Zoho Desk gives you two complementary ways to track creditworthy (billable) activities: the Activities module for logging tasks, calls, and events against tickets, and the Follow/Notification Center for monitoring high-value customer interactions in real time.
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Why this matters
When your support team handles premium clients, SLA-tier accounts, or any customer whose interactions carry billing implications, you need a reliable record of every touchpoint. Missed tasks or unmonitored conversations can mean lost revenue, SLA breaches, or gaps in your audit trail. Zoho Desk's Activities module and customer-following features work together to close those gaps — and as independent experts (not official Zoho support), Beam Help walks you through exactly how to use them.
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Step-by-step
Step 1. Open the Activities module.
In your Zoho Desk account, navigate to the Activities module from the main navigation. This is the central hub where tasks, calls, and events are created and managed. Each record stores key details such as start time, duration, priority level, and current status — all accessible from within the activity itself. [2]
Step 2. Create a task tied to a creditworthy ticket.
Inside the Activities module, create a new Task and associate it with the relevant customer ticket. Tasks function as your to-do list within Zoho Desk and can be either stand-alone or linked directly to a ticket. For example, if a premium client is waiting on a bug resolution, create a task called "Fix Bug – Priority Client" so the action is time-bound and traceable. [2]
Step 3. Set status, due date, and priority on the task.
Once the task is created, assign an appropriate priority level, a due date, and a status. These parameters ensure that creditworthy work items are visually distinguishable from routine tasks and can be filtered in task views later. [2][5]
Step 4. Log calls and schedule events for the same contact.
Beyond tasks, use the Calls and Events sub-types within the Activities module to record phone interactions and scheduled meetings. Events carry a specific date, time, and duration, and you can set reminders so nothing slips through. Logging these against the contact or ticket creates a complete chronological record of all touchpoints. [2]
Step 5. Follow the high-value contact.
Navigate to the Customers module in Zoho Desk. Open the contact record for the creditworthy client. Click the More (⋯) icon in the top pane, then select Follow from the drop-down menu. From this point forward, that contact's associated tickets, email conversations, comments, and other events will automatically surface in your Notification Center. [3]
Step 6. Monitor activity in the Notification Center.
Click the Notifications icon in the upper-right corner of your Zoho Desk account. The Notification Center window will open, displaying a live feed of all activity from contacts you are following. Click any individual notification to drill into the full detail. This gives managers and senior agents a real-time view of how creditworthy customers are being served. [3]
Step 7. Use predefined and custom task views to audit activity.
Zoho Desk provides a set of pre-built task views — for example, tasks completed today or tasks due today — and also allows you to build custom views filtered by criteria such as priority, status, or associated contact. Use these views to produce a quick audit of all open or recently closed activities linked to premium accounts. [5]
Step 8. Mark any billable expenses as billable before invoicing.
If your support activities generate reimbursable costs, ensure each expense is explicitly flagged as billable at the time of recording. A common failure point is that expenses get logged correctly but are never marked billable, meaning they never appear on the client's invoice — representing direct revenue leakage. [6]
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Common pitfalls
- Unfollowing a contact by accident. If you or a colleague selects Un-Follow from the More menu on a contact record, all future activity for that contact will stop appearing in the Notification Center without any warning. Periodically audit your followed contacts list. [3]
- Activities not linked to tickets. Stand-alone tasks are valid, but tasks that are not associated with a ticket are harder to surface in ticket-level reports. For creditworthy clients, always link the task to the relevant ticket so the full history is visible in one place. [2]
- Billable expenses recorded but not flagged. Recording an expense and marking it billable are two separate actions. Skipping the billable flag means the cost is absorbed internally rather than passed to the client. [6]
- Spam-marked activities disappearing from views. Zoho Desk allows activities to be marked as spam, which removes them from standard views. If a creditworthy activity goes missing, check whether it has been inadvertently spam-flagged. [5]
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What to check
- Confirm the contact is followed by reopening the contact record and verifying the More menu shows "Un-Follow" (meaning follow is active) rather than "Follow." [3]
- Verify each task has a linked ticket, a due date, and a priority so it appears correctly in filtered task views and can be audited at any time. [2][5]
- Confirm all billable expenses are flagged as billable before the invoicing cycle closes, to prevent revenue from being absorbed rather than recovered. [6]