The SugarCRM system incorporates a case management system within the core product. It can be configured to provide a powerful support system for managing customer issues.
At it's simplest level, a case or issue management system needs to be able to log a case, assign it to a support person and track the progress and resolution of that case. However, there are a number of additional scenarios that need to be taken into account when configuring an effective support system:
- A support case can typically remain open for a period of time. This may be due to waiting on information from the end client, waiting for new hardware if it is a hardware issue, or any number of other potential issues. It's important to ensure that open cases aren't forgotten and that the support team actively follows up these cases.
- It's important to ensure that the case management system is simple to update for support users and also simple to add notes, send email communication to the clients and log phone and meeting communication with clients.
Based on the above requirements, it's recommended that the system leverages a followup process that leverages a next followup date to drive followups of open cases for support staff.
Using CRM to Drive Customer Support
This process for driving support followups is as follows:
- A required field is added to the cases module that specifies the next followup date. This means that a case can't be created within the system without the support person specifying when it should be followed up
- A dashlet is provided on each support user's home page that indicates the open cases that are due to be followed up.
- Support people are given the ability to update the next followup date via the logging of calls, meetings, notes and tasks. This results in forcing support people to log activity as it becomes the most efficient way to push the next followup date along
- Management is provided with a report that shows case followups that are overdue by more than a defined number of days. Since the next followup date is a pro-active field set by the support person, management can be quite pro-active in making sure it's enforced.
Although the above process is quite simple, it provides a lot of value in helping to ensure that cases are always being actively driven to conclusion.
