IN THIS CHAPTER

Understanding service and support processes

Creating cases

Using case queues

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, the ability for customers to log in to a private community 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; then we cover how to manage the growing caseload. For more extensive knowledge of Service Cloud and implementing its various features, check out Salesforce Service Cloud For Dummies, by Jon Paz and TJ Kelley (Wiley).

Walking through a Day in the Life of a Service Agent

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:

• Responding to inbound emails and calls
• Taking new cases from assigned queues
• Validating that the inquiry is coming from an authorized contact
• Creating a case to begin tracking efforts to resolve the issue
• Working the case backlog, including researching solutions
• Managing service-level agreements (SLAs)
• Communicating the resolution to the customer

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.

If all your company’s Salesforce users have full licenses, and you just need to capture a fairly manageable influx of basic cases, you can do that without having to purchase full-blown separate Service Cloud licenses.

Understanding the Case Record

A case is a record of a customer service inquiry (you may call them tickets), as shown in Figure 13-1. Similar to other common records, such as accounts and contacts, you capture case-related information 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 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:

• Status: This field defines the important statuses in your case process. It comes preconfigured with a basic process, but you should modify the values to fit your process. If you’re an Enterprise or Unlimited Edition user, you can use this field to distinguish multiple support processes appropriate to the different kinds of cases you want to track.
• Case Number: When you create a case, Salesforce automatically assigns a sequential number used for tracking.
• Type: Use this picklist field to define the type of case. Salesforce presets this list with selections that include Problem and Question, but you can modify the picklist to match your categories.
• Case Reason: Use this picklist field to specify the reason the case was opened. Many companies track this field to identify areas of customer service that they can improve. Of course, you can also modify this list to suit your needs.
• Case Origin: Use this field to record from which channel the case originated — for example, by phone, email, or web. Many companies report on this field to understand and improve the methods by which customers interact with service and support agents.
• Internal Comments: When editing a case, use this field to jot brief comments to communicate internal messages, as needed. Customers or people outside your company will not see this field by default. However, internal comments that are marked Public may be viewed by clients in the Customer Portal, if you have it enabled.

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. If your organization has Chatter feed tracking enabled on the Case object, your Case record detail will look a little different than that of other standard objects. Internal discussions about a case appear on the Feed tab, next to the Details tab, which contains field details, as shown in Figure 13-2. This layout is meant to give agents quick access to Chatter discussions about the case or record details, with a minimum of page scrolling.

You’ll also notice that related lists still appear on the Details page as they do on any other standard record page. The left side also has quick links to the related lists, again so agents can quickly navigate to information. Speed is critical when interacting with a customer, and Salesforce provides as much information as possible to an agent without having to click off the screen to get to the right details.

Creating a Case

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.

Entering new cases

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 either by using the Create New drop-down list on the sidebar or by clicking 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:

1. From the Contact detail page, click the New button on the Cases related list.

   The Edit mode of a new case appears.

2. Fill in the fields as much as you can or as required.

   Notice that the Contact field is prefilled with the contact you were working from.

3. When you’re done, click one of the following buttons:
   • Save: Brings up the Case detail page.
   • Save & Close: Saves the current case info and automatically takes you to the Close Case detail page, as shown in Figure 13-3, where you select the appropriate closed case status and add additional details. Use this page to quickly resolve an issue.
   • Save & New: Saves the current contact info and automatically opens a new, blank contact record.
   • Check Spelling: Checks the spelling of the contents of the Description field.

To clone a case, click the Clone button at the top or bottom of the case record. If it’s the day of a new product or feature release, and many customers are reporting the same problem, the Clone button will come in handy for you. Just remember to still skim the new copy that was cloned, to make sure you change certain fields (like the Contact), to be relevant for each customer. This is similar behavior across other records in the Salesforce family.

You can also set up Salesforce to generate a new case from an email sent to a specific address (like [email protected]), also known as the Email-to-Case feature. You have a few options, depending on your company’s email requirements. Or, you could always have a Web-to-Case form set up (similar to the Web-to-Leads form that we discuss in Chapter 15). For details on how to set up Email-to-Case, read Salesforce Service Cloud For Dummies.

Managing Cases

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 discuss how to manage your growing caseload.

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. Queues ensure that everyone has an equal chance at the latest cases.

Case queues are accessed from the same location as case views — the Case View drop-down list on the Cases home page.

To choose a case from a queue, follow these steps:

1. From the Cases home page, select the view that corresponds to a queue that you’re supposed to monitor.

   The list page appears.

2. In the Action column of the case list, select the check boxes for the case records that you want to accept and begin working on.

   If you don’t see an Accept hyperlink, you’re probably looking at a list view instead. See Chapter 17 for more information on list views.

3. Click Accept to take ownership of these cases.

   You’ve now claimed these cases from the general pool of new cases.

Communicating the Outcome

After you research your case and find the right solutions for it, you must communicate this resolution to your customer before you officially mark the case closed. Make sure that your administrator has created appropriate case resolution emails for your support team.