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Support

Support is the help desk for your customers. Tickets come in by email, web form, chat or the customer portal, are assigned to the right group and agent, and are tracked against SLAs on your business hours. When CRM and Books are on, agents see the customer's account, contract and outstanding dues beside each ticket.

Who uses it​

  • Support admin: sets up email channels, groups, business hours, SLA policies, automations, the help centre and the portal; approves knowledge base articles and data erasure.
  • Support agent: works tickets in their groups, replies, adds notes, merges and splits tickets, and drafts articles.
  • Collaborator: reads tickets in their groups and adds internal notes, without replying to customers.
  • Customer: an outside user who raises, follows and rates their own tickets in the portal.

Before you start​

  • Your company is set up in Thoshika and Support is switched on for it.
  • Agents are added as members (usually People workers) and given the Support agent or Support admin role. Agents can be limited to their groups.
  • You can forward your existing support mailbox (for example support@ your domain) to the inbound address Support gives you.
  • Optional: CRM or Books for customer records, Books for AMC invoicing and dues, Projects for bug tracking, People for holidays and leave.

Set up​

  1. Email channel. Copy the inbound address from settings and set up forwarding from your support mailbox. Replies go out with your company name and thread back to the ticket.
  2. Brands (optional). If you support more than one product or business, add a brand for each, with its own inbound address, help centre, colours and default group.
  3. Business hours. Create a calendar with your working days and hours (IST by default) and choose holidays from a People state or location calendar, a manual list, or both.
  4. Groups and agents. Create groups such as L1, L2 and Billing, add agents, choose an assignment mode (manual, round-robin, load-based or skill-based) and set a maximum open load per agent.
  5. Categories and fields. Add ticket categories with default groups and required skills, custom fields, and ticket forms per type.
  6. SLA policies. Set first response, next response and resolution targets per priority, and the conditions each policy applies to (customer tier, group, type or channel). Keep one default policy.
  7. Canned responses and macros. Add common replies and one-click actions for frequent cases.
  8. Help centre and portal. Add your logo and colour, create knowledge base categories, and decide which articles are public, portal-only or internal.
  9. Web form and widget. Copy the embed snippet for your website so visitors can search articles, chat or submit a ticket.

Key workflows​

Work a ticket​

  1. Open your queue or a saved view such as Unassigned, My open or Due today.
  2. Read the conversation and the customer panel: company, tier, active contract, recent tickets and, with Books on, open invoices.
  3. Reply using a canned response or macro, or add an internal note and mention a colleague.
  4. Set the status. Pending pauses the resolution clock while you wait for the customer.
  5. Resolve the ticket. The customer receives a short satisfaction survey.

Handle a live chat​

  1. Mark yourself available for chat in the chat console.
  2. Accept an incoming chat when it appears and answer the visitor.
  3. End the chat. The transcript becomes a ticket and is emailed to the visitor. Chats nobody accepts in time also become tickets.

Publish a knowledge base article​

  1. Write the article in the editor and choose its category and visibility.
  2. Submit it for review. A Support admin approves it in the inbox and it goes live; admins can publish directly.
  3. Add translations if you serve customers in more than one language.

Manage AMC and support contracts​

  1. Add a contract for a customer company with its tier, dates, SLA policy and ticket or hour allowance.
  2. With Books on, raise the AMC invoice from the contract; the contract becomes active once the invoice is posted. Support can also pick up AMC invoices already posted in Books.
  3. Watch the contracts list for renewals due within 30 days.

Invite a customer to the portal​

  1. Open the contact and send a portal invitation.
  2. The customer signs in to see and reply to their tickets. A contact marked as an organisation viewer sees all tickets for their company.

India specifics​

  • Business hours default to IST and can use People holiday calendars by state or location.
  • AMC invoices are raised through Books with GST, so the ledger and GST returns stay with Books.
  • Calls are matched to contacts on the last ten digits of the number, and WhatsApp click-to-chat links are prefilled with the ticket number.
  • For the DPDP Act, contacts record their consent source, a retention period anonymises old data, contact data can be exported on request, and erasure goes through an approval.

Works with other apps​

  • CRM: link companies and contacts to CRM accounts, create a deal from a ticket, and see tickets on the account.
  • Books: customer records, outstanding dues and AMC invoices.
  • Projects: turn bugs and change requests into project tasks and follow their status.
  • People: agents, leave and holiday calendars for routing and SLA clocks.
  • Field Service: create a field job from a ticket when an on-site visit is needed.
  • Bookings: let customers book a callback that is noted on their ticket.
  • The mobile app gives agents their queue, replies, assignment and SLA status.

Next steps​