Customer Service Features of CMS

Incident Area

The incident screen is where users record any information they receive from a customer about a support incident. The incident screen allows users to:

· Create a detailed record of every support incident that can later be accessed in the Knowledge Base.
· Classify customer service issues for automated incident and problem reporting.
· Automate resolution steps to minimize training for new support professionals.
· Instantly view an incident's life cycle.
· Assign activities to other CRM users.
· Assign priority to urgent incidents.
· Calculate the costs associated with resolving an incident.
· Link documents to support incidents.
· Track resolution times to gauge the efficiency of the support team.
· Track the productivity of individual support professionals.

Knowledge Base

The Knowledge Base is a searchable data bank that houses detailed information about every customer service inquiry, incident and problem every recorded. With the Knowledge Base, users can:

· Create an online resource for resolving support incidents.
· Search for like problems, then study their solutions for fast resolution of customer issues.
· Classify customer service issues for automated incident and problem reporting.

Problem Area

Once a support professional identifies a problem, the Problem Screen is used to capture a summary of the defect. The Problem Screen is then used by the support team to classify defects and find ways to resolve them. The Problem Screen allows users to:

· Record product defects and instructions on how to correct them.
· Prioritize product defects by tracking the frequency and severity of the problem.
· Identify the life cycle and status of a product defect.
Link documents to problems.

Proactive Support

Who says the support team has to sit back and wait for service inquiries? The support team can tap the marketing capabilities of Oncontact's customer relationship management (CRM) application to proactively communicate with specific groups of customers. Support professionals can target the exact group of customers they need to contact by running queries based on the appropriate support criteria.

Example 1: Support News
The support team wants to send out a newsletter, but only wants those customers with open support issues to receive it. The support team runs a query to identify all the customers with open support issues, then prints labels to mail the newsletter with.

Example 2: Problem Solving
A computer software company is using CMS. The support team learns of a bug in Software X. The support team queries Oncontact's CRM application to find every organization using Software X, then sends a blast email to notify those customers that they need to perform an upgrade to banish the bug.

Contract Tracking

The contract screen lets users house an unlimited number of contracts within Oncontact's customer relationship management (CRM) software, enabling them to:

· File contracts electronically for convenient sorting and classification
· Automatically calculate the status of each contract
· Sort contracts by expiration and solicit renewals
· Move data to third-party applications for billing
· Assign multiple products to a single contract

Return Merchandise Authorization (RMA)

The ability to track returned merchandise within Oncontact's customer relationship management (CRM) application gives users more insight into a customer's buying habits. The RMA screen lets users:

· Investigate the factors that caused the return in an effort to prevent future returns
· Manage each step of the return process, from receiving to testing to accounting
· Export data to financial applications for crediting
· Completely customize screens to match specific RMA requirements

Mirror Your Business Model

Oncontact's customer relationship management (CRM) system puts you in the driver's seat. After all, you know what works best for your business. Using the Agent Designer, part of the standard CRM toolkit, you can imbed your business rules so the system works exactly how your business does. Here's an example of how it works for your customer service team:

Your company sells computer software. Your customers rely on that software throughout the day for various business tasks, so they need immediate access to your support team. To ensure that every customer issue is addressed promptly, you customized Oncontact's CRM application to escalate support incidents to the support manager if not resolved within an hour.

Customer A calls the help desk and explains the difficulty he's having with the software. The help desk rep tells Customer A that she'll find a solution and call him back in 45 minutes. After she hangs up, she gets preoccupied with another case. An hour passes and the CRM application detects that Customer A has not received a response. Oncontact's CRM system sends an email to the support manager notifying her that Customer A needs help right away. The manager can see that all the help desk reps are busy with other customers, so she calls Customer A and resolves his issue.

Financial Management Integration Module

The Financial Management Integration module bridges the gap between the sales, marketing and customer service efforts associated with your front office and the financial management functions handled by your back office. The link provides your front office team with critical financial data, like past invoice content, year-to-date purchases, scheduled payment dates and credit pricing terms.
Access to combined front and back office data increases the productivity of your sales force, the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns and the quality of your customer service. The integrated solution provides unlimited access to activity history, sales history and pipeline analysis information that allows you to run sophisticated queries that pinpoint the exact data you need. The query results can then be used to generate detailed sales forecasts, launch targeted marketing campaigns or access billing information to respond to customer inquiries.

As an added bonus, information only has to be entered in one system. Data entered in Oncontact's CRM application can be piped into the financial management system and vice versa.