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

    • 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

    • 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

    • 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

    • Announcing the New and Improved Article Editor

      KBase articles are known to help customers, find solutions to problems on their own and set the stage for ticket deflection. That said, the way you present your KBase content is the clinching factor that ensures your customers stick around to consume it.  We took it upon ourselves to build an editor that allows you to publish articles without delving into the code. Well, at least for the most part. With more options and a redefined interface, the article editor in Zoho Desk is now better than ever!

    • Recent Topics

    • Error 403: Forbidden When Updating Email Signature via API

      Hi Zoho Desk team, First, congratulations again on the excellent Zoho API. But, I’m encountering an issue while attempting to update an email signature via the API. Whenever I make a request to update the signature, the response returns an HTTP 403 Forbidden

    • Automatically set quotes to "lost" if deal is set to lost

      Hi, Is there a way to automate that if a deal (opportunity) is lost the related quotes are also set to lost? Thanks!

    • Change script to add fields

      Hi, I have a custom function (writen by a different implementation company in the beginning) which I would like to edit to add a different field as well. Can't get it to work on my own though. - The script now adds the address fields to a new quote (needs

    • Subdomain

      How can i make subdomain in my zoho website

    • A/R Aging Details shows wrong aging days

      In the A/R Summary Report all of the invoices are in the right aging buckets. When I run the A/R Aging Details report I get aged dates of +300 days when they should be in the 0-90 day range.

    • "Age in Days" calculation in Advanced Analytics

      Hi Can someone advise how this is calculated? I am getting values on this report which I cannot understand. Thank you

    • Global Choice List share ownership

      I have created several forms that use one or more Global Choice Lists. These lists have been published to Org. I would like to allow one or more admins to edit the choices in these lists. Any help appreciated. Geoff

    • Domain Transfer

      I have a Godaddy domain, how i can transfer it to Zoha? and how i can move my website to Zoho server? With my best wishes.

    • Project Templates & Reminders

      I am getting projects all set up to work for our company and am running into a problem that I'm hoping is easily fixable. I have created a project template and within that project, there are reminders set on certain tasks. When I create a project from

    • Kaizen #126 - Circuits in Zoho CRM - Part 1

      Hello everyone! Welcome back to another week of Kaizen! Today, we will discuss an exciting topic—Circuits in Zoho CRM. For starters, we will discuss what Circuits are, how beneficial they are for businesses, different views of a Circuit, and the different

    • 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

    • Zoho Flow or Schedules

      I have a process where we text our leads 7 times over a 14 day with different content for each text. I created one flow in Zoho Flow to do this, but wondering if there is a more efficient way to accomplish this via Schedules. It goes on for 6 more times

    • Free webinar: Zoho Sign 2024 wrap-up - Everything that is new and has changed

      Hello, Are you looking up to catch up on all the updates made to Zoho Sign in 2024? Or are you still figuring out how you can use Zoho Sign better to get business paperwork done more efficiently? If so, we invite you to join us this Thursday, December

    • Send Whatsapp with API including custom placeholders

      Is is possible to initiate a session on whatsapp IM channel with a template that includes params (placeholders) that are passed on the API call? This is very usefull to send a Utility message for a transactional notification including an order number

    • How to Customize Task Creation to Send a Custom Alert Using JavaScript in Zoho CRM?

      Hello Zoho CRM Community, I’m looking to customize Zoho CRM to send a custom alert whenever a task is created. I understand that Zoho CRM supports client scripts using JavaScript, and I would like to leverage this feature to implement the alert functionality.

    • Workflow - Execute Based on Date

      Hello, I have trouble understanding the documentation for Execute Based on Date or Date Time Field's Value. I want to send an email every time I have a Case opened for more than three days with its status unchanged. I set : This rule will be executed 3 days after [date].  Condition : Status is [New]. Instant Action : Send an email notification. However, I'm not sure I follow this part of the documentation: "For all the records matching the rule criteria, rule will be triggered either monthly or yearly

    • Can we set a BCC address as default to show while sending emails?

      Two things inside ZohoCRM are annoying me because it's a repeated work. First one is that I always need to click manually to add the BCC field while sending an email to a lead. Can we set a default address so when I click to send a new email the BCC address

    • Client Script - mapping data from different module

      Dear ZOHO Team Firstly I need to describe the need - I need to have data from Contacts module based on lookup field - the 5 map limit is not enough for me because I have almost 20 fields to copy So I have decided to make a Customer Script - and from unknown

    • Make collecting payments from your customers in Bigin easier with payment links

      Greetings, Efficient payment collection is crucial for business success. Bigin already helps your businesses manage and sell products effectively, but we can further enhance this by making payment collection easier. This integrated payment feature lets

    • Zoho Creator Upcoming Updates - December 2024

      Hi all, We're excited to be back with the latest updates and developments on the Creator platform. Here's what we're going over this month: Deluge AI assistance Rapid error messages in Deluge editor QR code & barcode generator Expandable RTF and multi

    • Basic Price List Functionality Still Missing

      I am having a problem with the most simple imaginable pricing scenario - you buy cheap, add profit, then sell high. Or in less simplistic terms: business buys a product at a given cost, then adds predetermined percentage markup, and finally sells that

    • How do I hire employees????

      Hi! I own a bookkeeping company, where a few of my clients use Zoho Books as their accounting platform . I started utilizing Zoho Practice to work on the books of my Zoho clients, some have Zoho One and some have Zoho Books plans. I just hired an employee,

    • Advanced Framing Techniques

      I'm a construction professional passionate about optimizing building practices, and I want to share my insights on Advanced Framing Techniques with this forum. When I first learned about these methods, I was amazed at how much efficiency they bring to

    • Automate data upload process like reports

      I'll start with the end in mind.  I want to basically keep certain creator tables updated with data that are in a sql database/tables in our office (employees, active jobs, employee positions) so I can reference that data and not have to duplicate it by hand every time someone adds a new job or employee in the office desktop software.  Here are some thoughts I had about how to do this, but am unsure as to whether any of them are actually possible and how to go about it from there: Is there any way

    • Greylisted, try again after some time

      Can you check my ip, i send to duyna@vietlinkjsc.vn but have an error; my ip is 112.213.94.12 Here is log: 2018-01-09 09:40:29 H=mx.zoho.com [204.141.32.121] SMTP error from remote mail server after RCPT TO:<duyna@vietlinkjsc.vn>: 451 4.7.1 Greylisted, try again after some time 2018-01-09 09:40:32 H=mx2.zoho.com [204.141.33.55] SMTP error from remote mail server after RCPT TO:<duyna@vietlinkjsc.vn>: 451 4.7.1 Greylisted, try again after some time 2018-01-09 09:40:32 duyna@vietlinkjsc.vn R=lookuphost

    • Zoho Sheet Custom function column showing Error #EVAL!

      Hello I have a custom function in Zoho Sheet developed to convert a date time from one time zone to another. The custom function takes date and time columns and then using subHour( ) converts the time to PST time. However, though the custom function works,

    • Clear String field based on the value of other field

      Hello everyone, We would like to be able to clear a string field (delete whatever has been written and make it empty) when another field (picklist) is changed to a specific value. While I can empty other types of fields, I noticed that I can't do this

    • Emails linked to Deal

      Hello everyone, I’d like to ask a question to see if someone can help me out. We are requesting availability from suppliers by sending emails directly from the Opportunity. These emails we send are logged within the Opportunity; however, when we receive

    • How to transfer all my mails from Zoho to Gmail or Office 365

      is there any option to move my emails from zoho to gmail or office 365. i would like to export more than 25k emails from zoho to office 365 or gmail. can anyone help me to guide properly. this will help me to access my emails easily i have both account and can easily  do it with office 365 or gmail. i want two options. direct from zoho to office 365  or exported eml files from zoho to gmail. please suggest me both if possible 

    • Inquiry Regarding Image Display Issue in Campaign Duplication

      We are currently using Zoho Campaigns for email distribution to our clients. I would like to inquire about an issue we encountered. When duplicating a previously created and sent campaign from the "All Campaigns" section, the images used in the header

    • New integrations for Bigin: Zoho Sign, SalesIQ, and Marketing Automation

      Greetings, We're excited to share new integrations that make Bigin more powerful and useful for your business! Zoho Sign for Bigin Zoho Sign now integrates seamlessly with Bigin, enabling you to sign, send, and manage contracts or agreements without leaving

    • Add multiple users to a task

      When I´m assigning a task it is almost always related to more than one person. Practical situation: When a client request some improvement the related department opens the task with the situation and people related to it as the client itself, the salesman

    • What is Attendee Status 0 and 1?

      Hi there, I recently stumbled upon the API to get the attendee list and in the return value, there is a parameter called "status", and 0 supposed to mean not_attending, and 1 means attending. I cannot find this representation anywhere in the attendee

    • How to add a Data Updated As Of: dynamically in text?

      I need to add a "Data Updated As Of" in the dashboard to show when was the last date the data was updated. I tried to create a widget but it does not look really good, see below. Is there a way I can do this through the text widget and update it automatically

    • ZOHO BackStage

      How to get list of events, using ZOHO BackStage APIs. Is it possible OR not?

    • Email with attachments saving attachments into Zoho CRM from Zoho Mail

      Hi, I get a lot of emails from prospective clients asking if we would bid their project. Those projects usually have many documents associated with them that I link to.  I would like to have those documents be saved as an attachment in my Potential or Contact or Account. I don't see a way to do that that isn't multi-step. As of now I do the following: 1.) Open email 2.) If email sender isn't in my Zoho CRM database I enter them creating a Potential 3.) I download the attachment and save it to a different

    • Directly Edit, Filter, and Sort Subforms on the Details Page

      Hello everyone, As you know, subforms allow you to associate multiple line items with a single record, greatly enhancing your data organization. For example, a sales order subform neatly lists all products, their quantities, amounts, and other relevant

    • Blueprint - Field Validation Criteria (During)

      When setting validation criteria elsewhere in Zoho, or even workflow criteria etc., there are Is Empty and Isn't Empty options.  Within the Field Validation Criteria within Blueprint, those options aren't available.  Is there a particular reason for this? 

    • Request For Quotation (RFQ) module

      Hello, Do you have any plans to implement a RFQ module in to ZOHO Inventory? I would like to chose items that I require a price for, select a number of different suppliers to e-mail and have them submit there pricing online. I would then like to see a

    • How to Customize Task Creation to Send a Custom Alert Using JavaScript in Zoho CRM?

      Hello Zoho CRM Community, I’m looking to customize Zoho CRM to send a custom alert whenever a task is created. I understand that Zoho CRM supports client scripts using JavaScript, and I would like to leverage this feature to implement the alert functionality.

    • Next Page