Overview of Agents and Teams in Zoho Desk
Introduction
Zoho Desk is a comprehensive customer support platform that empowers businesses to deliver efficient, organized, and personalized customer service. Central to this efficiency are Agents and Teams two foundational elements that drive the help desk’s operational flow.
Understanding Agents in Zoho Desk
Agents are customer support representatives who communicate with customers to answer questions about your business, products, and services. You can invite agents to your help desk and add them under various roles and profiles from this page. You can also manage agents from here by deactivating and deleting them when necessary.
Types of Agents
- Standard Agents: Full access users who manage, respond to, and resolve customer tickets.
- Light Agents: Limited access users who can view and comment on tickets but cannot respond directly to customers.
- Admin Agents: Agents with elevated privileges to manage settings, users, and workflows within Zoho Desk.
Agent Responsibilities
- Responding promptly and accurately to tickets.
- Managing ticket statuses and priorities.
- Collaborating internally to resolve complex issues.
- Contributing to knowledge bases for customer self-service.
Teams in Zoho Desk: Overview and Importance
What Are Teams?
Teams in Zoho Desk are groups of agents organized to handle tickets collaboratively based on shared expertise, roles, or customer segments. This team based structure enhances coordination and ensures tickets are routed and resolved efficiently.
Teams Overview and Decision Making in Organizations
An organization’s structure greatly influences how efficiently it achieves its goals. Structurally, organizations can be centralized or decentralized depending on how decisions are made.
One highly effective approach is a team based organizational structure, which groups people with similar skills and roles to work toward specific objectives quickly and effectively.
The Importance of Teams in an Organization
Consider an interior design company with different teams handling specific activities:
- Example Scenario: Steve Parker owns a bakery and wants to renovate his new larger space. His renovation requirements include:
- Creating a visually appealing storefront display.
- Redesigning the color scheme and decor.
- Adding adequate aisle breaks.
The interior design company breaks down Steve’s requirements and assigns different teams to each task, creating service tickets for each team and breaking down their plans into activities.
- Work Plan Highlights:
- All communication with Steve and internal discussions were managed through service tickets.
- New requests or modifications were raised as tickets and automatically routed to the relevant teams.
This team based approach ensured the project was completed on time and to Steve’s satisfaction.
How Teams Enhance Efficiency in Zoho Desk
Teams help streamline support workflows by:
- Allowing targeted ticket assignment based on skill, location, or function.
- Enhancing collaboration and knowledge sharing among agents.
- Enabling automated routing and escalation of tickets.
- Providing managers with clear performance visibility through team based dashboards.
When to Consider Creating Teams in Zoho Desk
Teams can significantly improve workflow efficiency in the following situations:
1. Large, Diverse Support Teams:
When your support staff includes various roles like part time agents, field service reps, supervisors, and tiered support agents across regions, grouping them into teams based on roles or regions helps manage the workload effectively.
2. Multiple Process Verticals:
If your business has different support categories (e.g., returns, sales, social media), creating specialized teams for each vertical helps deliver expert support.
3. Multi-level Service Level Agreements (SLAs):
Teams can manage escalations across different SLA tiers to prioritize and resolve issues faster.
4. Global Sales and Marketing:
Businesses operating in multiple countries can form regional teams to provide localized support in different languages and time zones.
5. Tagging Teams in Tickets:
For organizations handling multiple products or services, teams of subject matter experts can be tagged in tickets to offer faster, more accurate solutions.
6. Managerial Oversight:
Teams provide a bird’s eye view of ticket distribution, helping managers monitor ticket types, team workload, and SLA adherence for better decision making.
How Agents and Teams Work Together in Zoho Desk
- Tickets are routed either directly to agents or assigned to teams.
- Teams distribute tickets internally, balancing the workload among agents.
- Agents collaborate within teams for knowledge sharing and escalating issues.
- Team leaders and managers track performance and optimize processes.
Best Practices for Managing Agents and Teams
- Define clear agent roles and responsibilities.
- Organize teams logically by skills, regions, or service areas.
- Use automation to route tickets efficiently.
- Monitor performance with team specific dashboards.
- Foster collaboration and communication among team members.
Conclusion
Agents and teams form the cornerstone of effective customer support at Zoho Desk. While agents handle direct customer interactions, teams bring structure, coordination, and scalability to your support operations. By strategically organizing agents into teams, businesses can streamline workflows, improve response times, and deliver outstanding customer service much like the successful example of Steve Parker’s bakery renovation.
