Dynamics 365 for Customer Service – how to take care of your customer after finalizing sales process?

Customer Service module – just like Sales module – has already been known to Dynamics CRM users. It serves for managing cases – issues reported by customers who have purchased your product or service. What for and how exactly?

Customer Service lets you:

• manage Service Level Agreements – SLAs by monitoring the time spent on solving cases,
• manage services,
• manage cases/tasks for your employees by queueing and prioritizing them.

In practice

Imagine you got a mail calling you to make a payment that you paid two weeks earlier. You search for the company’s hotline number and you call. Following the directions of an automatic voice, you press buttons on your phone to talk with a consultant. You provide the automatic voice with authentication data (PIN, ID number, address, cat’s name and your first cousin once removed foot size) and you are waiting.

And you are waiting.

Some piece of music playing all over again is entertaining you in the meantime.

You are still waiting.

At last, a consultant answers phone and asks you to provide authentication data, again. So you tell him your PIN, ID number, address, cat’s name and first cousin once removed foot size. Correct! And you finally may ask your question:

Why did I get a call for payment if I have paid that two weeks ago?

Your consultant does not know; he has no right to access your vindication data. You can call the hotline, once again prove you are yourself by providing consultants with your PIN, ID number, address, cat’s name and first cousin once removed foot size, listen to the annoying piece of music and reach a vindication consultant. And when you finally talk with the proper consultant you will know that everything is fine: they got your payment but someone forgot to cancel mail.

You have lost about an hour of your life.

And the respect for the company.

What do I do not to lose my company’s reputation?

Information system should help us. Although from the POV of the customer it may be the reason of all the evil in the world, it actually helps us manage the data. And, setting aside the security matter (to be honest, we do like being asked for our first cousin once removed foot size as long as it serves the security of our data), the system worked well. It provided both users with the proper data based on their rights in the system.  It could have been better – it could automatically cancel the mail – but still, it served its purpose.

When our client comes to our company and signs an agreement, let’s say a service agreement or warranty agreement, we have to ensure him we will answer his needs immediately. We create the rules by which we should be solving customers’ issues. We set up SLAs and decide upon the business goal – to lover the index of time exceeded cases.

We solved his case in two days, as promised, and our client is content.

How to reduce time spent on single case?

Most of the problems our clients report is similar. Dynamics 365 allows us to associate similar cases with each other – especially when we expect to find an already solved case that might help us find the solution for ours.

What is more, Dynamics 365 allows us to create the knowledge base out of articles on crucial information about the product, service or system function. Its purpose is to provide users and clients with knowledge with relevant information on time. Each article may be linked to the case (thus easing the solving process) or directly sent to the customer (if it answers his question). As a result, a newly employed employee will have access to the knowledge base and the solutions provided. There is no need for him to asks his colleagues and the risk of failure is diminished.

The case may be divided into child cases. Perhaps, fixing a notebook requires power supply replacement, USB port repair and motherboard replacement. This case can be divided into three, and each can be distributed to few employees, depending on their work schedule.

But we can also merge our cases. Let’s take our example with broken notebook: our client reported three cases: a need of power supply replacement, USB port repair and motherboard replacement. In our company there is only one person delegated to that type of service and we can assign all three cases as one. Similarly, when the case is reported via different media – for example when customer sends us email but calls the hotline anyway. In this case, two cases were created and should be merged to avoid the redundancy.

Each user has the access to his own queue with cases, he knows what kind of tasks have been assigned to him and he knows what he will be working on during the day. He may assign the case to other user – for example when the case solution goes beyond his competence. But foremost, he has access to all the data he needs – he knows the subject of the case, he can make his own notes, he knows what type of SLA has been signed by the customer and he is up-to-date with case status.

And the same goes for the first contact consultant: he can easily provide his customer with the case status and the proposed solution.

Dynamics for Customer Service is a solution that helps us to monitor the cases reported by our clients, such as complaints and product repair requests. It serves us solving customers’ issues ably.