Chapter 15
In This Chapter
Understanding service and support processes
Creating cases
Updating cases
Viewing case lists
Researching and resolving cases
Communicating the outcome
Salesforce provides robust customer service functionality in its Service Cloud product. The module is used to track and resolve cases, using a variety of features that allow agents to respond to cases as efficiently as possible. But it’s more than that as well.
With Service Cloud, you have all the tools at your fingertips to efficiently deliver excellent customer service while managing the costs of operations. In days and weeks, versus months and years, you can start and manage a fully integrated customer service strategy that supports the many channels that customers use to communicate with you. Service Cloud also provides the ability to handle web chats from customers looking for help on your website, for customers to log in to a private portal where they can submit new cases and check up on existing ones, and a console where agents can minimize the number of clicks and additional pages they have to open to see information about a customer.
In this chapter, we introduce you to basic customer support functionality in Salesforce, starting with its core concept, the case. We first discuss fundamental support agent processes for handling new cases, and then we cover how to manage the growing caseload.
Salesforce follows a general process when it comes to managing cases. Service agents (you may call them support reps) commonly perform these tasks on any given day. The specific tasks may be different in your company, but you probably see some similarities:
At its core, customer support is all about accepting questions and answering them in a timely and consistent manner, while providing high levels of customer satisfaction. How you handle your responses — and the scale on which you handle them — are more complicated issues.
A case is a record of a customer service inquiry (you may call them tickets), as shown in Figure 15-1. Just like other common records, such as accounts and contacts, you can track all interactions on a case from a single detail page. And to manage all your cases, Salesforce comes out of the box with all the tools that you need for routing, queuing, and escalating cases, plus complying with service-level agreements (SLAs), if that applies to your company.
A case record comes preconfigured with standard fields and two icons commonly used for case management. Most of the standard fields are self-explanatory, but in the following list, we highlight key fields that are less obvious:
You may also hear the term case feed. The case feed borrows functionality from Salesforce’s Chatter feature so that users can better collaborate around resolving a particular case. Internal discussions about a case appear chronologically above the case details, as shown in Figure 15-2. Each comment can then appear in other employee’s feeds, and those with information that could help can reply with a comment of their own. You don’t even have to know the coworker who is giving you a response. He just may have seen your comment in his feed, know the answer, or know someone else who knows the answer and can give that other person a heads-up also within the comment.
One of the main responsibilities of an agent is handling new inbound inquiries. Writing notes on a little sticky square that you attach to your monitor may not be the best way to track information, especially if you have terrible handwriting. In the following sections, we discuss how to begin the case management process in Salesforce so that the right information is tracked for the right customers.
The first step in creating a case is validating the company and contact information to see whether any special circumstances or SLAs exist. This is less of a technological innovation then a general business best practice. Can’t have just any random person taking up your precious time, can we? This information should reside in custom fields on the account record. For example, to do this in response to an inbound call, log in to Salesforce and follow these steps:
The Search Results page appears. Hopefully, you see the account name listed. If it’s not listed, you should have some business processes in place to determine how to verify that the person or business calling in is indeed a customer.
The Account record appears. Verify the business’s information on this record that helps you identify that you’re allowed to support this company. You might verify an address or an account number. You should confirm those processes first before using cases.
Again, depending on your company’s policies, you may or may not have specific customer contacts authorized to call you for support.
The Contact record appears. Verify information on this record that helps you identify that this person is permitted to call for support. If the contact record doesn’t already exist, create a new contact record. For more information, read Chapter 5.
After you qualify the customer, you have to associate a case to each new issue you receive. Because cases are associated with contacts, the best, most reliable way to create case records is by starting from the relevant Contact detail page. From the Contact detail page, you can add a case by using either the Create New drop-down list on the sidebar or the New button on the Cases related list. The result is the same in both situations, and you automatically prefill the Contact lookup field. By doing this, you can always find your case, and your case activities will be listed on the overall Contact detail page.
To create cases by using the best practice, follow these steps:
The Edit mode of a new case appears.
Notice that the Contact field is prefilled with the contact you were working from.
http://wiki.developerforce.com/index.php/Members:Email_To_Case
Check with your account executive to discuss other options. Of course, you could always have a Web-to-Case form set up (similar to the Web-to-Leads that we discuss in Chapter 13), too.
As a service or support agent, one of your key goals as a case owner is to address and resolve many customer issues as quickly as possible. Ideally, the need for speed is balanced with some defined processes to ensure a sense of order. Over time, your caseload will build up as different cases take different lengths of time to resolve. You’ll work off the Cases home page, which you access by clicking the Cases tab at the top of the page. There you’ll be able to see the most recent cases and adjust your views so that you can see the cases that are most relevant to you (for example, maybe you handle all the Platinum requests for the West Coast and just want to see those). In the following sections, we describe how to efficiently update a case as you work it, and then we discuss how to manage your growing caseload.
As you work your cases, you may need to modify case information. To update a case, follow these steps:
If you don’t have this information (usually from your customer), don’t worry; you can still enter whatever information you have about the customer into the search tool. It may take a few extra hops to get to the case as you return a contact or account record, but the beauty of Salesforce is that these records are all related, via the account record. A Search Results page appears.
The Case detail page appears.
The case record appears in Edit mode.
The Case detail page reappears. Notice that the fields you edited have been changed.
After you create cases in Salesforce, you might need to transfer them — reassign them — to the right people: folks who become responsible for case resolution after it’s been escalated, for example.
To reassign a case, go to the case record and follow these steps:
The link is in square brackets. The Change Case Owner page appears.
(Optional) Select the check box to choose to notify the recipient with an e-mail.
The case record reappears. Notice that the Case Owner field has changed to the assigned user.
Case views and case queues are accessed from the same location — the Case View drop-down list on the Cases home page.
A case view is a list of cases that match certain criteria. When you select a view, you’re basically specifying criteria to filter the results that you get back. The advantage of using a view, versus searching, is that you can use the view over and over again.
If your company has several agents resolving cases for a variety of products and services, your administrator may set up case queues to automatically funnel cases to the right pairs of eyeballs. For example, you may use your website to collect both product and billing inquiries. Case queues would allow support agents to grab new cases from the product queue, while accounting operations staff can monitor the billing queue.
To try out a predefined view, do the following:
The four default options appear and maybe some other choices that have already been created for you.
The All Open Cases list opens, as shown in Figure 15-4.
Notice that Salesforce lays the list out with standard columns that correspond to commonly used case fields, plus an Action column so that you can quickly modify a record.
A Case detail page appears.
The case record appears in Edit mode, and you can make changes to the data.
The case record appears in Edit mode for that action, and you can make changes, as appropriate.
Queues ensure that everyone has an equal chance at the latest cases.
To choose a case from a queue, follow these steps:
The list page appears.
You’ve now claimed these cases from the general pool of new cases.
If you want special lists for the way that you track your cases, we recommend building custom views. For most objects with tabs in Salesforce, you can create a custom view. See Chapter 4 to find out how to generally create a custom view.
Salesforce Knowledge introduces a more robust knowledge base option for support departments and call centers. It’s smart enough to return relevant answer options to internal support agents or customers, based on its evaluation of your problem description. Multiple filtering options also let you find information based on multiple attributes, for example, based on the type of product and the topic of the issue (GenWatt Engine products and Broken Circuit topics). It’s available for Enterprise and Performance Edition users, and possibly for an additional price, depending on your edition. (Talk to your account executive for more information.)
We discuss Salesforce Knowledge in depth in Chapter 16.
When you have your set of assigned cases, the next milestone is to resolve the customer’s issue. In general, case resolution means responding to the issue and doing it efficiently so that you minimize time spent on repetitive tasks. For example, typing out the same explanation to “Where’s the Any key?” (you know, when the manual says to “press any key”) can tend to get stale after a while.
A solution is a basic text boilerplate response to a commonly asked question. As you resolve cases, service reps can both apply existing solutions and create new ones that your teams can use in the future. Using solutions helps new agents ramp up more quickly and makes any agent on your team proficient on a wider range of topics. The following list describes additional terms used when discussing solutions:
From the case record, look for solutions by using the method described in this section.
You’ll see a Find Solution button on the Solutions related list, as shown in Figure 15-5. Click the Find Solution button to view relevant solutions. We generally recommend that you associate only reviewed solutions with cases.
To look for solutions by using the Search box in the Solutions related list, follow these steps:
After you get more familiar with solutions and their unique IDs, you may even look up a solution by part of its solution number.
The Find Solution for Case Number page appears. If Solutions Categories are enabled, search results are first shown by category and subcategory groupings.
When you’re viewing the relevant solutions, you want to find the appropriate solution(s) and associate it (or them) to your case. You may do this in two ways:
After either method, you’re returned to the Case Record page. In the Solutions related list, you see the solution that you just attached. If you add more than one solution to a case, simply repeat the steps for finding solutions and associate them to your case, as appropriate.
After you research your case and find the right solutions for it, you now must communicate this resolution to your customer before you officially mark the case closed. Make sure that your administrator has created appropriate case resolution e-mails for your support team.
Standard e-mail templates allow you to merge your attached solutions into the body of an e-mail template, which you then send to your customer. This increases the efficiency with which the support team can answer questions. To provide a response to a customer using an e-mail template, read through Chapter 8 for details.
After you resolve your case and successfully notify your customer, it’s time to close the case and move on to the next one. One of the key advantages of Salesforce is its easy-to-use reporting system (more about that in Chapter 17). Additional information is collected after you close a case, so support executives can use the collective feedback to continuously improve the customer experience.
To close a case, follow these steps:
Alternatively, if you’re on the Edit page for the case record, click Save & Close. The Close Case page appears in Edit mode.
Other fields are shown based on your company’s customizations. If you’re a Professional, Enterprise, or Performance Edition user, you’ll also see an additional section allowing you to create a solution from this case.
This will also link the case to your new solution.
If you want to display common solutions to the public so that customers can look for their own solutions, you have a few options. Both Salesforce Knowledge and the default solutions can be set up for this. Check with your account executive or customer success manager for details.