is no option to reauthenticate the Zoho Bug Tracker integration in

      • Newby Questions

        Q1. The top bar of Zoho Books has a "Search in Banking (/) " field. What is the proper use of this text box? - Searching for Amazon for example has no results but there are transactions. - Is the search case sensitive? - Are regular expressions allowed?

      • Transaction Rule Matching

        Q1. Is there a method to have the Transaction Rules applied across multiple Bank Accounts? Q2. To match "contains" text in Transaction Rules, is a wildcard or regular expression required? Is it case sensitive? Would searching for "issue" in the following

      • Newby Questions - Vendors, Customers, and Income vs. Other Income Clarifications

        Q1. For Deposits, there does not seem to be an option for "Income". "Other Income" is an option however. What is the process to add the option to assign a deposit to type "Income"? Q2. In many cases Vendors and Customer are the same. Vendors may purchase

      • Introducing parent-child ticketing in Zoho Desk [Early access]

        Hello Zoho Desk users! We have introduced the parent-child ticketing system to help customer service teams ensure efficient resolution of issues involving multiple, related tickets. You can now combine repetitive and interconnected tickets into parent-child

      • Three Zoho Billing Limitations Blocking Standard Subscription Operations

        After working through Zoho Billing support for over a year on these three issues without resolution, we wanted to flag them to the broader community. We are curious whether other businesses are running into the same walls. 1. Cannot Prepone (Move Earlier)

      • Automation #3 - Auto-sync email attachments to tickets

        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. Most of our customers use email

      • Can't add a sender adress from zoho campaigns

        hi, I need to change the sender address for a campaign.  When i try to add it i get a message to say 'duplicated email address found while adding your sender address'.  This is the first campaign i'm sending so I don't understand why this message is displayed? Thanks Jane 

      • Using a custom single line External ID form as merge fields in templates

        Hey everyone, We're looking to integrate a few external systems better with our Zoho CRM, and we had hoped to use external fields for this purpose. In this case, it would mean being able to use our own inoice system's invoice numbers are a direct id compatible

      • Introducing Workqueue: your all-in-one view to manage daily work

        Hello all, We’re excited to introduce a major productivity boost to your CRM experience: Workqueue, a dynamic, all-in-one workspace that brings every important sales activity, approval, and follow-up right to your fingertips. What is Workqueue? Sales

      • Zoho CRM - Feature Request - Analytics Components Group By Week Alternative Formats

        On the Zoho CRM Analytics Components, please consider adding an option to allow group by week format to be changed to other formats such as Week Commencing or Week Ending dates, rather than the current Week Number. This would provide improved usability

      • Dashboard target enhancements

        Often individuals in IT are creating dashboards for their sales team. The ability to create a single dashboard that can be used by multiple people is key. A components for a dashboard have the ability to filter by logged in user which is great. However

      • Zoho Campaigns - Feature Request - Re-Send Existing Email Action in Automations/Journeys

        Hi Zoho Campaigns and Zoho Marketing Automation teams, I would like to suggest a feature that would make building and managing complex automations significantly easier. The Feature Introduce a “Re-Send” or “Send Existing Email” action within Automations

      • Can I write a check in Zoho Books with no associated bill?

        This currently does not seem possible, and I have a client that desperately needs this function if I am able to convert them with Quickbooks. Thank you in advance for your reply. 

      • ISO 3166-2 Compliant Country and Regions

        Zoho should consider implementing ISO 3166-2 standards for countries and regions in address dropdowns. It adds a lot of noise in the data when items added programmatically conform to ISO 3166-2 (e.g., TX for Texas, CA for Canada, etc.), but the few items

      • US State abbreviations in Address fields

        In regards to all Address fields within Zoho, Is there a way to change the State field to be the 2 letter abbreviation vs the full spelled out US State name? Example: "Washington" should be WA. I am able to type in the abbreviated state, but it's not

      • Zoho Booking - TIN vs ATIN & ITIN

        Zoho Booking Vendors allows for TAX ID values of SSN, EIN, ATIN an ITIN. There is no option for TIN. What is the method to properly add TIN to the list of taxable values for companies? For reference: Social Security Numbers (SSN) Individual Taxpayer Identification

      • How to see Statement Details Shown in Unclassified Transactions in All Transactions?

        All, The list of Unclassified Transactions show the Statement Details and Descriptions. What is the method to see that column in the All Transactions list? -Thanks!

      • Zoho Books | Product updates | October 2025

        Hello users, We’ve rolled out new features and enhancements in Zoho Books. From iOS 26 updates to viewing reports as charts, explore the updates designed to enhance your bookkeeping experience. Zoho Books Updates for Apple Devices At WWDC 2025, Apple

      • Bill sent for Payment Approval

        Zoho Books currently supports three levels of transaction approval for bills: Draft, Submit, and Approved. We are looking to add a layer of approval like a bill marked for payment before initiating payment requests through HSBC Bank. Can you please guide

      • Ask the Experts - Live Q&A webinar

        Hello Community, We’re excited to host our very first Ask the Experts session! Join us on 7 April 2026 from 11 a.m. to 12 p.m. (IST) for this live webinar Q&A session, where you will have an opportunity to connect directly with our product experts, gain

      • All new Address Field in Zoho CRM: maintain structured and accurate address inputs

        Availability Update: 29 September 2025: It's currently available for all new sign-ups and for existing Zoho CRM orgs which are in the Professional edition exclusively for IN DC users. 2 March 2026: Available to users in all DCs except US and EU DC. 24

      • Kaizen #235 - Automating record restoration using Recycle Bin APIs in Zoho CRM

        Welcome to another Kaizen week. Here's a question that came up in our developer forum: "I'm working on a piece of software to automate conversion of Leads into Deals based on order status from my company's website. There are some cases where a previously

      • Open PDFs using Zoho PDF Editor

        Hello users, In this article, we will be exploring the open PDF capability in Zoho PDF Editor to collaboratively edit PDFs, insert text and images, add fillable and e-signature fields, and more. You can upload PDFs upto 50 MB or 150 pages. Password-protected

      • One Contact with Multiple Accounts with Portal enabled

        I have a contact that manages different accounts, so he needs to see the invoices of all the companies he manage in Portal but I found it not possible.. any idea? I tried to set different customers with the same email contact with the portal enabled and

      • Bank Feeds Breaking Constantly

        Hey Everyone, I have already reached out to support about this issue but I am wondering if anyone else is having the same issue. My bank feeds keep breaking within days of me fixing them by updating the credentials. Its been happening for a while and

      • Print Sales Orders, Purchase Orders or Invoices from API

        Hello, Is it possible to use the print option that is available in Sales Orders Purchase Orders and Invoices with the API?. I don't see any information in the docs about this. Thanks

      • Timed addition to segments

        Hi there - hoping you can help me figure out a graceful way of doing this: • I want to add contacts to a Segment in Campaigns based on a Stage pick-list field value X in CRM - that bit's fine. The problem is that I only want to add them to the Segment

      • Zoho Developer AI Agent = Claude AI + MCP Server + Zoho Ecosystem

        Hello Zoho Community 👋 I’m excited to share a recent integration we’ve worked on at Officehub Tech: ✅Claude + MCP Server + Zoho Creator Zoho Developer AI Agent – an AI-powered Zoho automation platform This solution connects Zoho applications with an

      • Dynamic Questions in Zoho Forms

        Is it possible to add dynamic questions (like displaying a user’s name) in Zoho Forms? I know this is possible in surveys, but can we implement similar functionality in Zoho Forms?

      • Cliq iOS can't see shared screen

        Hello, I had this morning a video call with a colleague. She is using Cliq Desktop MacOS and wanted to share her screen with me. I'm on iPad. I noticed, while she shared her screen, I could only see her video, but not the shared screen... Does Cliq iOS is able to display shared screen, or is it somewhere else to be found ? Regards

      • Google Fonts Integration in Pagesense Popup Editor

        Hello Zoho Pagesense Team, We hope you're doing well. We’d like to submit a feature request to enhance Zoho Pagesense’s popup editor with Google Fonts support. Current Limitation: Currently, Pagesense offers a limited set of default fonts. Google Fonts

      • CRM

        How do I build an email funnel of 10 emails with decision tree ie; if yes use this email if no use this email. Also I cannot figure out how to add more groups or see my whole groups. I've set up different groups like attorneys is one group of companies/people

      • WebDAV support

        I need WebDAV support so that I can upload/download (and modify) documents from my local file system. Is anything planned in his direction?

      • Replying from same domain as a catch-all?

        I have 2 domains setup on Zoho, both with associated email addresses. They look something like this: john@example.com (primary address) john@test.com (this domain also has a catch-all setup) I use the catch-all for test.com as a public-facing email address

      • 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

      • Next Page