New case is never something unexpected. We get customers’ requests from everywhere: Call Center, store, website, via emails. They may concern different products. What can we do to improve case management? Who will be responsible for routing cases to our employees?

Queue in Dynamics CRM

Queue is an organization tool that allows us to plan the work of our teams and individual employees. It’s a container for incoming cases. As a user we reach into the container, pull out the first we see and solve it. It doesn’t have to be a case – it might as well be a task to perform such as toner refill or quote estimation. Queues are usually used for managing cases though. Depending on the case type, product, customers’ characteristics, the system may route cases to proper employees – these of appropriate knowledge and skills.

The easiest example? As a worldwide company we provide service for France and Germany and our employees are francophone or German speaking. Hardly anyone in our company knows both languages.

As a result, cases are divided into two queues: French and German. Both are assigned to employees who know respectively French and German. Everyday each of them comes to work, logs on to the system and checks whether there are any pending cases in his queues. As a consequence, an employee who doesn’t speak German will never receive a call from a customer he isn’t able to communicate with.

Queues management

First of all, we can create as many queues as we need. When adding a new user, system automatically creates a private queue for him – the one only he can see. No one else can access his private queue and sees items on it. Private queues might be created not only for individuals but also for groups of people. In this case, only queue members see queues items. The other type of queues is public. that one is accessible for all. In general, queues can be created for departments, teams, people of similar skills, individuals.

Let’s extend our example and suppose we have the following queues in the system:

• French – home appliance,
• French – PC and notebooks,
• French – phones,
• German – home appliance,
• German – PC and notebooks,
• German – phones.

A member of French – phones queue is responsible for resolving French speaking customer issues regarding phones and smartphones. He will never have to deal with Herr Schmidt’s issue concerning his refrigerator. Similarly, a member of German – PC and notebooks queue will deal with the exchange of drives and graphics cards in computers. He will never have to work on cases concerning an on-switch even if the issue was reported by a native Berliner.

Routing cases on queues – how is it that I don’t see Her Schmidt’s cases

Distributing on queues is organized by routing rules sets. System lets us create a set of rules – conditions that have to be fulfilled in order for a case to be added to proper queue. For example, we can set up rules based on customer’s nationality and product type the case is referring to; more specifically the following rules:

• If the customer’s nationality is French and the case concerns household appliances, direct the case to French – home appliance queue.
• If the customer’s nationality is French and the case concerns PC or notebook, direct the case to French – PC and notebooks queue.
• If the customer’s nationality is French and the case concerns a smartphone, direct the case to French – phones queue.
• If the customer’s nationality is German and the case concerns household appliances, direct the case to German – home appliance queue.
• If the customer’s nationality is German and the case concerns PC or notebook, direct the case to German – PC and notebooks queue.
• If the customer’s nationality is German and the case concerns a smartphone, direct the case to German – phones queue.

Once created, the case can be added to the appropriate queue and thus forwarded to the appropriate group of people. It will appear in the list of Items Available to Work On. One of the employees will pick it up from the list to resolve. The case will disappear from the list of Items Available to Work On and will appear in the Items Our Colleague is Working On.

Routing can be launched for a singular case or for many so we do not have to manually assign them to proper users or groups. One click allows us to manage multiple cases and assign them to different queues. A person responsible for case management does not need to keep in mind all the rules for resolving matters. All you have to do is press the button “Apply Routing Rules”.

Items I am working on

When we get to work, we comfortably sit in front of our desk, log into our CRM account, check pending cases and choose one that we want to resolve. For example, to ones that are reported by customers we know. Or the ones we know how to solve. Or the ones with the higher priority. We can choose the first from the list ipso facto implementing the FIFO rule. And, if we miss adventures in life, we can choose case randomly from Items available to work on list. This is a list not only of items routed to queues we are members of but also assigned to our personal queue by other users and system.

After choosing a case to solve, it may turn out to be beyond our skills or responsibilities. It may also require other people from different departments work on that case. In that case, we should be able to release the case and return it to the queue, and that’s the functionality Dynamics CRM provides us with. Moreover, at any time we can manually assign a case to another queue, for example if it turns out that it is urgent and requires attention of the manager, we can assign it to his personal queue.

However, if we bravely decide to solve the chosen case – it will disappear from the queue.

Time for summary

Queues are a fantastic tool for managing workdays. We can avoid tedious analysis of cases and assigning them to employees. We don’t have to worry about the fact that some employees wait for the cases to be assigned to them while others are overworked. The system itself will rout cases thus assigning them to groups, and our colleagues will pick them sequentially to resolve when they finish the ones they are working on. This will save us time and let us take care of cases that require immediate attention quicker and thus increase your chances of fulfilling the SLA.