Case
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Contents |
What is a Case
A Case is a record of a customers interaction with your business. A Case can be created manually or automatically. Cases would be created manually by the sales or customer service representative, when the customer calls on the phone or contacts your business directly in person, via the phone or via email.
Cases are created automatically when a web form is submitted on your web site. The custom fields on that web form are also captured in the resulting Case Record. Most cases in the system will be created via web form submissions.
Its important that a case is created each time a customer interacts with your business. This enables you to keep a history of all interactions with the customer and refer to them at anytime in the future.
Creating a Case Manually
To add a case manually click on Customer Cases link in the Relates box of the customer record. Click Create a New Case. You can enter the subject of the case and create notes and tasks as necessary. You can choose a workflow for your case. Once you have saved your case you can initiate the workflow and notify the relevant people who are responsible for completing the relevant tasks associated with the case.
Case Ownership
Case ownership is decided by who created the case. If the case was created via a web form, anyone can take ownership of the case by selecting a user from the Assigned To drop down. The case will get assigned to this person. This is primarily for reporting purposes.
Case Threads
Threads allow you to create a running conversation between you and the customer via email related to the current case. Click on Threads to bring up the online editor that allows you to write an email to send to the customer directly from the web-based Administration interface. When you are finished, click Send Message to email the customer. Your email will be saved against the case for future reference.
Case Files
You can upload and attach one or more files to your cases. These are files related to the current case and serve as a reference. If a web form consists of the file upload field, then any files upload will be automatically attached to the case. If you are publishing cases in secure zones, you can also publish case files and allow customers to easily download them. This is discussed in further detail in a later topic.
Case Workflows
Under Case Workflows you can view the workflows that apply to this case. By clicking on History you can view the history of the different workflow steps that have been completed. You can run the same or different workflows for a case. However no two workflows can run at the same time.
3rd Party Notifications
Quick Add allows you to quickly add this customer to a workflow process that supports 3rd party notifications. Manage Notifications allows you to add other customers to this cases 3rd party customer notifications. Please refer to previous section to learn more about 3rd party notifications. In essence 3rd Party Notification can keep your customers in the loop as a workflow process progresses internally within your organization. For example if you are processing a loan application for a customer, you may want to keep the customer in the loop as the loan application progresses internally towards approval.
Publishing Case History for Customers on Your Website
There are many situations where you might want to allow your customers to view their cases online. For example a finance company may want to show customers the progress of their application. You can do this in a few easy steps.
- Set up a Secure Zone for your customers.
- Create a new web page and add it to the secure zone.
- For that web page, click on the Editor tab and open up the Module Manager.
- Under Secure Zones, you will see the case related modules such as
- Case Search, to search for cases by their name or ID number
- Customer Case History, to display all of the cases for that customer, or all of the cases related to a particular workflow (such as a loan request workflow for the finance company).
NOTE:
- Your Online Business also provides a web services framework to allow the addition and updating of cases.
- To enhance customer experience you may place the Case Search module in a secure zone to allow customers to search through their cases and retrieve them quickly.
- When publishing cases in secure zones, customers will see their cases and any other case that have been directly linked to them using the Cases Relationships option. Refer to the Case Relationships topic to learn more.
Customizing the Case History Layout
As with everything in the system, how the case list and history is laid out is entirely up to you. You can completely customize this in Admin -> More Customization Options. Click on Customer Cases Templates. You can modify the List template, and add and remove the tags you want to display (refer to Customizing Your Online Business).
You can also modify the Details template, adding and removing the tags you desire, and rearranging the HTML to suit your desired look and feel. You can publish the case details, conversation threads, case files (with the ability to download) and any custom fields that may be attached.
