Sixth Insight - The Hidden C in Data

Sixth Insight - The Hidden C in Data

The Wheels of Ticketing - Desk Stories

The Hidden C in Data

[Importance of clean data]


Data cleaning

Data cleaning ensures ticketing systems' data is accurate, consistent, and complete. This process includes eliminating duplicates, fixing errors, and addressing missing information.
Quote
Clean data is happy data.

Why is data cleaning so important?

Data cleaning eliminates errors, inconsistencies, and duplicates within data, resulting in increased accuracy. Tools are available to help you swiftly address data issues. Enhancing accuracy enables the extraction of reliable insights. Inconsistent or inaccurate data can lead to misleading results, poor decision-making, and ineffective strategies.

Data hygiene

Data hygiene in a ticketing system refers to the processes and practices involved in maintaining accurate, complete, and consistent information. This is crucial for ensuring that customer support operations run smoothly and effectively.


  • Data accuracy
  • Data completeness
  • Data consistency
  • Data deduplication
  • Regular data audits


By prioritizing data hygiene, organizations can improve the efficiency of their support teams, enhance the quality of customer service, and gain valuable insights from reliable data analytics.

A story for better interpretation

Scrub your data clean

Once upon a time, a small but dedicated team in a tech company managed customer support through a ticketing system called "HelpNow." As the company grew, so did its customer base, leading to an overwhelming influx of support tickets. Although the team worked diligently, the increase in tickets created clutter. 
 
Once efficient, the HelpNow system became cluttered with old tickets, unresolved issues, and duplicate requests. Customer satisfaction started to decline as users waited longer for their problems to be resolved. Frustration lingered not only in the hearts of customers but also within the support team, which they found increasingly challenging to navigate through the cluttered ticketing system.
 
One day, the team lead, Joey, called for a meeting to address the urgent situation. "We need to scrub our data clean," he announced. The team discussed various strategies, but he had a vision of what needed to be done and a systematic approach to decluttering their HelpNow system.
 
The initial step entailed thoroughly reviewing and categorizing all existing support tickets utilizing a custom view. The team reached a consensus to archive tickets over six months old and lacked follow-up, as these were likely associated with resolved issues. To ensure efficient progress, they established a clear deadline for this undertaking, fully aware that collaborative effort and focused teamwork were essential for effectively addressing the backlog. Their strategic approach aimed to organize the current workload and foster a more streamlined process for ticket management.
 
Joey organized a “Scrub-a-thon” a week later, encouraging everyone to join forces. Each team member was assigned a category of tickets to review. Deleting duplicates became a friendly competition. Teams found ways to delete tickets using mass updates and automation, rewarding those who could clear the most entries. They quickly learned that many tickets had been created multiple times due to customers submitting the same request across different channels.
 
During this process, the team discovered an unexpected treasure trove of information. Many old tickets contained insightful feedback about the product, creating a new FAQ section that addressed common user questions. They also realized that some bugs needed urgent attention, leading to prioritized fixes for the product.
 
As the Scrub-a-thon continued, the team also acknowledged the importance of customer communication. They crafted an email update to inform customers about their efforts to improve support quality. Customers appreciated the transparency and felt confident that their concerns were being taken seriously.
 
After two weeks of hard work, their system was transformed. The volume of tickets had been dramatically reduced, and the remaining tickets were prioritized and categorized effectively for quicker solutions. Customer agents could easily navigate the system and focus on resolving issues rather than wading through a digital maze.
 
Reports generated from the cleaned data helped Joey and her team identify trends in customer inquiries and revamp their product support resources accordingly. Inspired by their findings, they implemented a new self-service help widget to empower users with immediate solutions. 
 
The results were incredible: response times dropped, customer satisfaction surged, and the support team thrived in their more organized environment. The HelpNow system became a case study in transforming mess into clarity, demonstrating the power of scrubbing away the unnecessary to unveil the valuable.

Best practices

Scheduled data audits

Scheduled data audits are the systematic process of regularly reviewing and analyzing data within a specific timeframe to ensure accuracy, compliance, quality, and relevance. This practice is essential for businesses and organizations to maintain the integrity of their data, identify errors, and ensure adherence to regulations and standard policies.

Removing inaccurate data entries

Removing inaccurate data entries means eliminating incorrect, erroneous, or misleading information entered into a system. These inaccuracies can occur for various reasons, including human error, technological glitches, data migration issues, or a lack of standardized procedures. 

Setting up field validations

Setting up field validations is crucial in ensuring data integrity and enhancing the user experience in any application. Field validations check users' input to ensure it meets specific criteria before being processed or saved. Validation rules in Zoho Desk help you overcome this problem by arresting incorrect data even before it can enter your help desk. Refer here for more details.

Detecting duplicate data

Duplicate data detection is crucial for maintaining data integrity and accurate records. The deduplication feature in Zoho Desk helps you find duplicate records in bulk and merge them.  Refer here for more details.

Addressing data security

Addressing data security involves implementing measures and practices to protect sensitive information from unauthorized access, breaches, and other cyber threats. Encryption takes the final stand against attempts to steal your data. It completes data protection by ensuring your data can neither be damaged nor stolen in the unfortunate event of a security breach.. Refer here for more details.

Inactive record management

Inactive record management involves managing records that are no longer in active use or required for daily operations. This encompasses outdated documents, files, or data that must be preserved for prospective reference, even though they do not require frequent access. In Zoho Desk, ticket management is simplified by automating the archiving of follow-up-less tickets over six months old by a deadline.. Refer here for more details.

Integrate data with analytics

Data analysis helps identify inconsistencies. Data analytics can automatically identify and flag inconsistencies within datasets. This helps agents quickly pinpoint errors or anomalies that might go unnoticed, improving the overall data quality. Data analytics can assess the quality of the data in real-time. It can provide metrics on completeness, accuracy, and consistency, giving agents the insights needed to ensure that the data they are working with is reliable. Refer here for more details.

Summing up

Ensuring a clean and accurate database is crucial for the effective operation of Zoho Desk. Data cleaning is not simply a one-time task; it requires a continuous effort to maintain the integrity and reliability of customer information. 


Establishing clear protocols and guidelines for data cleaning will ensure that agents understand their responsibilities and take accountability for upholding data quality. Mastering data cleaning practices will enhance your success.


Please stay tuned for more Desk Module stories.

 

Cheers,

 

Kavya Rao

The Zoho Desk Team

    • Recent Topics

    • Trying to show the actual Terms & Conditions on PDF

      Hi, On Zoho forms I am trying to have the actual terms and conditions that the user needs to accept also show on the pdf that they receive after. Right now it only says "Agreed". Please help.

    • Installing EMAIL Setup in New Domain

      Respected Support team, I'm facing an issue with cloudflare in Pakistan, I want to setup Zoho Mail Setup but I Don't know how to enable Zoho mail setup without cloudflare. My Website https://stumbleguyzzapk.com/, https://fakservices.com/ is using CF,

    • Enhancements to Zoho Meeting Annotator

      Hello Zoho Meeting Team, Hope you are doing well. We would like to share a few improvement suggestions regarding the Zoho Meeting Annotator used during screen sharing. While the current version provides helpful annotation tools, there are several limitations

    • Zoho Social/Marketing Plus - Addition to "Monitor" function

      It would be very helpful if the Monitor function would allow us to add a column to monitor hashtags in addition to pages and mentions. This is a common and very valuable function in other social listening tools.

    • Zoho forms - > Zoho desk multiple agents

      Hi! I would like to use a standard form to be used when we hiring people, so we looked at zoho forms for that. Now we would like to get that info in to Zoho desk and their different users shall take care of this ticket simultaneous . So, what would be

    • Almacenamiento

      Hola, Quisiera saber como podría hacer para bajar el almacenamiento de 5gb a mis usuarios, en otras palabras los quiero ir limitando de la cuota real, y luego ir agregando poco a poco la cantidad hasta llegar a los 5gb que me dan en el plan free. 

    • Zoho Invoice Now Supports VeriFactu for Businesses in Spain

      Starting from January 1, 2026, Spain requires real-time invoice reporting for all B2B transactions. From July 2026, this requirement will extend to B2C transactions as well. All reporting must be carried out through the VeriFactu to AEAT (Agencia Estatal

    • Will I Get a Refund If I Downgrade Zoho Mail?

      Hello, We upgraded an email account for our new employee. However, the employee left after one month, and now I've reduced the number of Zoho Mail users from 7 to 6. Can we get a refund for the remaining portion of our annual payment?

    • Infinite loop of account verification

      Hi I can't do anything on my zoho account.  I always get this message Hi Sheriffo Ceesay As a security measure, you need to link your phone number with this account and verify it to proceed further. When ever I supply the details, it displays that the number is associated with another account. I don't have any other account on zoho so this is really annoying. 

    • Zoho Billing Now Supports VeriFactu for Businesses in Spain

      Starting from January 1, 2026, Spain requires real-time invoice reporting for all B2B transactions. From July 2026, this requirement will extend to B2C transactions as well. All reporting must be carried out through the VeriFactu to AEAT (Agencia Estatal

    • Introducing the revamped What's New page

      Hello everyone! We're happy to announce that Zoho Campaigns' What's New page has undergone a complete revamp. We've bid the old page adieu after a long time and have introduced a new, sleeker-looking page. Without further ado, let's dive into the main

    • Zoho Books - France

      L’équipe de Zoho France reçoit régulièrement des questions sur la conformité de ses applications de finances (Zoho Books/ Zoho Invoice) pour le marché français. Voici quelques points pour clarifier la question : Zoho Books est un logiciel de comptabilité

    • Name autocomplete

      Hi, During searching emails the web tool does not always propose the auto-completion of the saved emails. As a result I either have to go to contacts and look up the exact email, or the exact full name including the middle name and any dots, which is very annoying. For example I have a contact that I emailed in the past that has "First M. Last" <email@email.com> type of contact. When I start typing 'First' the email may or may not pop up in the autocomplete menu. Then if I start typing "first last"

    • How do i follow up my email campaign in-thread

      Is there a way to follow up the email campaign so that it is in-thread using zoho campaigns? eg customer gets original email with subject line "hello" then 5 days later follow up would be with subject line "RE: hello".

    • Announcing new features in Trident for Mac (1.29.0)

      Hello everyone! Trident for macOS (v1.29.0) is here with new features and enhancements to enhance your business communication. Let's take a quick look at them. Access shared mailboxes. You can now view and access shared mailboxes in Trident, which are

    • Books is extremely slow again today !

      Everything is running slowly even with 500mb connection speed

    • Cyclic dependencies in many-to-many relationships...

      I have an application which includes a form for companies, and a form for contacts. Each company can be assigned 1 technical and 1 administrative contact. I have this working okay so far, but I want to copy the scripts used so far to a new empty application. When I import the scripts it fails with a message that says: Problem encountered while creating the application Error in resolving form dependency:Cyclic dependency among the forms:[Company, Contact] What can I do to resolve this? After all,

    • Zoho API to create ticket

      I'm developing an integration to create tickets via API, but, locally it works (send and recieve requests). In production it also works sending requests, but, my file don't recieve any response data. My URL is available in Zoho API Console and I have

    • Automate Timesheet Approvals with Multi-level Approval Rules

      Introducing Approval Rules for Timesheets in Zoho Projects. With this automation, teams can manage how timesheets are reviewed and approved by setting up rules with criteria and assigning approvers to handle submissions. Timesheet, when associated to

    • Labels Part 2

       Hey Zoho Mail Team, On the labels window on the left-hand pane, alphabetize label name display, rather than displaying in order created.  This one should be easy. Thanks, Drew

    • Building Toppings #1 - Serving your needs with Bigin Toppings

      Hey Biginners! We're excited to kick off our Developer Community series on building toppings for Bigin, and our goal is to provide an accessible, beginner-friendly, and relevant path for every developer. Imagine creating tiny pieces of software that unlock

    • Can we create Sprint with tasks from Multiple projects?

      Hi Team, We were using Zoho Sprints for quite sometime. Currently we have started the process of Sprint method. We couldnt create the active sprint board with the tasks from multiple projects. I would like to know whether this is possible or Any timeline

    • Tip of the Week #74– Create automated workflows in MS Power Automate

      Zoho TeamInbox now connects directly with Microsoft Power Automate, letting you streamline everyday routines tasks such as from sending emails to managing threads, with automated workflows. About the integration Zoho TeamInbox integrates with Microsoft

    • Account validation

      Hello everyone, I registered my account on ZeptoMail to use the system, but the problem is that the verification period on Zepto's end has already passed and I have limited functionality.

    • Paste issues in ZOHO crm notes

      Hi, since a week or so I have issues with the paste function in ZOHO CRM. I use "notes" to copy paste texts from Outlook emails and since a week or so, the pasting doesnt function as it should: some text just disappears and it gives a lot of empty lines/enters.....

    • Is it possible to add a gradient color to a newsletter im designing?

      From where i sit it looks like you can only choose a single color but not combine 2 colors?

    • New Feature: Audit Log in Zoho Bookings

      Greetings from the Zoho Bookings team! We’re excited to introduce Audit Log, a new feature designed to help you track all key actions related to your appointments. With Audit Log, you can maintain transparency, strengthen security, and ensure accountability.

    • Custom validation in CRM schema

      Validation rules in CRM layouts work nicely, good docs by @Kiran Karthik P https://help.zoho.com/portal/en/kb/crm/customize-crm-account/validation-rules/articles/create-validation-rules I'd prefer validating data input 'closer to the schema'

    • Account disabled

      I have an issue I need help with. Whilst trialing ZOHO CRM I created the following: Account1 (-------------) using m__ame@m__rg___s__i__.___.__ and 2 personal emails Account2 (-------------) using a personal email and 2 users _al__1@______________._o_.__

    • Blocked Email

      We are a Zoho One subscriber and use Yahoo as our MX provider. A few times each year, for the past four years, CRM blocks one or more of my Zoho One users from receiving internal email from CRM. This includes "@mentions" in all modules, and emails from

    • 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

    • message var is empty in bot mention handler

      Hi, I'm encountering a problem: in my bot's mention handler, I want to retrieve the text the user typed when mentioning the bot. Example: On the #tests-cyril channel, I send this message: “@Donna hello how are you ?” I expect the system variable "message"

    • Remembrance Day to Remember – Recalling Values

      The phrase “at the eleventh hour” refers to the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month in 1918, when the hostilities of World War I came to an end—but it still holds meaning today. Remembrance Day (Veterans Day in the US) is observed on November

    • Enhancing Zia's service with better contextual responses and article generation

      Hello everyone, We are enhancing Zia's Generative AI service to make your support experience smarter. Here's how: Increased accuracy with Qwen One of the key challenges in AI is delivering responses that are both contextually accurate and empathetic while

    • How to display two measures (sales and price) divided by categories on one line chart

      Hi everyone, I’m having trouble figuring out how to display two columns on a line chart with category breakdowns. What I need is a line chart where one line represents Sales and the other represents Price. However, the Price data is divided into around

    • Create custom rollup summary fields in Zoho CRM

      Hello everyone, In Zoho CRM, rollup summary fields have been essential tools for summarizing data across related records and enabling users to gain quick insights without having to jump across modules. Previously, only predefined summary functions were

    • Introducing the locking option for CRM records

      Last modified on 06/04/2023: Record locking option in CRM is now available for all Zoho CRM users in all DCs. Note that it was an early access feature available only upon request. Hello All, Hope you're doing well! We're thrilled to introduce our latest

    • Two new enhancements in Zoho CRM: Introducing new criteria for user fields and displaying group information in users page

      Announcement moderated on 14th June, 2023. Dear All, These enhancements are opened for all users in all DCs. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dear All, Hope you're well! We are here with two useful

    • Tip #49- Navigating the Remote Support Dashboard in Zoho Assist- 'Insider Insights'

      The Remote Support dashboard in Zoho Assist is designed to help technicians quickly access, manage, and monitor all their support sessions from a single, intuitive interface. Whether you’re starting a new session, managing ongoing connections, or reviewing

    • BMI formula

      I've been trying for hours to calculate BMI using height and weight as my only inputs. It's a simple calculation and I even went to ChatGPT to help me figure this out in Zoho Forms, but it led me down a path of "try this" and "try this". None of my attempts

    • Next Page