How can you make your support more efficient by adopting Tiered support?

How can you make your support more efficient by adopting Tiered support?

One of the main issues most businesses face is handling support conversations as they expand. As the business scales up, the chat load also increases exponentially. So, it becomes hard for your existing operators to handle all of the chats, hiring new operators also does not come cheap, and training them takes time.

In our last post, we saw insider tips from support reps of SalesIQ themselves. In this post, let us see how you can bring more structure to your support as you expand your business without disrupting your support workflow.
 
"Organizing is what you do before you do something so that when you do it, it is not all mixed up."  
  - A A Milne  
 

What is Tiered support?    

Tiered support is the concept of organizing your support on multiple levels based on your customer's requirements.

Our take on Tiered support   

There are a lot of blogs and posts on tiered support; each has a different opinion on this topic, and many change based on the product they are selling. In this post, you'll see our take on how to approach tiered support using Zoho SalesIQ.
 
 If I have a business, will this be helpful for me? 
 
Yes and no, it depends on the type of business that you have. A large business with a high daily chat volume can gain a lot by adopting Tiered support. A budding business with little chat volume would not.
 
Now, let me explain the reasons clearly; every large business will have a lot of customers who might have the same questions; having your operators attend to all of these customers could not only result in inefficient support, it can also result in exhaustion of your operators.
 
Whereas in a small business, it would be more valuable to connect directly with your visitors. Now, let's take a look at the tiered support stages using SalesIQ. 

Tiered support stages using SalesIQ   

Tier 0: Enabling self-help for visitors  

The first stage of the Tiered support is to make the users find answers to all the commonly occurring issues by themselves. This can be achieved by enabling the knowledge base in your SalesIQ chat window. With the knowledge base enabled, you can display articles and FAQs, and they will be able to get answers to their questions from there.
 
To enable Knowledge base for your brand:
  1. Navigate to Settings > Brands > Your brand name > Configurations.
  2. Switch to the Channels tab in this section. And toggle on the Knowledge base for the desired platform.
If you wish to provide a messenger-first experience for your customers, you can use our AI-powered Answer bot to assist visitors with their basic questions. With the help of natural language processing, the bot will understand the user's intent, provide the right article for your help guide, and make it look like they are conversing with a human operator.
 

Tier 1: Deploying chatbots to provide personalized assistance

The next step in the Tiered support list is to enable advanced bots that can do more than address your visitors' questions. Zobot allows you to perform advanced functions like pushing leads to Zoho CRM, logging support tickets for conversations, adding visitors to newsletter, mailing lists, etc. These bots can be the perfect filter stage to know what the visitor wants. If visitors require a human operator, they can transfer the chat to a human operator.



Tier 2: Allowing customers to reach your human operators  

In this stage, the chats that were transferred by the bots and the chats where the visitors have requested to connect with an operator can be routed to your frontline support.

Issues that are too complex to be solved by the self-service knowledge base and bots can be handled in this stage. Issues with onboarding, account problems, etc., can be better addressed by a human more effectively, and the visitors will feel more satisfied when they know that an actual person is helping them.
 

Tier 3: Routing customers to the operator with the required expertise  

This is the last stage of the Tiered support; at certain times, you might have visitors with higher value support requirements; in such cases, it is wiser to route them directly to the operator with the right expertise. Chat routing can enable you to route chats of desired visitors to the operators or departments you specify.  
 
This final stage can be helpful for the following conditions:
  1. Escalated chats.
  2. Chats that would require the right expertise.
  3. VIP and high-priority chats and calls.
You can implement these four tiers of support using Zoho SalesIQ. Please let us know what support structure you are currently using for your organization in the comments.
 
Regards,
Naveen




        • Recent Topics

        • abou arattai

          I want to use the Arattai app for business purposes, so please convert my account to a business account.I have my own invoice app, and I want to link it with the Arattai app for direct messaging.

        • Overlapping Reports in Dashboards

          It's rare, but occasionally it would be a good feature if I were able to overlap reports, either fully or partially in the Dashboards. Also, then having the ability to move objects to the front or rear, or make them transparent/translucent would be good

        • Looking back at Zoho Calendar in 2025

          Hello Zoho Calendar Community, As we step into a brand-new year, we’d like to take a moment to thank you for being an active and valued part of the Zoho Calendar community. Your trust, feedback, and continued engagement motivate us to keep evolving and

        • There was an error while connecting to GSTN

          I am trying to file GSTR1. Everything flows smoothly until I reach the final step of filing the return. After I enter the PAN and OTP for filing it raises the error "There was an error while connecting to GSTN"

        • Zoho Books Extension: What Happens If Custom Fields Already Exist?

          When developing Zoho Books extensions, what happens if the target Zoho Books organization already has a custom field with the same API name as one defined in the extension? I’m asking because we originally created an on-Books version of this functionality,

        • Internal Server Error (500) When Attempting to View Banking Transactions

          I am experiencing an Internal Server Error (500) when attempting to view transactions across all of my banking accounts. Despite multiple attempts to resolve this, I have received little more than runaround from support, and the issue remains unresolved.

        • How do I add a blank line to the Organisation Address Format?

          I'd like to have my VAT number, for example, shown prominently by having a clear gap between it and the address block above, but any blank lines in the address format get ignored in PDF outputs.

        • Automatic Invoice Number generation for createRecord

          Hello, while testing some custom Buttons in my Zoho Books application, I noticed that I get an error that previously did not occur. After some further digging I found that the automatic transaction numbering of invoices no longer work in my organization.

        • Adding number of days to an estimate.

          I need both QTY of item and "number of days hire" in my estimates at the line item level. Any clues as to how this is done would be greatly appreciated. It needs to calculate. Thanks J

        • Books Api: listing expenses created after certain dates

          Is there any parameter I can add to the List Expenses endpoint that will let me look up expenses by when they were created?

        • Why can't we change the Account type from an Expense to an Asset?

          Like the question. Why in QuickBooks for example if I mistakenly created an account as an expenses and I already captured information in those accounts, I can just change the account type from expense to asset

        • Is it possible to do validation for the Actions added to Reports?

          We have an all-around On Validate function that checks all the possibilities before the Created/Edited form submissions. We want to have a button in the report view, so we can change records without entering. We are able to add this button, and it does

        • Ability to Edit Ticket Subject when Splitting a Ticket

          Often someone will make an additional or new request within an existing ticket that requires we split the ticket. The annoying part is that the new ticket maintains the subject of the original ticket after the split so when the new ticket email notification

        • [Free Webinar] Environments in Zoho Creator - Creator Tech Connect

          Hello Everyone, We’re delighted to kick off the 2026 edition of the Zoho Creator Tech Connect Series and are excited to continue this learning journey with you. The Creator Tech Connect series is a free monthly webinar featuring deep-dive technical sessions

        • Zoho Voice API SMS

          I made a post request in Zapier to try to send an SMS. Authentication appears to be configured correctly. I followed the documentation and I'm getting a 400 Error "Internal Server Error". Not helpful at all. Anyways, I could not find any information on

        • How do I change (error) display messages

          Hi! I would like to edit display messages like "invalid entries" and "enter a value for Nome" and so on into Italian language messages. How can I do that? Already tried on Validate on form submit. Where I am failing? Thanks in advance.

        • Record Overseas Transactions Along with CC charges

          Hi All, We receive payments via stripe in multiple currencies and stripe takes around 2.5% fees. The amount is settled in INR into our local bank. What should be the currency of the income account used for Stripe payments? Here is a sample flow that we

        • Easier onboarding for new users with stage descriptions

          Greetings, I hope all of you are doing well. We're happy to announce a recent enhancement we've made to Bigin. You can now add descriptions to the stages in your pipeline. Previously, when creating a pipeline, you could only add stages. With this update,

        • Pieds de page personnalisé - Document Zoho Writer

          Bonjour à tous, Je rencontre un souci avec l’ajout d’un pied de page personnalisé dans un document Zoho Writer. Je souhaite insérer les informations de mon entreprise (notamment un logo + adresse) dans le pied de page. Le problème, c’est que lorsque j’ajoute

        • Permissions on Views

          Having the option of any agent creating custom views is firing back and got a situation where there are a hundred different views across the team and tickets are not being dealt in the most efficient of ways. Tickets seems to be missed by some agents,

        • Credit card transactions are backwards after importing statements

          I am new to Zoho Books so I'm importing my firm's bank and credit card statements in. My credit card statements have a single column with negative numbers so that is the option I chose. But when I went to categorize the credit card transactions, I can

        • import data from Apollo.ai into zoho crm via zoho flow

          I might be asking this question in the wrong forum. We use Apollo.ai to find potential new leads for our business, there are around 10000 leads that we have initially found. We have an Apollo.ai account but just to do searches, we dont use it as a crm.

        • Knowledgebase SEO

          We have a custom-domain mapped help center that is not restricted via login. I have some questions: a) will a robots.txt file still allow us to control indexing? b) do we have the ability to edit the sitemap? c) do category URLs get indexed by search

        • VIsual maindmaps in Zoho notebook Ai

          Can I create and export VIsual maindmaps in Zoho notebook Ai

        • 1stDibs Integration to Zoho Inventory

          Hello is it possible to integrate my Zoho inventory and 1stDibs?

        • Community Question: Renewal vs Invoicing

          This is a question for the community. Does anyone else consider there to be a difference between a subscription renewal event and sending out a recurring invoice for a subscription? For example, let's say customer XYZ purchases a 1-year subscription to

        • cloud console support for music websites

          Hi Friends, I am not from a very technical background.. So need support from the Zoho family. I want to build a e-commerce website which is in Musical Niche. It will help people learn music & play instruments of all types. There are a few players in the market like Chordify , Guitaa, Guitar Dashboard, ChordU & few others. But I all these websites allow only a few instruments  to play. So I want to build a better  website than the one I mentioned. So wnated to know what UI & AI should I use so that

        • Scheduled Reports - Do not send empty report

          Hello, We are intensively using reports in the CRM, especially for sales managers. When data is empty, they still receive an email. Can you add an option to avoid sending the report when data is empty?

        • Is Zoho One Desktop more secure than Zoho One Web SaaS?

          Is Zoho One Desktop more secure than using Zoho One in browser? Inherently, it seems desktop would be unless you don't do things like share your pw or leave pc on. I am concerned about data being on the cloud or someone else's server and database.

        • Reminder Settings - Time Tracker

          On the time tracker in Reminder Settings I created a reminder according to the Zoho manual. But a manager asked me to change the message that goes in the email. Is it possible to change the message? I didn't find that in the Zoho manual. Another question: I configured to receive the reminder everyone who logged in less than 40 hours. Does Zoho consider less than 40 hours of the current week or the whole month? Another situation, I put it so that I and another specific user would receive the notification,

        • Create Item group from a composite Item

          I have applied my mind for hours but cannot figure this out. Can you have a composite item in an item group?. E.g. We bundle different color and size SKU's together as composite items. Also Using composite items as Bill of Materials. We want to create

        • Main difference of Zoho Recruit Corporte version and Staffing HR vesion

          Hi Zoho, I need help to fully understand what is the main key point differences of Recruit Corporate version versus the Staffing HR version? We are currently using Corporate HR version and we are looking on having an insightful automated reporting, does

        • Out of Stock items showing in Commerce

          I have over 6000 items and most are not in stock, but all items are showing up in Commerce whether they are inventory or not. What option or feature can you use to hide items in Commerce at zero or negative quantities? I currently am using Commerce for

        • Is it possible to transfer data from one related list to another within the same module ?

          In the Leads module, there is an existing default Product related list that already contains data. Recently, I added a custom multi-lookup field, which created a new related list in the same Leads module. Now, I need to move the existing data from the

        • 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

        • Formula working in MS Excel , is not working in Zoho Sheets, Filter fuction which is working in MS sheets per the attached workbook / Daily update.

          Filter function , which is working in MS Excel is not working in Zoho sheets. Please help on function of filter of particular class sheets and extract students name who has more than 3.5 hours of study hours on particular day depending on date in D7 cell.

        • New in Smart Prompt: Record Assistant for contextual assistance, and support for new AI models

          Smart Prompt helps teams stay informed and move faster by providing relevant suggestions where work happens in CRM. With this update, Smart Prompt becomes more adaptable to your organization’s AI preferences. You can now choose which Large Language Model

        • Improved Integration Failure Information (And Notification Options)

          Hi, When an attachment service for example fails, you just get "Field x - Error", I can check the field it is failing on and find nothing wrong, same file size, type, dimensions, etc. so more information as to the actual issue would be helpful. And an

        • Create static subforms in Zoho CRM: streamline data entry with pre-defined values

          Last modified on (9 July, 2025): This feature was available in early access and is currently being rolled out to customers in phases. Currently available for users in the the AU, CA, and SA DCs. It will be enabled for the remaining DCs in the next couple

        • Change User Role in a Form

          Hi, When in a form, it would be good (And consistent) to be able to change the user role/permission like you can with Shared Reports, All Entries or the actual User itself, rather than having to delete the users permission and then add it back again with

        • Next Page