Flow Global reduces chat handling time from 60 Minutes to 49 Minutes with Zoho Desk

Key results:

• Chat handling timeReduced from 60 to 49 minutes
• GC Blocks built450+

Overview

FlowGlobal, a financial services company, operating across multiple African markets implemented Zoho Desk to bring a centralised system to track, manage, and resolve customer queries efficiently.

The company

Flow Global is a financial technology company that provides specialized liquidity and growth capital solutions to small businesses and mobile money agents in emerging markets like Uganda and Rwanda. Established in 2019, the company utilizes a proprietary "Liquidity Engine" to offer collateral-free float advances, instant liquidity switching between providers, and tiered "Kula" business loans ranging from daily operational capital to long-term asset financing. By leveraging data-driven credit scoring and mobile-first technology, FlowGlobal has facilitated over 1.5 million loans, helping thousands of merchants manage their daily cash flow and scale their operations through accessible, near-instant financial services.

The challenge

As operations scaled across multiple African countries, the company's support infrastructure struggled to keep up. Field agents onboarding customers in remote areas, a tech support team based in India, and customer success officers in-country were all operating in silos, with no unified system to track, route, or resolve issues.

• WhatsApp was the primary support channel for field agents — informal, untracked, and unscalable.
• Moving to initial vendor helped connect field agents with tech support, but conversations were never converted into trackable tickets, making reporting and resolution visibility impossible.
• Customers had no way to raise support queries directly from the mobile app — issues around loan disbursals, payment captures, and account queries had to be routed through phone calls or CS officers manually.
• Their previous vendor lacked the AI-readiness and bot-flow capabilities the team needed to build a self-service layer for customers before escalating to human agents.
• There was no centralised system for senior managers and country leads to track ticket status or escalate issues without directly engaging the tech support team.

The evaluation

While evaluating multiple providers, the organization identified Zoho Desk as the right fit. After engaging with the team and going through a few demos, they found the setup straightforward and developer-friendly. Based on this, their in-house development team recommended moving forward with Zoho Desk, and the organization adopted it in 2025.

The implementation and onboarding process were supported by the Zoho Desk team, including initial setup and transition. Additionally, a requirement phase spanning three to four months was completed with continuous support from Zoho developers, ensuring the solution aligned with the organization’s needs.

The solution

Flow Global's ticket lifecycle using Zoho Desk

Flow Global designed a structured customer support workflow using Zoho Desk, where tickets are raised through multiple channels, including the customer application, field agent app, and internal web application.

Customers can raise queries directly through the application, which are automatically assigned to the tech support team. If sufficient information is available, tickets are resolved immediately. In cases where additional details are required, tickets are reassigned to the respective customer success teams in specific regions, who enrich the information before routing them back to the tech support team for resolution.

For field agents, interactions begin as real-time conversations. Once the issue is identified or resolved, these conversations are converted into tickets, ensuring that all interactions are documented and tracked. Additionally, internal teams can raise tickets on behalf of customers through a web application, particularly for users who do not have direct access to the mobile app.

Ticket assignment is managed based on agent availability using a round-robin approach, ensuring balanced workload distribution. The organization has set up three departments within Zoho Desk—tech support and customer success teams across regions—to streamline operations and ensure efficient handling of queries.

To further enhance efficiency, the system incorporates automation for specific use cases. For example, in transaction-related queries, customers can submit transaction IDs, which are validated against backend systems. If the data matches, tickets are automatically resolved without manual intervention, significantly reducing resolution time and effort.

Zoho SalesIQ integration for real-time support

The team at Flow Global has integrated Zoho Desk with Zoho SalesIQ in their RM app to enable real-time communication between field agents and the tech support team. Once a conversation is completed, it is converted into a ticket within Zoho Desk, ensuring that all interactions are properly documented and tracked.

The support process is further structured into multiple levels. Initial queries are handled by the Level 1 tech support team. If an issue requires deeper technical expertise, a ticket is created during the conversation and escalated to Level 2 teams, such as developers. These teams document resolutions and updates within the ticket.

Once resolved, the status is communicated back to the Level 1 team, who then inform the field agents, ensuring a seamless feedback loop and efficient issue resolution across teams.

Webhook-Based Status Synchronization

Flow Global uses webhooks in Zoho Desk to sync ticket data with its internal web application. When tickets are created or updated, the information is captured and stored in their system, enabling customer success teams, who do not directly use Zoho Desk, to track tickets externally.

Updates such as comments and status changes are reflected in real time. For instance, when a ticket is closed by the tech support team, the status is automatically updated in the internal application.

Workflow for Ownership Tracking

A workflow was recently configured within Zoho Desk to track ticket ownership changes across escalation levels. As a ticket moves between L1, L2, and any additional stakeholders, the system logs each ownership transition and surfaces this history to the relevant users. This was put in place specifically to support the Help Center rollout, giving senior managers and internal stakeholders clear visibility into who has handled a ticket and at what stage.

Guided Conversations - a complete summary of how they have been integrated

Guided Conversations (GC) within Zoho Desk serve as the connective tissue across all three of the company's applications — the web app, the customer app, and the RM app — each configured with its own workflow logic, language settings, and branching paths tailored to the users on that channel.

Web application:

The web app GC flow is used by customer success officers in Uganda and Rwanda to raise tickets on behalf of customers. When a CS officer initiates a support request, the GC bot walks them through a structured flow to capture the right information before a ticket is logged in Zoho Desk.

Once a ticket is raised through GC, it is created in Zoho Desk and immediately reflected in the company's internal web application. From there, the tech support team manages the ticket entirely within Zoho Desk — adding comments, updating statuses, and resolving the issue — while every change is automatically synchronized back to the web application in real time. This means customer success officers in Uganda and Rwanda can track the full ticket lifecycle, including status changes, reopen events, and closures, directly from the web app, without ever needing access to Zoho Desk itself.

Customer App:

The customer-facing mobile app uses the ASAP SDK with GC bots embedded directly into the support flow. Customers are presented with pre-defined issue categories — Float Advance, Float Switch, Kula, and Others — each mapped to its own GC workflow. For repayment-related queries, the GC bot checks the submitted transaction ID against the company's financial statements in real time. If the transaction matches, the loan is settled and the ticket is automatically closed without any agent involvement. If it does not match, the ticket is routed to the tech support team for manual review, with all relevant customer and product details auto-populated.

Benefits & ROI

With the implementation of Zoho Desk, Flow Global moved from a chat-based system to a ticket-based approach, enabling complete visibility into all customer queries. Every issue is now tracked as a ticket rather than being lost in conversations, improving coordination across teams and enabling better monitoring of support operations.

The platform also introduced improvements in usability, such as the ability to edit messages, reply to specific messages, and directly connect with users—features that were not available in their previous system.

Automation has reduced manual effort in specific use cases, particularly in transaction-related scenarios where tickets can be resolved instantly based on available data.

Additionally, the ability to search and retrieve past issues has significantly improved efficiency compared to their earlier system.

The organization also uses Zoho Desk Analytics to generate reports with customized fields and columns, helping them track support activities more effectively.