The Salesforce.com Case records allow you to manage support issues effectively or other processes involving a change of status or resolution of an issue. The inherent function of Cases lends itself to the common support ticket. Your customers can either generate their tickets or your support team can internally create Case records after retrieving information from your various inbound mediums – email, website, phone call, etc.
Cases exist to solve problems. Moving problems to solutions quickly and efficiently increases your brand trust with your customers. Here are 4 best practices to keep in mind:
1. Have Clear Assignment Rules
Create a strategy with buy-in from your team that makes sense. You can establish an auto-assignment of Cases to various team members or you can leave all new Cases in a queue to be assigned later.
If you choose the latter, ensure someone is monitoring the queue and that response time is measured from a management standpoint. Otherwise, things can slip through the cracks.
2. Manage Your Support With A Dashboard
Ensure that your team is incentivized to respond and that real-time data is front and center for the team. Some key metrics which can help keep your team focused are:
- Time for response
- Time for resolution
- Number of critical issues
- Load balance of issues
- Quality of response
As you see these numbers in real-time, direct the feedback to the people on your team that can make long-term fixes. Furthermore, you can throttle the workload based on the load balancing at any time as well. This drives throughput of resolution.
3. Communicate With Your Customers
Problems can affect customer emotions dramatically. Don’t just be sterile in your issue resolution. If you cannot resolve issues immediately, be sure to communicate. Keep your eye on the customer experience. Ensure your case records are filled with Logged Calls and Emails which keep the customer updated and let them know what you are doing. If there are hurdles or things take longer, let them know that you are working.
Setting expectations can avoid a lot of frustration, especially in our age of speed. Use Salesforce.com to manage the emotional experience of the customer and your system can become strategic in driving continued loyalty.
4. Build A Knowledge Base
Your team’s hard work of resolving issues can become a valuable asset over time which increases in value. When your team closes a Case record, provide guidelines for submitting the resolutions as Solutions for a knowledge base. Salesforce.com allows for searching on past resolved issues and this can become a cornerstone for a first level response in supporting your customer rather than reinventing the wheel.
The Goal Is Raving Fans
You solve your customers’ problems because it increases loyalty, word of mouth and, ultimately, revenue. Keep the goal front and center and customize Salesforce.com Case records towards this end. Too much customization can make the support process more cumbersome than useful. Speed and quality of response is critical. Effective Salesforce.com leadership or Salesforce consulting will provide a healthy balance and process for making your customers raving fans.
What are some support strategies you use?
