Create customized SLAs for your customer base with support plans

Create customized SLAs for your customer base with support plans

Managing customer expectations, prioritizing critical issues, and resolving customer inquiries on time is quite a juggle. Without a clear timelines or defined priorities, a support team may struggle with delays in response, SLA violations, and pending tickets, which will eventually impact customer satisfaction.
 
Support plans help businesses customize the support services based on service type, product requirement, issue type, business tier, customer needs, and more. By setting specific support plans for different accounts, businesses can ensure that every interaction is handled with the right level of attention and urgency to improve overall efficiency and customer satisfaction.

How are support plans beneficial?

Efficient SLA management

Businesses can create specific SLAs for support tiers and account types to ensure that the team meets customer expectations efficiently and consistently.

Example: A business can set different resolution times for various clients—such as 4 hours for enterprise customers and 48 hours for others—keeping service levels consistent while avoiding the risk of missing important deadlines for high-priority clients.



Clear credit cycle and limit management
 
Businesses can define specific credit cycles and limits for accounts based on their support plan to help manage service usage and costs effectively.

Example: A business can set a monthly support limit for an account on a basic plan and ensure that additional services beyond this limit are billed accordingly. For premium accounts, the business can offer higher or unlimited credit to provide flexibility while still maintaining control over resource allocation and usage. This helps businesses manage their support costs and optimize resource allocation strategically.



Automatic escalation handling

Critical issues can be escalated automatically if they’re not addressed within the set SLA, which ensures that urgent matters receive the necessary attention.

Example: If a critical issue isn’t resolved within the specified time, it can be escalated to the support manager without manual intervention. This ensures no critical issues are overlooked.

Greater flexibility for seasonal business models

Companies with fluctuating customer demands can adjust support plans to match seasonal trends.

Example: During holiday seasons, when demand is expected to increase from certain client types, businesses can associate multiple support plans to a single account. This allows them to provide the necessary level of support for different needs without the hassle of constantly upgrading and downgrading plans, ensuring smooth operations and quick resolution of time-sensitive issues.

Note: A support plan can be associated with multiple contracts. However, one contract can be associated with only one support plan at any given point.



Enhanced team accountability and performance

By setting clear SLAs and goals for different support plans, businesses can track team performance and ensure accountability.
Example: Support teams can track whether agents meet SLAs or not and optimize the SLA timelines and improvise other aspects periodically.

How does it work in Zoho Desk?

  1. Assign support plans to accounts: Within Zoho Desk, businesses can create and assign different support plans to specific customer accounts based on their requirements. This allows for customized SLA management.
  2. Set up SLAs: For each support plan, businesses can configure different SLA policies, such as response and resolution times, which will apply to tickets associated with the respective plans.
  3. Track performance: Zoho Desk will enable the manager track SLA performance and notify the team if the SLA is at risk of being breached, which helps ensure timely resolution.
  4. Escalation rules: Automatic escalation rules can be set up within Zoho Desk to ensure that critical issues get the necessary attention if they are not resolved within the specified SLA time.

Kindly refer to our help document for more information on working with support plans.
This feature is available to all users across all the DCs. Please give it a try and provide your feedback and suggestions in the comments below.

Thanks, and have a great day!

Regards,
Varsha P
Zoho Desk | User Education


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