Zoho Corporation, the global technology company, has unveiled new tools for Zoho Desk, its flagship customer service platform. The new features include a seamless combination of human and bot-led voice support. With these changes, customer service staff can provide customers with more specific information and responses to reported issues.

"In these tough economic times, the best companies are stepping up their efforts to retain customers. Everyone is trying to have better results and reduce expenses," - said Sridhar Iyengar Managing Director, Zoho Europe. "Increasingly better customer service solutions are precisely the answer to the economic crisis." Blended Conversations, a new service within Zoho Desk intelligently combines the work of humans and bots, therefore reducing service costs."

Applied to Zoho Desk, the Blended Conversations service allows customer service staff to delegate most manual and transactional tasks to bots, while retaining human control over the overall service flow.

With Zoho Desk's quick and easy deployment, companies can more easily develop voice service by increasing employee productivity without compromising service quality. This solution is a combination of Zoho's Instant Messaging (IM) Framework and Guided Conversations, a low-code wizard for creating self-service solutions. The IM Framework allows companies to integrate Zoho Desk's messaging service with services such as WhatsApp, Telegram, Line, WeChat, Messenger and Instagram.

"What our customers value most about Zoho Desk is the streamlining of communication with users, it's many features available and the automation that significantly reduces the time it takes to handle requests or complaints. For many, the easy configuration AND the ability to create custom functions that streamline the teams within the company is important. Using customised reports and dashboards, allows service staff to see the big picture and continuously improve their operations." - said Krisztian Farkas, Director from Pro Futuro Consulting.

The Guided Conversations service enables business users to build advanced self-service processes that are useful for customer service.

Customer service staff can choose from a series of predefined questions or answers to optimally resolve the issue raised by the customer. In addition, at any point in the conversation, a staff member can direct customers to interact with a human and then switch back if necessary.