The ten items in this article cover the basics for getting started working with the Customer Service features in Microsoft Dynamics CRM. The Resource Center also includes many articles for taking full advantage of the Customer Service features—for a complete list, visit the Resource Center by clicking Resource Center on the left navigation pane. And, for yet more information, see the Help.
It is possible that the terminology used in Microsoft Dynamics CRM has been customized. The term cases is often changed to incidents or tickets.
Key steps
Follow a case from call to closureThis diagram describes the life cycle of a case.
- Understand contracts, contract lines, and cases
A contract is a an agreement for what type of service a customer is eligible for. A contract line in a contract describes the service support to be provided. In addition, a contract line often includes pricing information and how support will be allotted; this is either by total minutes of service, or number of cases opened.
If your organization uses contracts, cases opened from the contract record can be linked to the contract line.
- Use activities to track work in cases
After you open a case, you can open activities, such as tasks, from the case record. When you close an activity and record the duration, it is added to the total billing time for the case. You can adjust the billing time as needed. All activities must be closed to resolve a case. When you resolve the case, the total displays.
- To create an activity for the case, under Details, click Activities and then click New Activities.
- Understand the queue
You can think of queues as folders that contain work and potential work. Often queues are used to hold cases and activities that haven't been claimed (or accepted) by anyone. In some organizations, as a customer service representative you have a queue to be watched for new cases. When a case to be worked on appears in it, you can accept the case, which moves the case to your In Progress queue.
If someone assigns a case or activity to you, it appears in your Assigned queue. You can accept or reassign the case or activity.
- In the queue, select the records you want to move to your In Progress queue. In the Assigned or any other queue, on the Actions toolbar, click Accept.
With the exception of sent e-mail messages, when you close an activity, it is removed from your queue. However, you can it find in the History of the related case or record.
- Use the Form Assistant
The Form Assistant pane is on the right side of the cases and contract forms. It displays a list of filtered records, which are determined by the field that you are in, and what data that you enter. For example, if you are working in a contract, the Form Assistant pane displays only the contract lines for that contract. Also, in some areas of Microsoft Dynamics CRM, you can create a follow-up activity from the Form Assistant pane. Using the Form Assistant pane is an alternative to using the Look Up Records dialog box.
- Send an e-mail to a customer or another person in your organization
- To send quick mail to a customer, in their account, contact, or lead record, on the Actions toolbar, click Send E-mail. Complete the form and then click Send.
- To send a quick e-mail to the owner of a record, on the Administration tab of a record, double-click the name of the Owner. When their record opens, click Send Direct E-mail, complete the form and then click Send.
- To instant message anyone with a presence jewel. If you have Office Communicator 2007 and Microsoft Dynamics CRM for Outlook installed, you may see the presence jewel. You can click the jewel and send instant messages or e-mail.
- To e-mail a knowledge-base article to a customer, in the KB article, click E-mail KB Article.
- Assign and share records
What Microsoft Dynamics CRM customer information you can work with is determined by permissions and ownership. If more than one person needs to work a record, it can be shared or assigned. When you share a record with another user, you are giving that user specific permissions, such as Read, Write, or Delete, to that record. When you assign a record to another user, you are making that user the owner of the record.
- On the Actions toolbar, click More Actions, and then click Sharing.
- On the Actions toolbar, click the Assign button.
For cases, you can assign a case to a queue.
- Find information in articles in the knowledge base
The knowledge base is a collection of articles that your organization creates. They can include procedures, answers to common questions, product sheets, problem solutions, or anything else your organization wants to share.
You can search for an article by keyword, title, article, number, subject, or use a full-text search. For more information about searching the knowledge base, click Help on This Page.
- Resolve and reactivate a case
When a problem has been solved or addressed to the customer's satisfaction, you can resolve the case and record the resolution and the amount of time to be billed to the customer.
Before a case can be resolved, all its activities must be closed. If the case is linked to a contract line, it must be active and have sufficient allotments to resolve the case. You can only resolve cases one at a time.
- To resolve a case, on the Actions menu, click Resolve Case.
By resolving a case, a closed Case Resolution activity is created.
Tip
You can view a list of all resolved cases. In the View list, click My Resolved Cases or Resolved Cases.
After a case has been resolved, you can reactivate a case and continue to work on it. The Case Resolution activity is closed as canceled.
- To reactivate a case, open the closed case, on the Actions menu, click Reactivate.
- Using Reports to track your work
You can use reports to help you manage your work and identify trends and issues. not only are there out of the box reports, but your managers may have also created reports that you can use.
The two reports you may find the most useful are Neglected Cases and Case Summary Table.
Related Links
Getting started articles
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