Narrative 8: Intelligent in-app support that's instantly available anytime and anywhere

Narrative 8: Intelligent in-app support that's instantly available anytime and anywhere

Behind the scenes of a successful ticketing system - BTS Series

Narrative 8: Intelligent in-app support that's instantly available anytime and anywhere


The App Support Across Platforms (ASAP) add-on for Zoho Desk is an independent application that integrates help center capabilities directly into your product to offer in-app self-service options for your users. Customers can use the ASAP widget to access help articles, connect with customer service representatives, and engage with other users without leaving the page they are on.

Help customers help themselves

We're excited to announce that we have improved our ASAP help widget for customers. The new ASAP widget is now available for both web and mobile platforms with a single configuration. It's easy to customize your self-service channels and branding elements to provide a seamless customer experience.

You can showcase the same help widget across all pages of your website or implement a unique add-on for each page. This method provides contextual support tailored to your customers, enhancing the customer service experience by offering immediate assistance without placing additional burdens on support agents. 

With our new ASAP feature, businesses can integrate a 24/7 help center service into their website or app interface. This allows end-users to access customer support without needing to navigate multiple windows, allowing them to find solutions more quickly and efficiently find solutions—all without leaving the application.

Fit your brand's style

Extend your brand identity to the ASAP help widget. You can exercise complete control over everything from support functionalities to themes, icons, logos, font styles, and more.

Benefits of adding a help widget to self-service apps

Glide through the following tips for a smooth and cohesive experience throughout your support journey.

Enhanced user experience

A help widget provides immediate assistance, reducing user frustration and improving satisfaction. It allows users to access help without leaving the app.

Reduced support costs

By offering self-help resources (e.g., FAQs, guides, or chatbots), the widget can resolve common issues without requiring human intervention. This reduces the volume of support tickets and lowers operational costs.

Increased user retention

Users are more likely to continue using an app if they can quickly resolve issues or find answers to their questions. A help widget reduces the likelihood of users abandoning the app due to confusion or frustration.

Proactive support

Help widgets can proactively offer assistance based on user behavior, such as suggesting relevant articles or tutorials when a user seems stuck. This can prevent issues before they escalate.

Accessibility and convenience

A help widget is always accessible, providing users with instant support whenever they need it. It also eliminates the need for them to search for external help resources or contact support through other channels.

Data-driven insights

Help widgets can track user interactions, providing valuable data on common pain points or frequently asked questions. This information can be used to improve the app, update help content, or prioritize feature development.

Brand trust and credibility

Offering readily available support demonstrates a commitment to user success, building trust and credibility. Users are more likely to perceive the app as reliable and user-friendly.

Multichannel support integration

Many help widgets integrate with live chat, email, or phone support, offering users multiple ways to get help. This ensures that users can escalate issues if they can't meet their needs with self-help options.

Improved onboarding

A help widget can guide new users through the app’s features and functionalities to improve onboarding and reduce the learning curve.

Competitive advantage

Apps with built-in help widgets stand out from competitors by offering a more supportive and user-centric experience. By incorporating a help widget, self-service apps can empower users, streamline support processes, and create a more positive overall experience.

Support customers on the channel of their choice

Supporting customers on the channel of their choice is essential for fostering strong relationships, enhancing satisfaction, and ensuring effective communication. Here’s a more detailed look at what this entails: Customers today prefer different channels for communication, including phone, email, live chat, social media, and in-person interactions. Understanding which channels your customers favor can help you improve their experience significantly.

Providing help center services via widget delivers instant assistance to your customers  

The ASAP software development kit (SDK) for Android and iOS provides easy access to help your mobile app's end users. Using this SDK, you can create and customise a help widget within your app, providing end-users with easy access to the help centre services.

Truly mobile  

Enable mobile app users to find solutions in their knowledge base quickly and community with in-app search and text-to-speech capabilities. Enhance the experience by placing help buttons right where your customers need them.

Conclusion

Customer expectations are evolving fast, and our team highly recommends using the ASAP help widget to enhance your customer service.

Please stay tuned for more Desk behind-the-scenes series.


Regards,


Kavya Rao

The Zoho Desk Team

Idea

Also, read:

Behind the scenes of a successful ticketing system (BTS Series)


Further reading:

The Wheels of Ticketing Series

    • Recent Topics

    • Table dimensions

      I try changing the dimensions of the table on my computer but it doesn't change. Do I have to be a premium member or does it only work on the app?
    • Direct link to Record Summary

      Hi everyone, In one of my reports, I have built a Record Summary template to display the details of one record. I would like to be able to link directly to this Record Summary once I submit a new record, without having to go to the list of records first and click on View. Is there a possibility to do so ?  Should I use the URL by passing some parameters ? Thank you very much for your help ! Guillaume
    • API Support for Creating Invoices with Batch-Tracked Items

      Hi Zoho Community, I am working on an integration where we create invoices in ERPNext and push them to Zoho Books. I need to send batch-tracked items (batch numbers) when creating invoices. I could not find any reference in the Zoho Books API documentation.
    • Amendment effective date

      Hi everyone, I noticed that the amendment effective date mentionned in my amendment is not right. Indeed, when a contract is amended several times, it states the previous amendment and their effective date. However, the effective date stated is always
    • STOCK history in zohosheets

      is it possible to get historical stock value using stock function in zoho sheets? i could not see from and to period in the helper document.
    • Auto sync Photo storage

      Hello I am new to Zoho Workdrive and was wondering if the is a way of automatically syncing photos on my Android phone to my workdrive as want to move away from Google? Thanks
    • Agent password reset

      Hi Zoho support, I would like to ask if there is a way the admin can reset a password of an agent? Regards
    • Can receive but not send messages in Zoho Mail

      Hello! I was able to configure my email client successfully in that I can receive messages just fine. However, when I send messages out, they seem to go out fine (I don't receive any errors or anything), but the recipient does NOT receive those messages.
    • Mail is sent twice!

      Been using Zoho for a while now. Installed Zoho for someone else and some weird things are happening. Mails are being sent twice. He is using Thunderbird as an email client. I already read about email being duplicated in the sent folder. But in my case
    • Can't login IMAP suddenly

      Since this evening I'm getting the error: You are yet to enable IMAP for your account. Please contact your administrator... IMAP always been enabled in my account and was workign fine for the past 7 years. Already tried turning IMAP off and on again.
    • Sending of username did not succeed: Mail server pop.zoho.com responded: User already specified

      I am having issues receiving emails from Zoho in Thunderbird. I am getting the above error. The first error tells me Authentication failed, and prompts me to enter in my password. Then I get the above error. I can receive emails when I log in online to
    • Bug tracking

      Hi, does anyone know how to track errors during picking or packing? This way I can keep track and see how to improve and prevent errors in this area.
    • Flow - Fetch info from drop down in another module

      I am running into a road block which I thought would be a simple task. My goal - The account is assigned to a "route" which can be selected from a drop down menu and adds a tag to the account accordingly (easy enough). Now when I create a task for this
    • Migration of corporate mail environment from Yandex 360 to Zoho mail

      I have to migrate a corporate mail environment with an existing domain from Yandex 360 to Zoho mail. It is vital to migrate all users with all the data. I have read the article on this topic using MacMister Email Backup Software just now and have some
    • I'm unable to send mail pthrough Zoho SMTP programmatically

      This has been working for years, but today it's been offline all day long. I see nothing anywhere on your site about this. I'm not the only one experiencing this. Downdetector has a spike of reports today
    • Can no longer send email via Django site

      This was working fine as of 11/7/25. Now I am unable to send user verification emails from a Django site on a AWS lightsail sever. When a user attempts to register the following error occurs. I have also attempted to send a test email via the shell and
    • unable to send email but able to receive email

      my email address is info@securityforceservices.ca
    • Login to server failing

      When trying to retrieve my mail, I am getting this error message -- Login to server pop.zoho.com with username (my email address) failed. It gives me the option to retry, enter password, or cancel. Then I get this message -- Sending of username did not
    • Configuration failed: 200 response not received for POST request.

      Hello, I am trying to set up a webhook to connect with an Salesforce but I receive the following error from Zoho: Configuration failed: 200 response not received for POST request I have tried testing it on webhook.site as well and receive the same error
    • Zoho Migration Assistant not working

      Hello, I am trying to use you Migration assistant to migrate emails from Rediff to Zoho. I am stuck in the first step. After downloading the migration tool, I copied the link to verify user credentials, however, after pasting the link in the browser,
    • Paid Support Plans with Automated Billing

      We (like many others, I'm sure) are designing or have paid support plans. Our design involves a given number of support hours in each plan. Here are my questions: 1) Are there any plans to add time-based plans in the Zoho Desk Support Plans feature? The
    • 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?
    • Contacts Missing — PeopleSync/Zoho Mail

      English: In our company we use ManageEngine Mobile Device Manager (MDM), Free edition, to manage corporate mobile devices. Our usage policy does not allow personal Google accounts on these devices; therefore, Google account sync is blocked through MDM.
    • Best way to integrate Zoho with mobile app for managing customer requests with real-time notifications?

      Hello, I'm building a solution for a travel company where customers submit requests through a website, and the sales team manages these requests through a mobile app. The Requirement: Customers fill a form on the website (name, email, number of children,
    • Kaizen #57 - Mass Update API in Zoho CRM

      Hello everyone! Welcome back to yet another post in the Kaizen series. This week, we will discuss the Mass Update API in Zoho CRM. In this post, we will cover the following: 1. Introduction 2. Mass Update Records API  3. Schedule Update and Get Status
    • Getting Attachments in Zoho Desk via API

      Is there a way to get attachments into Zoho Desk via an API?      We have a process by which a zoho survey gets sent to the user as a link in a notification.    The survey has several upload fields where they can upload pdf documents.    I've created
    • Multiple currencies - doesn’t seem to work for site visitors / customers

      I am trying to understand how the multiple currency feature works from the perspective of the website visitor who is shopping on my Zoho Commerce site. My site’s base currency is US Dollars (USD) but my store is for customers in Costa Rica and I would
    • Pincode based Product Restriction

      we have different types of products. 1) Very bulky items like plywood. 2) Too delicate items like glass These type of products we want to sell to local customers. Other products we want to supply all over India. There should be an option to restrict products
    • Can multiple agents be assigned to one ticket on purpose?

      Is it possible to assign one ticket to two or more agents at a time? I would like the option to have multiple people working on one ticket so that the same ticket is viewable for those agents on their list of pending tickets. Is something like this currently
    • Related Lists filter

      I have Contacts showing in our Accounts module. I customized the Contacts module with an Employment Status field, with the following picklist options: "Primary Contact", "Secondary Contact", "Active Staff(not a main contact)", and "No longer employed".
    • Standalone custom function not generating logs

      Why dont't standalone custom functions generate logs when the're called from another function? I have some functions (workflow, buttons and blueprint) that have common parts, so I put that part in a standalone function which is called from the others.
    • Add "Reset MFA" Option for Zoho Creator Client Portal Users

      Hello Zoho Creator Team, We hope you are doing well. We would like to request an important enhancement related to Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) for client portal users in Zoho Creator. Currently, Creator allows us to enforce MFA for portal users,
    • Support Bots and Automations in External Channels

      Hello Zoho Cliq Team, How are you? We actively use Zoho Cliq for collaboration, including with our external developers. For this purpose, external channels are a key tool since they work seamlessly within the same interface as all of our other channels
    • Urgent Security Feature Request – Add MFA to Zoho Projects Client Portal Hello Zoho Projects Team,

      Hello Zoho Projects Team, We hope you are doing well. We would like to submit an urgent security enhancement request regarding the Zoho Projects Client Portal. At this time, as far as we are aware, there is no Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) available
    • Creator HTML page refresh

      Hi, I have added around 5 different html snippets in single creator page. I understand, I can refresh the entire page from page script using Navigational URLs https://help.zoho.com/portal/en/kb/creator/developer-guide/others/url-patterns/articles/navigational-urls
    • Zoho Desk - Custom Module Related List Columns on Tickets

      I have a custom module in Zoho Desk called Asana Tasks, each task has a lookup to a Ticket. On the Ticket I want to see the columns of the Asana Tasks in the related list . Is there a way to do this? Right now it just has the name of the record and I
    • Google Analytics import data inaccurate (as of October 11, 2025)

      We have Zoho Analytics connected to GA4 to import daily event data. This has been running without issue for a couple of years. However, a month ago we started noticing discrepancies. All data until October 10 lines up perfectly - October 11 onward is
    • What is your opinion of the new UI?

      Hi Everyone, I would like to see what everyone thinks of the new Zoho One Dashboard. I don't get it, but perhaps I'm missing something. What are your thoughts?
    • Zoho mail to Teaminbox

      Hello, We're searching for new mail program. Now I'm testing a bit with zoho mail and team inbox. My findings in the research: Pop mail throught zoho mail is almost instant. Any pop or imap via external provider takes a couple minutes to 15 minutes before
    • What are the OAuth scopes needed to access the Zoho MCP server?

      I think I'm authenticating with the MCP server endpoint successfully using a bearer token but I can't successfully initialize an MCP session. I'm using the official MCP Python sdk (https://github.com/modelcontextprotocol/python-sdk). I get as far as here
    • Next Page