11.             Service

Service relates to the management and resolution of customer support issues Cases. The principle entities involved with Service activities are:

·        Cases defined for each customer service incident.

·        Contracts which may be created against a customer if service contracts are relevant to the organisation.

·        Knowledgebase Articles which allow for a rudimentary automated help desk facility where a bank or articles can be easily searched and emailed to resolve a case.

·        Service Activities which require the allocation of at least one resource to an activity.

11.1.           Cases

A Case is defined to cope with a customer service enquiry from a customer. A case is defined against a customer and must have a title, an owner, a subject and must be linked to a Customer. A Queue can be allocated as the owner of the case where cases might be allocated to one of a number of users.

Although anyone can view and add activities, only the case Owner can resolve or reactivate a case from the action menu and cases can only be resolved if all activities held against the, have been completed.

11.2.           Queues

Queues are an integral part of working with the service functionality of CRM. A Queue is often setup to accept support emails from Customers directly from a customer support email (the Exchange Router automatically copies the emails into the appropriate queue).

Incoming Emails are automatically copied from the Exchange Inbox into the Queue and can then be converted into a Case or an Opportunity. Ownership of the item can be allocated by workflow rules or selected users instructed to browse the Queue and assign items to themselves or other users. The item than joins the In Progress queue of the user and can be progressed normally. Occasionally the User might return the item to the Queue or assign it to another user.

11.3.           Contract Template

Contract Templates must be set up to provide similar terms and conditions for different contracts. They can be defined in the Settings-Templates-Contract Templates work area and define whether time or number of cases apply as a constraint on the contract and also define the available working hours.

11.4.           Contract

Service Contracts are be defined against a Customer showing the dates for which service activity is covered. The contract name and customer together with the start date and end date of the contract must be specified together with the billing address and currency.

The contract is not available to be used until the invoice Contract action has been selected. This does not actually create an invoice record but makes the contract record read-only and allows the contract to be referenced with a case. At least one Contract Line Item, usually related to a product and representing a piece of equipment, must be added to the Contract before it can be invoiced.

Note:    Making the contract read-only after it is invoiced makes it difficult to add further contract line items to the contract whilst it is in progress.

The total time and resources available for each contract can be used to check service activity against each contract indicated in the Service Management Reports.

11.5.           Knowledge Base

The Knowledge Base allows resolutions to common customer service issues to be documented and one method of resolving a case is to search the knowledge base area and link to the knowledge base article (which can also be emailed easily to the Customer).

An Article Template is required for each article (Settings-Templates-Article Templates) and different Users can create articles. Once an article is completed, the Submit action is required to submit the article for approval. Once approved, the articles can be searched easily and inserted into emails as well as being used to resolve a case.

Note:    The knowledge base index is updated every 15 minutes and so changes are not made available immediately.

Knowledge Base articles can be associated with a Case in the Notes and Article tab (or using the form assistant). Articles can be easily searched for and added to any outgoing email from the standard CRM email form by pressing the Insert KB Article form button on the Email form.