The challenge of 24/7 connectivity: Being present and meeting customer expectations

The challenge of 24/7 connectivity: Being present and meeting customer expectations

Before television entered our homes, radio was our window to the world. We had to tune carefully to catch voices from distant places. When television arrived, the world began to grow smaller.
We can watch rocket launches, see the goal that wins our favorite football club the cup, follow events worldwide, celebrate victories, understand conflicts, and explore cultures beyond our neighborhoods. Television brought familiarity, knowledge, and a shared sense of humanity. It became a place for entertainment, learning, and community. Families sat together, friends gathered, and conversations started because of what we watched.
In many ways, television was an early form of social media, filled with moments that helped connect us despite its one-way nature. It became a platform for journalists to serve mankind by bringing awareness and understanding right into our homes.
   

Television and customer service  

Just as television bridged distances, businesses need to connect with customers across cities, countries, and time zones. A business may have franchises, but customers still seek the comfort of hearing directly from “the organization they trust.” This is where customer service becomes the modern-day connector, a place where trust is built, voices are heard, and relationships grow. But unlike television’s one-way communication, today’s customers expect a two-way conversation. They want updates, answers, clarity, and reassurance.

Zoho Desk: A Platform that helps people connect

Zoho Desk becomes the modern version of that “global connector,” helping organizations reach customers seamlessly, no matter the distance.
⭐ The omnichannel interface allows our customers to connect with the communication they prefer: Email, chat, call, or meetings.
⭐ Self-service portals help customers learn and solve problems through features like the Knowledge Base and a Community forum that encourages peer-level support. A well-built Knowledge Base      extends your organisation’s presence to search engines and helps customers find answers quickly.
⭐ With Guided Conversations, ASAP widgets, and automated workflows, customers can receive support and guidance, even when agents are on leave or out of office.

The shift to 24×7 connectivity

Television introduced us to having access to content around the clock—news, movies, education, and global events available anytime. Today, with online platforms, that 24×7 access has only grown. Customer service has evolved to mirror that same constant availability.
Customers don’t just expect help to be available; they expect it to be accessible right when they need it. Zoho Desk helps customers stay connected to the business. Help is just a call or message away. With Zoho Desk, customers will find help, whether they search on our community, browse articles, chat with us, or connect with an agent directly.
On this World Television Day, let’s remember the times when television was our only source of entertainment and togetherness. We gathered with friends and family at fixed times to watch shows, movies, and events—and created memories by being present.
Customer service isn’t just about resolving queries; it’s about being present for your customers. Listening, guiding, reassuring, and building lasting relationships. Great customer service brings businesses and customers together.
Cheers,
Lydia | Zoho Desk

    • Sticky Posts

    • Register for Zoho Desk Beta Community

      With the start of the year, we have decided to take a small step in making the life of our customers a little easier. We now have easy access to all our upcoming features and a faster way to request for beta access. We open betas for some of our features

    • Share your Zoho Desk story with us!

      Tell us how you use Zoho Desk for your business and inspire others with your story. Be it a simple workflow rule that helps you navigate complex processes or a macro that saves your team a lot of time; share it here and help the community learn and grow with shared knowledge. 

    • Tip #1: Learn to pick the right channels

      Mail, live chat, telephony, social media, web forms—there are so many support channels out there. Trying to pick the right channels to offer your customers can get pretty confusing. Emails are most useful when the customer wants to put things on record. However, escalated or complicated issues should not be resolved over email because it's slow and impersonal.  When you need immediate responses, live chat is more suitable. It's also quick and convenient, so it's the go-to channel for small issues. 

    • Welcome to Zoho Desk Community - Say hello here!

      Hello everyone! Though we have been here for a while, it’s time to formally establish the Zoho Desk Community; we’re really happy to have you all here! This can be the place where you take a moment to introduce yourself to the rest of the community. We’d love to hear all about you, what you do, what company or industry you work for, how you use Zoho Desk and anything else that you will like to share! Here’s a little about me. I am Chinmayee. I have been associated with Zoho since 2014. I joined here

    • Webinar 1: Blueprint for Customer Service

      With the launch of a host of new features in Zoho Desk, we thought it’ll be great to have a few webinars to help our customers make the most of them. We’re starting off with our most talked about feature, Blueprint in Zoho Desk. You can register for the Blueprint webinar here: The webinar will be delivered by our in-house product experts. This is a good opportunity to ask questions to our experts and understand how Blueprint can help you automate your service processes. We look forward to seeing

    • Recent Topics

    • only 100 entry download entries in Zoho Form

      Is there a way to download more than 100 entries in a form at a time? It is capped (unless I am not doing the export correctly). This is very frustrating as I want to make sure I don't miss a record when downloading data. Thanks!

    • Zoho FSM Premium Edition is Here

      As your field service operations grow, so do the complexities — managing large distributed teams, keeping sensitive data secure, generating the right reports at the right time, and ensuring every technician dispatched is the right fit for the job. The

    • Seeking a WhatsApp Business App (not API) Zoho CRM integration

      We have a business need to integrated WhatsApp Business App (not API) into Zoho CRM to centrally manage communications between our Sales team and Leads & Contact. Is there a reputable integration available for this scenario of ours? Core features we would

    • Auto-sync field of lookup value

      This feature has been requested many times in the discussion Field of Lookup Announcement and this post aims to track it separately. At the moment the value of a 'field of lookup' is a snapshot but once the parent lookup field is updated the values diverge.

    • How are other Books users integrating crypto and digital assets into Books?

      If my company owns some digital assets I would want those to exist in Books as assets, and also be able to change the value as needed when generating reports. My company would also be receiving payment in cryptocurrencies and may sell at the time of payment

    • Lets Talk Recruit: Key takeaways from our India community meetups

      Welcome back to Let's Talk Recruit — the series where we bring you real stories, product insights, and community highlights from the world of recruitment. Our last post covered how Resume Harvester can take the follow-up out of hiring. This edition is

    • Approval Workflow for Purchase Orders Abrir

      The requirement is , that all purchase orders greater than or equal to 5000 go through an approval process from certain people, but within books I only see that the approvers can be by levels or any approver but we cannot enter a rule like these. Can

    • Unable to create new finance account in Zoho Books Android app due to missing account number field.

      Free plan I have enabled a setting via the website requiring unique account codes to be specified for all accounts. When using the android app, go to expenses, new expense, select account, new account. Promoted to enter the Account name and description.

    • How to Fetch data from Sales Order and Insert into Purchase Order with Deluge

      Hello, I am wanting to write a Deluge script that would take the shipping address on a Sales Order and upon conversion to a Sales Order automatically insert it into that corresponding PO. I am new to Deluge but understand that it has great capabilities.

    • Google Drive shared folder

      My deluge script has stopped working, no longer collecting files from Google Drive - have these connections finally been deprecated ?? They seem to be active but errors occur when updating them ?

    • Zoho Desk: Mobile Updates | Q1 2026

      Hello everyone, Greetings! As we gear up for the end of Q1, we are excited to share a quick journey into all that released in the first quarter of 2026. We have brought in a few enhancements in the mobile apps that improve overall user experience and

    • CRM x WorkDrive: We're rolling out the WorkDrive-powered file storage experience for existing users

      Release plan: Gradual rollout to customers without file storage add-ons, in this order: 1. Standalone CRM 2. CRM Plus and Zoho One DCs: All | Editions: All Available now for: - Standalone CRM accounts in Free and Standard editions without file storage

    • Additional Address - Company Name

      It would be very helpful to have a "Company Name" field in the Additional Address shipping section.  In a situation where you drop-ship orders to a different address or different company entirely, it may be necessary to list the company name of the receiver. I understand that the Attention field can be used for that purpose, but that's not really the intended purpose of that field.

    • Zoho Payroll's Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Bahrain and Canada edition is available in Zoho One

      Great news for Zoho One users! Zoho Payroll has expanded to five new regions: Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Bahrain, and Canada. And the best part? These new editions are fully integrated with Zoho One, just like our existing editions in India, the UAE, Saudi

    • Does Zoho Creator support multilingual translation for user-entered data?

      I understand that Zoho Creator provides localization support for UI elements such as field labels and static text. I would like to know: Does Zoho Creator support automatic translation of user-entered data (for example, form inputs or stored records)

    • Upload field on tasks module

      Hello, Why I cannot add an upload field to a Task? Or maybe when creating the task make attachements visible, so you can add an attachement while creating the task? Looking forward to your response! Moderation Update: The Canvas detail view for the Tasks

    • WhatsApp phone number migration

      Hi @Gowri V and @Pheranda Nongpiur, Thanks for implementing the promised enhancements to the integration between Zoho CRM and WhatsApp. The previous discussion has been locked, so I'm opening this new one. I am copying below a specific

    • How to let club members update their own profile data

      Our club has about 200 members. We keep names, addresses, phones, emails, payment records, etc. for each, recently migrated to Creator. Once a year I send email to each member to confirm or correct their info on file with us, as well as ask for payment

    • Document retention in Zoho Sign

      Document management doesn’t end at signing. It extends to how long you retain agreements—and how securely you dispose of them. With the document retention option in Zoho Sign, you can define structured, policy-driven timelines for managing completed documents.

    • Sales Allowed Beyond Available Stock and Payment Recorded Without Restriction

      Hi, While testing in Zoho Inventory, I noticed that a sales order can be created with a quantity exceeding the available stock in the selected warehouse. In my case: Available stock: 5 units Ordered quantity: 6 units Despite this: I was able to convert

    • Deleting, Adding and Changing a Zoho Books Entry

      Zoho Books Community & Support, If a bulk upload of entries were added to an account, what is the process to: - Delete an entry - Change the amount of an entry - Is there a means to manually add an entry other than upload?

    • Zoho CRM - Feature Request - Analytics Components Group By Week Alternative Formats

      On the Zoho CRM Analytics Components, please consider adding an option to allow group by week format to be changed to other formats such as Week Commencing or Week Ending dates, rather than the current Week Number. This would provide improved usability

    • The Social Playbook March edition: Myth vs Facts

      We’ve all heard a lot of myths growing up. Some sound convincing, some feel believable, and over time they start to feel like facts. But the truth is, a myth is still a myth until it’s backed by real facts. Marketing is no different. Over time, many ideas

    • Updating Analytical Fields Data

      Dear Zoho team, I'm having an issue with the recently added fields in both Analytical Desk and Analytical. How can I generate the data in Analytical when new fields are added? https://analytics.zoho.com/workspace/2436819000000007005/edit/24368190000

    • Marketing Tip #26: Optimize product images for SEO

      Product images can do more than make your store look good. They can also help customers discover your products through search. Since search engines can’t "see" images, they rely on text signals to understand what an image is about. Two small actions make

    • What's New in Zoho Analytics - February 2026

      Hello Users! We're back with another round of updates for Zoho Analytics. This month's release focuses on giving you greater flexibility in how you visualize, manage, and act on your data - with new features like custom visualizations, remote MCP server,

    • Clone a Module??

      I am giong to repurpose the Vendors module but would like to have a separate but very similar module for another group of contacts called Buyers. I have already repurposed Contacts to Sellers. Is it possible to clone (make a duplicate) module of Vendors

    • [Webinar] Solving business challenges: Secure, real-time, and external collaboration

      Hi Zoho Writer users, We are excited to announce Zoho Writer's webinar for March 2026: Solving business challenges: Secure, real-time, and external collaboration. Zoho Writer supports real-time collaboration by allowing teams to work together in documents.

    • Realtime Translations of Video via OnAir

      It would be an amazing feature to have a drop down selector in the On Air video area for attendees to select a language to convert the original language to.

    • can change deal colors in bigin?

      can be super useful if we can change colors deals process any way to do it?

    • You have reached the maximum limit of bank accounts that can be connected to Zoho Books through token.

      I can no longer connect to my bank account to download transactions into Zoho Books. I egt the error message: "You have reached the maximum limit of bank accounts that can be connected to Zoho Books through token. To connect more accounts, write to us

    • Assign emails to lead

      I have some contacts who refers leads but there is no away to manually assign emails to lead.   

    • Print Sales Orders, Purchase Orders or Invoices from API

      Hello, Is it possible to use the print option that is available in Sales Orders Purchase Orders and Invoices with the API?. I don't see any information in the docs about this. Thanks

    • Push Forms to CRM

      Hello, I created a Form but forgot to integrate to CRM before many of the Forms were filled out. Is it possible to push those entries to CRM or should I just export a CSV then upload to CRM?

    • Layout Adjustment.

      Hello Latha, Hope you are doing well. I wanted to check with you about adjusting the layout columns in the Service Report from the backend, as currently there is no capability for us to customize the layout from our end. Below is the output that I am

    • Invoice emails repeatedly "Bounced back" from perfectly good email address of clients.

      Hi For a couple of months now I am getting tens of invoice email invoices "bounced back" from perfectly sound email addresses when they are sent via Zoho Books. (see attached or an example) (the common theme seems to be that the emails are going to either

    • Newby Questions - Vendors, Customers, and Income vs. Other Income Clarifications

      Q1. For Deposits, there does not seem to be an option for "Income". "Other Income" is an option however. What is the process to add the option to assign a deposit to type "Income"? Q2. In many cases Vendors and Customer are the same. Vendors may purchase

    • yodlee bank fees

      My bank feeds have been pretty much error-free until this recent Yodlee update.  I have configured it as per the information however nothing comes through. It says that bank feeds have been refreshed as of 30th June, 2022. It is the end of the financial

    • 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

    • Amazon.in FBA multiple warehouse integration with Zoho Inventory

      My organisation subscribed to Zoho One looking at the opportunity to integrate Amazon.in with Inventory. But during the configuration, we understood the integration has severe limitations when it involves multiple warehouses in the same Organisation.

    • Next Page