Relay Inc. achieves a 95% CSAT score after implementing Zoho Desk

Overview

Relay uses multiple Zoho Desk features and integrations to accomplish their goals and has attained a 95% customer satisfaction score.  

The company

Relay focuses on streamlined connectivity between frontline workers and management. Their mission is to deploy cutting-edge technology to ensure effective communication and prioritize worker safety. They have delivered over 2.5 billion messages and mapped more than 1 million locations.  

Originally known for B2C products, Relay shifted its focus to B2B solutions with the aim of bridging communication gaps in industries such as hospitality, healthcare, and manufacturing. By integrating advanced analytics and location-based services, their cloud-based products empower organizations to improve overall workforce management.  

The challenge

As Relay transitioned from a consumer-focused product to a B2B model, they found that the platform they used to support their customers, Intercom, lacked the scalability and robustness needed to manage a growing customer base. Additionally, they found it to be expensive for the value they provided, especially when advanced features like SSO were required.  

Tom Cunningham, Relay's Director of Customer Support, explained that the company's journey had "shifted from being a larger, consumer-focused company to operating more like a startup again." As a result, they've needed to continue rapidly evolving "while maintaining a scrappy, growth-focused mindset." Zoho was a natural fit.  

Having already built their Sales team around Zoho CRM, adopting Zoho Desk was a logical, cost-effective move. It offered deeper integrations, scalability, and familiar functionality, aligning with their growth needs without the high costs of other platforms.  

Sean Rivers, platform evangelist at Relay, added that the team found it easy to adopt the platform and successfully implemented Zoho Desk in 60 days.  

The solution

Support ticket flow at Relay

When a customer raises a ticket, an automated email is sent confirming receipt (based on notification rules) and informing them that they can call in if they need faster service. The ticket then enters a triage queue, where the issue is assessed and categorized. Based on its priority and type, the ticket is automatically routed through round-robin assignment to the appropriate agent. At this stage, an SLA is also set.  

Agents handle tickets as they come in—responding, updating the status, and either resolving the issue or marking it as "waiting on customer." Once the customer replies, the ticket re-enters the agent’s queue, and they continue working based on the defined SLAs.  

Custom functions to simplify processes

Relay has created many custom functions to automate manual actions.  

Preventing reopening of closed tickets

Purpose: To maintain accurate resolution metrics by preventing closed tickets from being reopened.  

Function: When a customer replies to a ticket marked as “Solved,” a new ticket is automatically created instead of reopening the original. This ensures that the original ticket remains closed and avoids skewing customer service metrics, such as inflating resolution times.  

Ticket volume awareness for agents

Purpose: To provide visibility into how many tickets a customer already has open, which helps agents manage the workload and reduce duplicate efforts.  

Function: When a new ticket is submitted, this function checks for existing open tickets associated with the same email address or customer account. It then sets specific fields within the ticket to alert the agent accordingly.  

CRM and Desk post-triage data sync

Purpose: To ensure agents have relevant customer context readily available without switching between systems.  

Function: After triage, the custom function pulls key data from Zoho CRM—such as account status, churn risk, and relevant notes—and displays it in the ticket. This allows agents to begin work with the necessary background information in place.  

Blueprint trigger for RMA process

Purpose: To guide agents through the RMA process with full visibility into any special considerations.  

Function: When an agent initiates the RMA process via a Blueprint transition, the system checks for and displays critical account information, such as discounting or special order handling, so agents are fully informed before proceeding.  

Zia AI to support customer-facing teams

The team set things up so Zia can pull answers directly from their fully built-out internal knowledge base. These capabilities are especially helpful when they need to make back-end system changes. Zia makes transitions smoother by giving the team quick, accurate answers without requiring them to dig through multiple tools or documents.  

"One of the most interesting use cases I have seen is just how much Zia is helping the Billing team reduce handle time and improve their efficiency," Cunningham said. "I am looking forward to seeing similar results once we bring the Support team into the fold, as Zia continues to evolve and improve."  

Integrations with Jira, Slack, and Zoho BugTracker

Alerts and status updates using Slack and Jira

With the Slack integration, the team receives notifications whenever new tickets are created. These updates are automatically pushed into designated Slack channels to provide real-time visibility and enable faster response times.  

The Jira integration is primarily used by the Support team to collaborate with Engineering. When an issue arises that a support agent cannot resolve, they create a Jira ticket and link it to the corresponding Zoho Desk ticket. This facilitates smooth ongoing communication between the two teams and allows them to work together efficiently until the issue is resolved.  

Integration with Zoho BugTracker to streamline bug resolution

The primary goal of the setup was to gain clear visibility into how many customer tickets are affected by a specific issue or bug. Before implementing a structured bug tracking system, the team relied on tags within Zoho Desk. This wasn't a reliable solution because different agents would use varying tag names for the same issue, which resulted in fragmented data and unreliable reporting.  

With the current integration between Zoho Desk and Zoho Projects, agents can now identify bugs quickly and attach relevant tickets directly to those bugs. Custom functions have been implemented to copy the bug ID into a dedicated field on each ticket automatically to enable efficient and accurate reporting.  

Blueprints for smoother transitions of tickets

The Support team currently uses at least two blueprints. The primary blueprint manages the full ticket lifecycle, from creation through various stages such as RMA processing or escalation to Tier 2 or Tier 3 agents. It provides the appropriate statuses at each step, guiding the ticket through resolution and eventually to closure. This blueprint is the backbone of the support process; it ensures consistency and structure.  

The second blueprint is designed for more operational or systems-related requests, such as system access or specific internal tasks. These types of requests typically do not require the same level of detail as a standard support ticket, so this blueprint is tailored to simplify those workflows without overcomplicating them.  

The team has actually maxed out the available workflow limit. As a result, they have started relying more heavily on custom functions to accomplish additional automation needs.  

The workflows in use range from straightforward to more complex. Examples include:  

• Customer notification on ticket creation: One of the basic workflows automatically notifies customers when a ticket is first created. This ensures immediate acknowledgment and sets the tone for follow-up communication.
• Auto-triage for incoming tickets: Some workflows are designed to detect specific ticket types—based on the incoming channel or subject line—and automatically fill in all the relevant fields (such as category, sub-category, and priority). This allows tickets to be fully triaged without agent intervention, streamlining the process significantly.
• Wi-Fi outage detection workflow: When a ticket comes in indicating a Wi-Fi outage for a customer, the system detects it based on predefined criteria, pulls in the relevant customer information from the email, sets all the necessary fields, assigns the appropriate priority, and routes it directly to the agent’s queue. This workflow helps bypass manual triage completely, speeding up resolution time.
• Notification-based workflows: Many workflows are focused on sending alerts or updates to internal teams or customers based on ticket status changes or other field updates.

Supervisor rules to ensure no tickets are missed

The team primarily uses supervised rules to manage automated responses, especially for tickets placed in a "Pending" status. For example, when an agent replies to a customer and moves the ticket to pending, awaiting more information or confirmation, a supervisor rule kicks in to follow up automatically.  

• After two days, the system sends the first follow-up message and updates a field to indicate that the first follow-up was sent.
• If there is still no response after another two days, a second follow-up is sent, and the field is updated again.
• If the ticket remains in pending status for an additional 2–3 days, the system moves it to "Solved" with a message indicating that the issue is being considered resolved due to the lack of response.
• Finally, after another 2–3 days, the ticket is moved from "Solved" to "Closed" and the customer is prompted to open a new ticket if they still need assistance.

This process ensures that no pending tickets are forgotten and helps keep the support queue clean and manageable. Previously, tickets would remain open or pending indefinitely, and agents had to review their backlog manually, sometimes leaving tickets untouched for weeks. This led to bloated queues and slow progress.  

Now, with supervisor rules in place, agents can "set it and forget it." The system handles follow-ups and closures automatically. Additionally, the team tracks how many tickets are closed due to lack of response by tagging them as "Resolved by Automation" to provide clear reporting on the impact of these rules.  

Help center and knowledge base to empower customers

The company maintains both an external knowledge base for customers and an internal knowledge base that is accessible only to agents. The help center empowers customers to resolve issues on their own by searching for relevant articles in the knowledge base instead of calling or submitting tickets.  

Support agents also use these articles to assist customers by linking them to tickets and emails, which enables them to provide help faster and encourage users to explore self-service options. The team has found that the help center is a valuable tool for both supporting customers and managing ticket volume.  

Additional features used

Formula fields: The Business Operations and Customer Operations teams have been using formula fields to for billing, payment, and contract-related workflows.  

Customization of ticket layout rules: The Support team has customized the ticket layout to include essential information such as account details and relevant account-related links. One notable enhancement is the implementation of field dependencies between category and subcategory fields. Instead of displaying all available subcategories—over 100 in total—the system now dynamically shows only the subcategories relevant to the selected category.  

Service-level agreement (SLA): The Support team has customized their SLA policies to better serve different customer segments. They have two distinct SLA policies in place: an Enterprise policy with very strict SLAs for high-priority customers, and a Standard policy for other customers that categorizes issues into low, medium, and high priorities with response times of two hours for high priority, six hours for medium, and two days for low. Email alerts notify agents when a ticket violates SLA requirements.  

Assignment rules: Relay's support team uses round-robin assignment to balance the workload of each agent.  

Benefits & ROI

Time tracking within Zoho Desk

In addition to the Support department and help desk, the company's Customer Success department, Billing department, and Business team all actively use the Desk platform.  

Zoho Desk is utilized for nearly every type of customer interaction by these departments. One of the most appreciated features is the native time tracking, which provides clear visibility into the time spent on each reply or ticket overall. This eliminates the need for third-party add-ons or manual time tracking by agents, which can often be inconsistent and unreliable.  

Dashboards and reports for more visibility to the management

The main dashboard view Cunningham uses on a daily basis is designed to give an immediate snapshot of key metrics. It shows who is online or offline, the ticket volume per agent, and the volume of incoming and outgoing responses. "This is my go-to view to monitor performance and ensure everything is running smoothly," he said.  

Positive outcomes of the integration between Zoho Desk and Zoho BugTracker

• Enhanced visibility: The team can now instantly identify how many tickets are linked to a particular bug.
• Faster impact analysis: It is much easier to quantify how many customers and how much revenue are affected by a specific issue.
• Data-driven escalation: The support team can provide the engineering team with real-time metrics—such as a jump from 5 to 30 affected tickets in a day—making it easier to prioritize bug fixes based on actual impact.

Customer satisfaction score (CSAT)

The ability to customize the CSAT phrasing and graphics has helped the company make surveys more engaging and interactive for customers. Cunningham said that Relay's customers have been "very responsive," which has helped the team gather constructive feedback and maintain a high level of service.  

Average response and resolution times

With Zoho Desk, Relay has been able to achieve an average response time of 15 minutes and make a significant improvement in how long it takes to resolve tickets.  

"Now, thanks to the efficiencies we have implemented, the average total handle time per ticket—from creation to resolution—is just over an hour," Cunningham explained. "This has helped the team work much faster and more effectively, and the results have been phenomenal."