THG Ingenuity uses Zoho Flow to connect customer support with its engineering team

About the company

THG Ingenuity is a global ecommerce technology and services company headquartered in Manchester, UK, covering everything from commerce platforms and fulfillment to logistics and content production. With more than two decades of ecommerce experience, they work with brands like MyProtein, LookFantastic, Cult Beauty, Holland & Barrett, and The Range.

Getting customer support queries to the engineers

THG Ingenuity's support requests previously arrived as unstructured Outlook emails, giving the client services team no way to track status or report on them. Meanwhile, the engineers handling these requests worked in ManageEngine's ServiceDesk Plus, which had no connection to those incoming emails.

Working with implementation partner DSL Telecom, THG Ingenuity set up Zoho Desk as its customer-facing support layer and used Zoho Flow to connect it with ServiceDesk Plus. When a customer raises a ticket, Zoho Flow reads a custom category field to route it to the right team. It then creates a ticket using the appropriate ServiceDesk Plus template, letting existing assignment rules take over from there.

THG Ingenuity also uses a custom function to create these tickets instead of the standard action, because of the amount of information that needs to be passed at once. A unique ticket reference connects the records in both systems, while the ServiceDesk Plus ticket ID is written back to Zoho Desk so subsequent flows can identify the corresponding ticket.

Controlling customer access to support

A client company can have several brands and dozens of contacts needing support access, but an employee working on one brand shouldn't see tickets raised for another. THG Ingenuity manages this through a custom Brand module in Zoho CRM. When a contact is marked for support access, Zoho Flow checks that they exist in the CRM, have a brand linked, and have been approved. Only then does it invite them to the Help Centre and update their contact record.

When something is missing, the flow emails Client Services with the exact reason: no brand linked, no email, or no CRM record. The team can then fix it at the source before the customer is left unable to log a ticket.

THG Ingenuity operates two departments within Zoho Desk—one dedicated to its own clients and another for partner companies that manage queries on their behalf. The same access-control flow is used across both departments, ensuring the two audiences and their reporting remain cleanly separated.

Keeping support tickets in sync

Once a ticket exists in both systems, its status and conversation have to stay current on both sides. At THG Ingenuity, status is owned by ServiceDesk Plus, where the engineers work. Zoho Flow detects changes there and updates the corresponding Zoho Desk ticket automatically, so when an engineer closes a ticket, the customer sees it closed on their side too.

Comments stay in sync the same way. A public comment a customer adds in Zoho Desk becomes a note on the ServiceDesk Plus ticket, and an engineer's note comes back the other way. Each flow checks the comment's author before acting, so a synced comment never triggers a second sync of itself.

Customers work entirely from Zoho Desk. Engineers work entirely from ServiceDesk Plus. Neither needs to check the other system.

Automating processes beyond customer support

THG Ingenuity runs over 60 live flows across its operations. Zoho Flow connects Zoho CRM with SalesLoft, creating leads automatically and writing activity records back against them. For marketing events, a Zoho Backstage integration creates records on registration and attendance, linking each to the right lead or contact in CRM.

For one customer with an out-of-hours support agreement, tickets are routed to a ServiceDesk Plus template that notifies standby engineers automatically, so a ticket logged at 10pm reaches someone without the customer doing anything differently.

Benefits and ROI

With Zoho Flow connecting its customer-facing and engineering systems, THG Ingenuity has turned customer support into a process it can track, manage, and report on. Every query now enters through a controlled channel and reaches the right engineering team from the start.

"Zoho Flow has given us complete control over how our engineers receive support queries. Every request now enters through one channel and lands with the right team from the start, with none of the delays we used to see. The hours our team spent manually creating tickets from scattered emails now go into solving customer queries instead."

Natalie Vickery, Head of Systems and Tooling,THG Ingenuity

Engineers work entirely from ServiceDesk Plus without needing Zoho Desk access, which means no additional licenses. The entire integration runs within THG Ingenuity's existing Zoho One organization, with Zoho CRM as the single source of truth for who's entitled to support.

Support data has also become a reporting tool. Zoho Desk data is combined with ServiceDesk Plus data in Zoho Analytics, giving THG Ingenuity visibility into who within a client's organization is raising tickets, what type, and when. These reports are shared with clients by link or on an email schedule. Internally, the same data helps management spot where ticket volume is rising and decide whether the answer is a process fix or additional resources.

Moving forward

THG Ingenuity finds Zoho Flow to be their go to platform for their integration needs. They are continuously working with their partner to identify customer facing process that can automated using Zoho Flow.