Overview of Agents and Teams in Zoho Desk

Agents and teams are the two building blocks of how Zoho Desk organises customer support. Agents are the people who work tickets; teams group agents together so tickets reach the right people automatically.

Understanding agents

Agents are the support representatives who respond to customers about your products and services. You can invite agents, assign them a profile, and manage them, including deactivating or deleting them when needed, all from the Agents screen. Zoho Desk offers a few agent profile types: Agent, with full access to manage and respond to tickets, Light Agent, with limited access to view and comment on tickets, and Admin, with elevated privileges to manage settings, users and workflows. You can also create custom profiles.

How to add an agent

1. Go to Setup > User Management > Agents and click New Agent.
2. Enter the agent’s first name, last name and official email address.
3. Select the department or departments they should have access to.
4. Choose a profile: Agent, Admin, Light Agent, or a custom profile.
5. If you choose Agent, specify their ticket access rights.
6. Note their channel expertise, such as phone, chat or email, and add any optional contact details.
7. Click New Agent to send the invitation.

The agent receives an email invitation valid for seven days, and must accept it to activate their account.

Understanding teams

A team groups agents with similar skills or responsibilities so tickets are handled by the right people. Teams are useful when your business has:

• Multiple support categories, such as returns, sales or social media, each better served by a specialised team.
• Multi-level SLAs, where teams manage escalations across different service tiers.
• Regional or multi-language support, with teams covering different countries or time zones.
• Subject matter experts who can be tagged into tickets for faster, more accurate answers.