Social Media Integration Enables Real-Time Customer Support, Engagement

• Monitor, route and respond to social media support requests
• Automatically escalate spikes in social media requests with certain keywords
• Social interactions handled completely within the Zoho Support UI

PLEASANTON, Calif.– Zoho continues its effort to lead small and medium businesses successfully into the social sphere, announcing today that Zoho Support, the company’s online customer support software, now offers tight integration with Facebook and Twitter. Companies can now easily employ Zoho Support to engage with and support their customers in real time via the popular social networks — without ever leaving Zoho Support’s intuitive user interface.

“Today’s connected customers expect a higher level of customer support. When they Tweet a question to a company, they expect a genuine answer, and they expect it quickly,” said Raju Vegesna, Zoho evangelist. “Social media is growing as a support channel and with the right approach can be an effective and powerful tool for companies to strengthen their customer service. By integrating these features into their existing support software, we are giving companies the power and tools to listen to, learn from and lead their customers to solutions in the spaces customers already interact in, strengthening their reputation and relationships along the way.”

The Facebook and Twitter integrations for Zoho Support are the latest result of Zoho’s continued focus on outfitting their customers with powerful and effective social integrations. Zoho has already rolled out Facebook and LinkedIn integration into Zoho CRM, and LinkedIn integration for Zoho Recruit.

“We are excited to continue providing companies with the tools they need to effectively embrace social media,” added Vegesna. “These integrations are strengthening Zoho users’ ability to leverage social media into their organizations’ desired results. We are committed to giving Zoho users across our suite of applications expanded social support.”

Socializing Zoho Support

Within Zoho Support, the user interface gains a new social tab with options for Facebook and Twitter that let users:

• Listen to customers, wherever they are – Whether customers direct a Tweet at a specific profile or discuss a service with friends, companies can now monitor their profiles, pages, hashtags and defined keywords and then engage those customers, all from within Zoho Support.
• Route and respond – Set faster SLA and escalation paths for tickets from Twitter and Facebook to meet the real-time expectations of social media users. Companies can also organize and expedite ticket routing, directing different keywords automatically to specific support agents or teams. Agents can also reply to public Tweets and Facebook comments directly within the Zoho Support interface, simplifying an already complicated job.
• Escalate – Zoho Support can set a trouble-sensing filter that automatically sends customized alerts to assigned company officials when a certain Tweets-per-minute threshold is met. With immediate notifications that the conditions are ripe for a social media storm, companies can make proactive effort to fix a problem early and avoid having the costly damage of a social media backlash.

Pricing and Availability

Facebook and Twitter integration for Zoho Support is available immediately, free of charge, in the Zoho Support Enterprise Edition and Zoho Support Professional Edition.

For more information on Zoho, please visit www.zoho.com and watch “What is Zoho?” To get breaking Zoho news, visit and subscribe to the RSS feed at http://blogs.zoho.com, and follow the company on Twitter at @zoho and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/zoho.

About Zoho

Zoho is a comprehensive suite of award-winning online productivity, collaboration and business applications for businesses of all sizes. Over five million users rely on Zoho for their Business, Productivity & Collaboration needs and actively connect via Forums, Blogs, Facebook and Twitter. To date, Zoho has launched 27 different applications which include several online office applications such as Writer, Sheet, Show and Mail along with a host of business applications ranging from CRM to Projects, Invoice and Meeting. These applications are offered directly via Zoho.com or through hundreds of partners in the Zoho Alliance Partner Program. For more information about Zoho, please visit www.zoho.com.

Zoho is a division of Zoho Corp., a privately-held and profitable company, which also provides IT Management Software (ManageEngine with more than 60,000 customers) and a Network Management Suite (WebNMS with 25,000 Tier 1 carrier deployments). With headquarters in Pleasanton, CA and offices in Austin, New Jersey, Chennai, London, Tokyo and Beijing, Zoho Corp. serves the technology needs of millions of customers worldwide.