RSMUS.comIn an effort to increase the efficiency of Customer Service operations in Microsoft Dynamics 365, Microsoft offers an extensive set of features revolving around case management. The case management system in Microsoft Dynamics 365 is fairly intuitive, so we’ll just take a look at some of the main points of the system.
So… What is a case?
In the context of service management, a case is a record type representing a single incident of a service. Depending on your organization, you may hear a “case” referred to by an alternative term, such as an “incident,” “ticket,” or “service request,” among others.
Within Microsoft Dynamics 365, a customer can have as many cases as necessary affiliated with their record. Users can view all of these cases on the customer’s record page, including open and resolved cases.
Resolving a Case
When working in case management, a customer service representative’s (CSR) main objective is to resolve the case. Resolving a case can be accomplished with many different approaches.
Some cases may not require the use of any additional resources or research. If a CSR is unable to immediately resolve a case, the usual next step would be to perform some research on the subject to determine how other CSRs resolved similar cases.
For example, let’s say that to resolve a particular case the CSR found a knowledge base article that offered a solution to the case. The CSR would be able to attach the knowledge base article to the current case. Then, when a similar case comes up, a CSR can easily resolve the case by reviewing the knowledge base article. In addition to knowledge base articles, CSRs can also attach subjects, products, entitlements, and activities to a case.
A case cannot be resolved until all activities tied to the case are resolved. These activities can include telephone calls, letters, appointments, and addresses. This is a preventive measure to ensure a case isn’t accidentally closed prior to workflow or mandatory activities being completed.
What if a Customer Decides they no Longer Need Their Case?
A client may request a case be created, but later decide they no longer require any assistance. This leaves us with two options for the case: either delete or cancel the case.
When you cancel a case, the system will keep a record in the system that can later be reactivated if necessary. This is the recommended course of action.
Alternatively, you can delete a case. However, deleting a case permanently removes the record along with all activities, notes, and attachments associated with the case. This means you should only delete a case if you are absolutely certain you will no longer need the case or anything associated with it.
If deleting a case is a concern for your company, security roles can be configured to prevent users from deleting cases.
Assigning Case Records
When a CSR creates a case, they can choose to assign the case to themselves, another CSR (or any user), or to a queue. Whoever is assigned to the case is referred to as the “owner” of the case. As you might imagine, ownership of a record means the user is responsible for managing the case record. Ownership of a case can easily be transferred from one person to another.
To aid in service management situations such as managing incoming support requests, queues can be configured to accept incoming messages and convert queue items into cases automatically.
With case management operations in Microsoft Dynamics 365, customer service providers can more easily resolve client issues. If you’re interested in learning more about Case Management, feel free to contact us at academy@rsmus.com for more information regarding our Introduction to Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Sales, Customer Service, and Marketing course.
by Nick Dietrich for RSM
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