Overview

Customer Care modules in CRM.COM include customer support features that any B2C system requires. They ensure the smooth operation and handling of customers and prospect customers, and target full agent and customer satisfaction.

• Use Communications to communicate with your customers for financial marketing and loyalty matters.
• Use Service Requests to register problems that customers experience with their products and subscriptions and to check whether products are under warranty. 
• Use Activities to log tasks which take place as part of a specific business process such as a Job or a Service Request. The activities maintain information about the task that is to be performed by tracking the resource that owns the task, the service that should be provided and eventually the actual time that was spent on providing each service.
• Use Leads to create and keep track of the leads related to existing or prospect customers. Information is collected by the sales and marketing department during the entire process of transforming a lead into a customer. This helps the evaluation of the lead to know how much effort, time and money should be spent by the sales owner.

Setting Up Customer Care modules and Core Processes

Setting up Service Requests

• Statuses : Statuses are used to progress a service request throughout its life cycle. Each status has a life cycle state (Pending, Responded, Temporary Resolved, Final Resolved, Completed, Cancelled) and a label which is meaningful to your organization.  It is required to provide at least one status for each available life cycle state apart from 'Temporary Resolved', as it is not compulsory that a service request goes through a temporary resolution. 

  Through the  service request type it is possible to define the possible progression of status from each selected service request status by defining Status Transition Rules. The next possible status depends on the current status of the request, its type, and the authorization of the user or unit.

• Service Request Categories: Categories are used to provide a business classification to the service request, such as information or request for a change. These classifications provide the user with input on how to handle the request, and can also be used by the business to analyze the type of calls they receive.

• Life Cycle State Categories: Categories are also available for 'Responded, 'Temporary Resolved' and 'Final Resolved' life cycle states. Through categories you can provide a business classification to the responses and resolutions provided to customers, and can be used by the business for future analysis. They are added to a service request when it progresses to the specific life cycle state. You can configure these categories to designate whether a response must be accepted by the customer before it can be temporarily or finally resolved.

• Prioritization Model: Prioritization model defines the required effort for responding and resolving a service request from the customer by the user. Set up your model which according to the urgency of an issue and the impact it has it will be assigned a priority number. Upon service request creation either the user will set the urgency and impact (or it will be automatically assigned through a workflow rule) and the system will user the Prioritization model table to assign the priority of the request.

• Cancellation Reasons: Provide the reasons for which a Service Request is cancelled
• Types : Service request types allow the company to set standard behaviour for common service request flows and determine the operational characteristics of service requests. They can be used for information, request for advice, report an incident etc. Setup the multiple service request types to support different business needs. Upon creation if a service request the agents select the service request type which best describes the service request to be logged and through the presets defined on the type the agent can progress the service request without room for mistakes. Through the type define the allowed time for completion, the categories to be used, the job and activity types which can be logged through the request as well as the products allowed to be added service requests of the type.

Setting up Activities

Statuses: Label the life cycle states of activities in a way that is meaningful to an organization.  Statuses are modified in order to progress an activity. Through the  activity type it is possible to define the possible progression of status from each selected status by defining Status Transition Rules. The next possible status depends on the current status of the activity, its type, and the authorization of the user or unit.

Categories:  Provide a business classification such as 'Installation' or 'Maintenance'. These classifications provide the user with input on how to handle the activity and can be used by the business to analyze activity requests.

Cancellation Reasons: Used for business analysis.

Types: Types are used to determine the operational characteristics of activities. Through the type define the one-time services (such as the installation of a modem) which can be added to activities of this type and which will be billed based on their duration (the time the installation took). The 'Allowed Organisational Unit' designates users authorized to create activities of each type.

Setting up of Leads

Settings: Use settings to create various entities such as statuses, source types, competitors etc and subsequently, add the entities you would like to make available for each type.

Types: Lead types are used to determine the operational characteristics of leads such as allowed statuses, lost reasons, competitors, products and subscription packages allowed to be added on leads etc.. On each type you can define whether leads of the type should be automatically converted to customers if they are won in which case an accounts receivable will be created (if one does not already exist).

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Managing Leads, Activities and Service Requests

Managing and handling of all customer care modules is common.

Navigate to the respective screen available under CRM area. Specify the criteria that match the entity you are interested in or use NEW from the Actions' Menu to create a new request. Provide the mandatory information in the service requests fields table before you SAVE the ENTITY.

Assignment information section can be used to select the unit and/or user responsible for dealing with the entity. The user field may be left empty, in which case users from the defined unit will be able to Accept the entity.

Shared Notes are used to record information regarding the entity. Every time the notes are updated the time and the name of the agent is registered. Define Owned by Group which refers to the Group that is responsible for carrying out the completion of the entity. The Group defaults to that of the currently signed in user or it is automatically set based on the geographical area of the contact. (if configured accordingly in the Automatic Collaboration Rules of Security Management)

Use EDIT from the Actions Menu to enter edit mode. While entities that are assigned to a unit and are pending acceptance by a user can be modified, the 'Assigned to User' can only be set through the Accept action.  An entity cannot be modified if its cancelled or completed already. Note that once an entity is created the related contact, account and type cannot be changed.

You can DELETE entities as long as they are no other entities in the system associated to them.
If an entity has been mistakenly opened you can CANCEL through Actions > Cancel action. The entity can be cancelled as long as it is still in a 'Pending' life cycle state.

Accepting and starting progress of customer care entities

New entities are assigned to a unit or user as defined in the Assignment information section.  A unit member can accept entities assigned to a unit, by using Accept from the Actions menu in the Data Entry page.  For example, a lead regarding a business client is assigned to the B2B marketing department and then accepted by a specific agent. Before an entity can be progressed it must be assigned on a specific user and not just a unit.

Once assigned on a user it must be progressed to start its processing.  Use Start Progress action and select one of the available statuses that represents an 'In Progress' life cycle state.  The action will change the state from 'Pending' to 'In Progress'. Once the action is executed, use EDIT mode to start working on the entity.

Service Request progress is more detailed than activities and leads. Once a request is accepted it must be responded to confirm the receipt of a request.  This can be triggered by clicking Respond in the 'Response and Resolution' section. Provide the required information before Saving

Communicating customer care entities

Communications can be sent to customers directly from the screen of any customer care module by using the Communicate action.

Additionally, as the entity (activity, lead, service request) progresses through each stage the 'agent - customer interaction' can be automated through the use of communications. For example, in service requests:

• A communication is created when the entity is responded, provided the 'Event Based Communication Definition' is configured accordingly.
  

• Customers can automatically accept responses and resolutions through email/SMS links. Once the customer clicks the respective link, the response/resolution of a service request is set as 'Accepted by Contact'.

You can use tags related to any customer care entity (text that is automatically replaced by values specific to selected records) when creating communications. Tags are available for selection by typing '#'. 
Refer to the Communications manual for a complete list of available tags.

Using Key Dates in customer care entities

Set the dates and time frames which are relevant to your entity. The set of dates includes: 'Start Date', 'Expected Completion Date', 'Actual Completion Date', 'Time to Completion', 'Estimated Completion Time' and 'Time Overdue'.

Through the entity Type, it is possible to set the time within which an entity must be completed, (To be completed within). For service requests it is also possible to have all the dates recalculated upon responding to the service request, 'Recalculate key dates on responding'.

Using Products in customer care entities

Most commonly customer care modules are used to handle tasks, questions or issues associated to physical goods or services. The system can be set up to have different entity types to handle issues with different products. The list of products that each entity can handle depends on the 'Products' added on the entity type; i.e. activity type, service request type, lead type.

Lead Specific Processes

Processing a lead

A lead can be either Won or Lost. When a lead is won it can be converted to a customer simply by changing its life cycle state to 'Won'.  This is done by using Win Lead action and selecting the appropriate status (i.e., one which represents a 'Won' life cycle state).

If the auto-conversion process is enabled in the lead type, the detail required to create an accounts receivable must be supplied.  (Persons or companies are required to have an accounts receivable in CRM.COM to be considered as customers). If not, then its possible to manually 'Convert to Customer' by using the respective action. Once converted the following actions become available:

• Plan a Job
• Become Subscriber

A lost lead can be logged by using the Lost Lead and selecting the appropriate status (i.e., one which represents a 'Lost' life cycle state). Select a reason the lead was lost from the modal. 

Importing leads

The fastest way to create leads is by importing an excel or CSV file for this purpose. To do so

1. Navigate to Utilities / Import Data / Import Leads and create a new definition.
2. Define the applicable settings applicable and Save.
3. Prepare an import file in either Excel or CSV format.  A template is provided during the import process. Files in either format contain one column for each field that can be imported and a first row including headers. 
4. Click on Submit from the Actions menu and proceed by selecting the file with the leads. 

Check Appendix A for information on how to download the template and information on how to prepare the import file.

Activities Specific Processes

Billing Activity Services

When an activity is completed services provided through the activity that is part of a billable (type) job can be charged. The list of services provided and the time spent on each is required information. The billing engine refers to the Price Plan for the rate of each service and bills the job based on how long it took to complete.  The price plan rate model used for one-time services is Duration based where the service is billed based on the duration. Possibility to provide tiered rates where price increases or decreases based on duration is possible. Check Pricing for more information.

Booking resources to complete an activity service 

Activities consist of tasks that must be completed by a designated user. The resources necessary to complete a task can be booked through CRM.COM Resource Scheduling.  Supply the service to be provided, the responsible department/unit and the date/time on which the task should be completed. Services that are necessary to complete an activity can be defined as mandatory on the activity type and added automatically.

Resources can be requested when adding a service for an activity through the 'Services to be Provided' section. Clicking the Request Resource link opens the Resource Availability modal, allowing you to search available resources and place a request. Refer to Resource Scheduling for more information.

Service Requests Specific Processes

Service Request Management Dashboards

Service Requests management dashboard tool allows managers, team leaders, and agents to easily handle and keep track of the service requests that must be addressed. The dashboard is readily available through the Service Request Summary screen

Relating service requests to other service requests

Service requests can be related to similar or relevant requests of the same contact which can be managed through the 'Related Work Section' available in the Data Entry page.

Providing service request feedback

It is possible for customers to rate your company's services (in this case service requests) by providing a rating as well as comments. Both rating and feedback is only possible through the WEB API.

The provided feedback can be viewed through the Display Feedback summary page available under Analytics.

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Business Flows