A leading food delivery platform reduced their first response time by 80% with Zoho Desk
The company
The company is a prominent regional food delivery platform and aggregator operating across eight countries, processing over 8 million orders monthly through a robust digital marketplace. Supported by a workforce of 5,000+ employees representing more than 10 nationalities, the business delivers broad menu variety, quality service, accessibility, and affordability across its markets. By seamlessly connecting local restaurant partners, regional chains, and retail vendors with an end-to-end logistics network, the platform serves as a high-volume digital storefront and fulfillment driver in dense urban markets. To sustain its industry-leading position, the company continuously leverages scalable technology and operational analytics to streamline vendor integrations, optimize dispatch workflows, and improve real-time order delivery performance.
The challenge
The company's rapid expansion exposed critical weaknesses in its customer support infrastructure. The team was grappling with approximately 10,000 daily support tickets arriving through multiple channels, including email, chat, and phone. This overwhelming volume led to inconsistent service quality, with initial response times averaging three hours—unacceptable for time-sensitive food delivery issues. Manual ticket sorting created processing bottlenecks, while the absence of real-time analytics made it impossible to optimize team performance or accurately measure customer satisfaction levels. These operational deficiencies threatened both customer retention and brand reputation in an increasingly competitive market.
Other key challenges include:
Real-time issue resolution: Food-delivery issues are highly time sensitive. Agents need quick access to order status, delivery information, payment details, and conversation history to resolve issues while an order is still active.
Multiple stakeholder coordination: Support teams may need to coordinate between customers, restaurants, and delivery partners, making ticket ownership and escalation more complex.
Priority-based handling: Critical issues such as failed deliveries, payment problems, food-quality complaints, or safety concerns need to be identified and prioritized over routine queries.
Consistent resolutions: With a large support operation, ensuring agents follow standardized processes and provide consistent responses across thousands of interactions can be challenging.
The solution
Intelligent ticket management with Zia AI
The deployment of Zoho Desk's built-in AI assistant Zia marked a turning point for their support operations. Zia's advanced natural language processing capabilities automatically categorized incoming requests by analyzing keywords, customer sentiment, and urgency levels. The system could identify common issues such as delivery delays, missing items, or payment problems, routing each ticket to the appropriate specialized team. Beyond classification, Zia suggested context-aware responses to agents, enabling them to maintain a personalized touch while reducing average reply times by an impressive 80%.
The company also leveraged Zoho Desk's pre-built Zia Agents to further automate support operations. The Support Specialist used the Knowledge Base to analyze incoming tickets and draft relevant responses, while the Resolution Expert automatically documented ticket resolutions by summarizing the issue, root cause, resolution, and customer confirmation. Together, these AI capabilities reduced repetitive manual work, helped agents respond more efficiently, and maintained consistent support quality even as ticket volumes fluctuated.
To learn more Zia's pre-built agents, click here.
Customized workflow automation
They implemented complex automation rules tailored to their unique operational requirements. High-priority tickets from Platinum-tier customers were automatically diverted past general queues, ensuring VIP users received preferential treatment. Delivery-related complaints triggered instant notifications to the logistics team, enabling real-time intervention. Additionally, they incorporated a multi-level escalation protocol that automatically reassigned unresolved cases to senior agents after 60 minutes, preventing unnecessary delays. Read more about SLAs and escalations here.
Omnichannel integration and communication
Zoho Desk seamlessly integrated with the food delivery company's existing internal chat tool, which served as the first line of real-time customer support. Keyword mapping ensured all order-related queries, whether originating from the automatic chatbot, emails, or other channels, were properly routed into Zoho Desk for systematic handling. This omnichannel approach created a cohesive support ecosystem that enhanced both efficiency and customer satisfaction.
To keep customers informed throughout the ticket resolution process, the team configured automated email templates for key ticket updates. Customers received timely notifications when a ticket was acknowledged, when an agent responded, when the ticket was awaiting their input, and when the issue was resolved and closed. By standardizing these communications, the team ensured that customers always had visibility into the status of their requests, reducing the need for follow-up queries.
Performance optimization framework
Through comprehensive time-motion analysis, management gained visibility into team capacities and operational bottlenecks. This data-driven approach led to the establishment of clear performance benchmarks, including an efficiency target of eight tickets per hour per agent. The real-time dashboards provided supervisors with instant access to critical metrics such as first-response times, resolution rates, and customer satisfaction scores. Automated CSAT surveys delivered immediate post-resolution feedback, enabling continuous process refinement.
These analytical capabilities empowered managers to make informed staffing decisions and intervene promptly when performance deviated from targets. Within twelve months, this structured approach yielded remarkable results: average human agent response times plummeted from three hours to just one, while overall resolution times improved by 40%.
Check how to track the amount of time each agent spends on a ticket.
Advanced automation for operational efficiency
The support team developed an extensive library of custom automations to eliminate redundant manual processes. This included the creation of more than ten custom functions and fifteen specialized assignment rules within a single department. One particularly impactful automation addressed a persistent reporting inaccuracy: previously, all customer replies were added to the same thread regardless of whether they represented new issues. The team implemented a custom function that automatically closed ticket threads after 72 hours of inactivity while ensuring new customer emails generated fresh tickets, preserving historical context while maintaining data integrity.
These automations collectively transformed the support operation from reactive to proactive, allowing staff to focus on high-value customer interactions rather than administrative tasks.
Here is how to create a custom function.
Benefits and ROI
The Zoho Desk implementation delivered transformative results across all key performance indicators. Most notably, average response times improved by 80%, dropping from three hours to just one. The resolution efficiency increased by 40%, enabling the team to handle higher volumes without compromising quality. Agent productivity rose by 30%, with team members consistently meeting the eight tickets per hour benchmark. Customer satisfaction scores showed significant improvement, reflecting the positive impact of faster, more personalized service. The management team also gets accurate reports and can create comprehensive dashboards that help them to make informed decisions. Perhaps most importantly, automation now handles approximately 60% of routine inquiries, allowing human agents to dedicate their expertise to complex cases that truly require personal attention.
- Key FeaturesZia's generative AI capabilities, Zia Agents, Custom functions, Workflows, SLAs, Omnichannel, Workflows and schedules, Dashboards and analytics