Time is money!, this old axiom is well known in the business world and has always remained a core truth. Every time one of your customer service representatives picks up the phone and says, “How may I help you”, money is spent. It may be the 10 minutes on the phone collecting the answers from simple questions to documenting the answers to the questions for future billing or lessons learned. The net result is every time the phone rings your company spends money.
How would a company battle this known fact with their customer server? You must provide customer Service to your customers to keep the money coming in, it’s the money out we want to try to curtail. A simple yet effective answer to this would be to have the Customer share in the cost of Customer Service. To effectively accomplish this you can offer them a service which allows for:
Easy entry of cases
Ability to instantly know the status of the case
Communicate with the support person via the service
Search and Schedule available service offerings
Search a Knowledgebase of company articles
Update their contact information
Update Account information
Custom Case escalations
The sell to the customer is fairly simple, we provide you with a website on which you sign up and you can do all of the above without being put on hold.
Welcome eService from Microsoft Accelerator’s repository. The eService Accelerator is a free set of code that Microsoft has given to the community and can be download from http://crmaccelerators.codeplex.com/. You must be running Microsoft CRM 4.0 to utilize this Accelerator, plus it is would only be fair to mention that it can take a while to setup for each company. The application itself only take about 4-6 hours to get working correctly in your environment, the time comes into the equation when you want it to look like it is part of your company. This is usably called skinning in the web world and can take time to get correct.
What is eService?
The eService accelerator is a set of .Net code that will reside on a .Net website that your company will host and allow access from the internet (where your customers are). The accelerator is made up of 2 accelerators, the first being the Portal Server Accelerator which allows access and customizations against Microsoft CRM 4.0. The Second is the rest of the eService accelerator, which provides what are called user controls. These user controls are NotesEditor , CasesGrid , CaseEditor , KBSearch , NewEntity , ViewKBArticle , ServiceScheduler , ProfileEditor , CreateUserAccount , and Login. In a nutshell, they are prewritten, self contained programs that allow simple access to the CRM system. So, if you have a web programmer that has created .Net pages they will understand what these controls and how to use them.
How do customers sign up?
The portal uses the ASP.NET membership provider (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms998347.aspx) – it handles encryption/account management etc (in short, it keep you and your company away from managing user names and passwords). Web portal customers are invited to be a web user, there is no mechanism to sign up independently. The invitation process is triggered via workflow when the Microsoft Dynamics CRM contact’s eservice access level field is set accordingly.
What do I need to install eService?
- The following is a list of items you will need to install the CRM eService Accelerator:
- A preinstalled and configure installation of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0.
- A web server that is running
- IIS.
- .Net 2.0 or above.
- An internet accessible address for the eService Portal to use. This server must have access to your CRM server via http(s). If you are in a DMZ some firewall configurations will be needed.
- A .Net developer who can create a Master Page
- This is a critical piece of the puzzle. If you are not familiar with user controls and master pages you will need to do some homework or find someone to help.
- SQL Server 2005 or 2008
Walk Through of eService:
Customer is marked as an eService user
In order for the customer to receive their welcome aboard email, someone must set them up in CRM as an eService user. There are two levels, contact and account. If the user is signed up as a contact level, then they will only see their cases and items. If the user is signed up as an account level, then they will see all cases within the account and the other users who have access.
Once you make the change above an email is sent to the user. This email will need to be customized for your business and can be found in the CRM workflows.
Customer Sign up
The customer will receive an email like the one below. Please not you will have modified it for your organization before they get it. This is just an example.
The user will click on the link provided and go to your Create User Account page. The following pages are using the Small Business Starter Kit solution which creates the Fabrikam website. This is a sample website with three columns. I would recommend one with 1 or 2 columns at the most for the eService.
The email and information filled in on this page are not stored in CRM but in the .Net Membership Services Database.
Once the user logins
It will is customary to create a landing page for the user see when they first log in. This page is up to you and your design team as to what appears. My recommendation would be to create an announcement block so you can broadcast information to everyone logging in. Also with any other useful links to information for your customers.
Add a case
In whatever menu system you choose to add to your site, you will have the user open a new case. The page will allow for the creation or editing of the case, which reduces code complexity for you.
You may at this point be wondering what fields will show up here. That piece is configurable by the system administrator who sets up the eService. In CRM there is an eService console that you can edit which fields to show on the screen and grids, plus attributes like read-only. The following screen shows this page:
There are only two downsides to the choices. You cannot have lookup fields on the page nor can you show the status fields. What I have done in the past is to create three text fields, current user, current customer, and current status. Then I have work flow monitor changes to user, parent customer, and status reason and update the appropriate text fields. These fields can then be put on the screen and grid as read-only. Not perfect, but a workaround.
The other added feature here is that you have the ability to utilize the powerful workflow engine within CRM to have custom case escalations. Example, if a case is opened up as a high priority then email the Customer Service Manager immediately, or if a case is not resolved in 1 day email and escalate to the level 2 support team.
Adding Case Notes
Case Notes are notes that are added to a case record. An eService Case Note can be viewed by all of your users within the account that have access to the case Example, Jane Doe is setup as a User level access for Account ABC Company. She has a case and enters a note. She can see the case, but if Bob Parker is setup as an account level user for ABC Company, then he can also see the note. Also, these notes are viewable within CRM by any who has read access to the case. One of the first questions is can we have private notes within the organization; we do not want the customer to see these notes. The answer is yes, every note on a case that is viewable on the eService portal is prefixed with a *WEB*. So by default, if you are a Customer Service rep and you want to enter a note that is not viewable by the customer, do not start the note with a *WEB* and they will never see it. Use notes to store information, such as comments or ideas, or to share information with the support team working on your case. Web portal customers can easily add Case Notes by simply opening any pre-existing Case, adding their Note and hitting Create New Note.
Summary:
There are several other items that can be performed by the eService Accelerator, they are:
- Edit Account info (Works like edit Case)
- Edit Contact into ((Works like edit Case)
- Search Knowledge Base
- Key word search through the CRM knowledgebase. There is a built in ability to have the system email you the kb article.
- Schedule a service activity.
- If you are using the service piece of CRM you can allow the user to find available times and schedule a service call.
By employing an external website and utilizing the eService Accelerator you can provide a 21 century Customer Service channel to your organization that will increase your effectiveness, help provide metrics, and reduce phone support costs.
Bill Owens
www.aresgrp.com