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


      • Sticky Posts

      • 2024 Email Authentication Standards: Elevating Security with Google and Yahoo

        In contemporary email communication, email authentication plays a pivotal role in mitigating email fraud, spam, and phishing attacks. Brace yourself for a new level of security. Starting February 2024, Gmail and Yahoo will be implementing robust email

      • Using Agent Email Address as From Address

        Currently, while replying to a ticket, it is possible for agents to choose their own email addresses as 'from' addresses. Although we built this just for that little extra flexibility, in hindsight, it hasn't figured much in conventional usage.  Almost all businesses prefer that responses to their customers' tickets be sent from the common support/service email address and NOT from those of individual agents. During personal interactions at events, some of you have even made passing mentions about

      • Edit and Delete options in Comments

        A lot of teams have been using ticket comments extensively to collaborate everyday. Notification Center further improved this experience by bringing real-time updates. As we continue to build more improvements to this experience, we've shipped a small-yet-important

      • Webinar 2: Supercharged customer support for growing business

        Join us for this webinar and learn how to step up your support game using a real-time communication platform to generate happier, more successful customers. In this live webinar, we will will discuss the importance of SalesIQ for your support team and how it can help you:  Understand your customers better and their journeys to proactively support and engage them even before they ask for help.  Integrating real time conversations into Zoho Desk’s Support, providing a conversational customer service

      • Customize Colors of your Customer Self Service Portal

        You asked for it. We heard you. We're happy to roll out the most sought after feature request, Customizing the Colors of your Customer Self-service Portal. Now you can set the color of your customer portal to mimic your company's web site, so that your customers visiting the portal will not feel alienated by the default theme.  Go ahead and configure the color of the header, tabs, fonts and background according to your needs. You can either choose between default color themes like Blue, Grey, Green

        • Recent Topics

        • Condition based aggregate fields in subforms

          Hello everyone, We're excited to inform you about the latest enhancements made to our aggregate field capabilities in subforms; create aggregate fields based on conditions! An aggregate field is a column on which a mathematical function has been applied.

        • Is there a way to disable the Activity Reminders Pop-Up Window every time I log in?

          Just wondering if there is a setting to disable the window from opening every time I open my CRM? Thanks Chris

        • Ask the Experts 25: Experience the full spectrum of Zoho Desk’s autumn and spring releases for 2025

          Hello Everyone, We’re on the 25th episode of our ATE series! It's a true milestone in our live community interactions! It’s been an amazing journey since we started in October 2018. Zoho Desk has come a long way, evolving with the support of a wonderful

        • Printing Multi-Page Reports (PDF Export)

          Hi, I am moving a report from Google's Looker Studio to Zoho Analytics and trying to reproduce the Looker page by page dashboard editing experience. With Google, what you see is what you get when you print to PDF. But I can't seem to create the same experience

        • Addin Support in Zoho Sheet

          Is there any addin support available in zoho sheet as like google marketplace to enhance productivity by connecting with other apps, providing AI data analysis, streamlining business processes, and more?

        • Mass Update of Lookup Fields not possible

          Hello List I've created a custom field for Leads and Contacts 'Current Campaign'. This is very Handy as I can filter leads and then related them to a campaign. Everything ready, but then I realized that mass update doesn't work for lookup fields... a

        • Zoho Books | Product updates | November 2025

          Hello users, We’ve rolled out new features and enhancements in Zoho Books. From translating email notification templates to the new transaction locking restrictions, explore the updates designed to enhance your bookkeeping experience. Making Tax Digital

        • Function #61: Automatically add free item to the invoice based on item quantity

          Hello everyone, and welcome back to another Custom Function Friday! During holiday seasons or special promotions, businesses offer deals like BOGO (Buy One, Get One), Buy 3 Get 1 Free, Buy 2 at 50% off, and much more to attract customers. These promotions

        • Notes for Items for Future Purchase Order

          Next time when I order an item, tau have to make some changes in it, that order has to be placed after 4-5 months, I want to save those changes or points somewhere in the item, how will that be possible..

        • Schemes of different tyoe

          How can easily apply hourly, day wise or month wise  schemes on Bill, Quantity, and other schemes. Like I want to apply a scheme  Form today to next 7 days .where i can mention in zoho books so scheme will implement automatically to all customers and

        • Alphabetically

          How can i arrange alphabetically - (Manage Manufacturer) Field in Item Master 

        • Zohomail

          Im trying to setup email address zoho

        • Clients not receiving emails

          I've been informed that my emails are not being received. Is there anything that I should look into to rectify this? Many thanks!

        • Double opt-in notifications and customizable confirmation messages for your webforms

          Dear CRM Community, We are excited to announce a major upgrade to our Webforms feature. You can now customize the confirmation message shown to your users who double opt-in from your webform and also customize your confirmation emails when they submit

        • Enterprise subscription support

          My organization sells subscription services to enterprise customers, which is a different model from the consumer subscription model that Zoho Billing has been designed to support and I beleve this capability should be added. An enterprise subscription

        • Free Plan mail accounts details

          In the zoho mail pricing there's a free plan that includes: FREE PLAN Up to 25 Users 5GB* /User, 25MB Attachment Limit Webmail access only. Single domain hosting. I need to make sure that I'm able to create multiple email accounts in the form of: name@domain.com

        • ZOHO Mail App Not working

          There seems to be an issue with Zoho Mail App today. It is not connecting to server, internet is working fine, tried uninstalling app and reinstalling, loading circle keeps spinning round. Is there an update on the way?

        • No more IMAP/POP/SMTP on free plans even on referrals with NO NOTICE

          Outraged. Just referred a colleague to use her domain (not posting it publicly here) to Zoho, just as I have other colleagues, clients, friends. Expected the exact same free plan features as I have and as everyone else I ever referred got. I was helping

        • Unable to receive email - "5.3.0 - Other mail system problem 554-'5.2.3 MailPolicy violation Error delivering to mailboxes'"

          My users are unable to receive emails from one particular domain, apparently. The domain known to be kicked back is whitelisted in the spam control. I sent an email to support earlier this morning but I have not received a reply. The error in the title

        • Caixa de saída bloqueada. Como desbloquear?

          Olá, meu e-mail isabela.celli@sivirino.com está com a caixa de saída bloqueada. Não consigo enviar e-mails. Acredito que tenha sido porque mandei o mesmo e-mail para várias pessoas, pedindo uma cotação de serviço. Vocês podem desbloquear para mim? Quantos

        • Zoho Forms - Improve the CRM integration field to query data from more than one module

          Hi Forms team, Something I get stuck on regularly is pre-populating a form with data when that data is spread across 2 or 3 modules. For example Contacts, Accounts and Deals. I don't want to duplicate the information in CRM so I end up writing a function

        • desbloquear cuenta

          Buenos dias  Cordial saludo Tengo una cuenta libre en zoho mail asociado a un dominio, pero uno de los usuarios se bloquea el correo porque dice que ha excedido el límite de correo, por favor podrian desbloquearla y como hago para que esta persona debe enviar sus correos sin ningun probleama. Gracias de antemano

        • Not Receiving Incoming Mail

          I can send emails from my account but I do not receive any. I originally set up forwarding and it worked for a while and then stopped. I turned off forwarding and now do not receive any emails. Could you please check what is causing this issue? Thank you

        • Will zoho thrive be integrated with Zoho Books?

          title

        • BARCODE PICKLIST

          Hello! Does anyone know how the Picklist module works? I tried scanning the barcode using the UPC and EAN codes I added to the item, but it doesn’t work. Which barcode format does this module use for scanning?

        • Making preview pane "stick"

          Hello, Is it possible to fix/dock the preview pane so that it's always there? The modern monitors are all very wide so there's plenty of space horizontally. Having the preview pane disappearing and appearing again when you click on an email message in

        • Reason:554 5.1.8 Email Outgoing Blocked

          I have been struggling to set up my email address for some time now; it's difficult to locate what I need. Additionally, I cannot send or receive any emails. I keep receiving the "Reason: 554 5.1.8 Email Outgoing Blocked" error. There doesn't seem to

        • Trouble Connecting Zoho Mail via IMAP in n8n – Need Help

          Hi everyone 👋, I'm trying to connect my Zoho Mail account to n8n using the IMAP Email Trigger node, but I'm facing issues getting it to work fully. ✅ Here's what I’ve done so far: ✅ IMAP access is enabled in my Zoho Mail settings ✅ I’m using the correct

        • Unable to send message; Reason:554 5.1.8 Email Outgoing Blocked

          Hi, I sent few emails and got this: Unable to send message; Reason:554 5.1.8 Email Outgoing Blocked And now I have few days since I cant send any email. Is there something wrong I did? Also can someone fix this please

        • Changes to the send mail Deluge task in Zoho CRM

          Hello everyone, At Zoho, we continuously enhance our security measures to ensure a safer experience for all users. As part of our ongoing security enhancements, we're making an important update on using the send mail Deluge task in Zoho CRM. What's changing?

        • Page Rules in Forms

          🚀 Dynamic Page Navigation Implementation I successfully implemented dynamic page navigation based on a user's radio button selection. The goal was to direct users to a specific, corresponding page while ensuring they only interact with the flow determined

        • Unusual activity detected from this IP. Please try again after some time

          When i try to create new addresses on my account i am getting this error, it has been 24 hours now and i am still getting this error can anyone help

        • Cancellation of written-off invoice

          Hi, Can I know when we cancel the write off (write back), in which FY, the reversal is recorded. It doesn't ask as to when the write off should be cancelled to reflect!. It shouldn't reflect in the year in which the invoice was written off since the Year

        • Create Invoice automated with Package

          Does anyone knows how to create an invoice from a SO when we have created the package? We do these manually. and validate that the product packed is the product invoiced (if the order is partially packed) Regards, JS

        • I want to create a mailing list, NOT a group.

          Can I create a mailing list in Zoho mail? I just want to be able to make a list of email addresses and give the list a name. Then when I type the list name, the list of email addresses will be automatically listed. When I create a group it sends an email

        • how to download all my files

          We are in the middle of zoho docs to zoho workdrive migration. I can not access my zoho docs page. I get redirected immediately to a zoho workdrive page. I would like to download all my files so that I have a backup in case something goes wrong with the

        • Read webpage - MSXML2.ServerXMLHTTP

          I have the following VBA script, put together from various sources (mainly zoho forum/help/support, so it once worked, I guess): private Sub GetListOfSheets() Dim url As String Dim xmlhttp As Object Dim parameters As String Dim html As String range("B1").value

        • Export Invoices to XML file

          Namaste! ZOHO suite of Apps is awesome and we as Partner, would like to use and implement the app´s from the Financial suite like ZOHO Invoice, but, in Portugal, we can only use certified Invoice Software and for this reason, we need to develop/customize on top of ZOHO Invoice to create an XML file with specific information and after this, go to the government and certified the software. As soon as we have for example, ZOHO CRM integrated with ZOHO Invoice up and running, our business opportunities

        • no me llegan los correos a Zoho mail

          No puedo recibir correos pero sí enviarlos, ya hice la modificación de MX y la verificación de teléfonos, qué es lo que ocurre? gracias

        • Group Calendar as Default for adding new events, etc?

          Hi, I want to make the group calendar (that I created, if that makes a difference) the default for anything new I add to the calendar. How can I do that? thanks.

        • Next Page