Tracking Service Requests in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011

  • 1/15/2011

Key Points

  • A case represents any service request or support incident for a customer in Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Customer service teams can use cases to manage customer requests and problems.

  • Customer service managers can analyze case data to identify frequently occurring customer issues, improve product or service offerings, and streamline the time it takes service representatives to resolve issues.

  • By default, Microsoft Dynamics CRM requires that a case be assigned a Subject value. The subject tree allows you to categorize sales and support records in Microsoft Dynamics CRM and should be configured by a system administrator.

  • Follow-up activities ensure that steps are taken to resolve a case. A follow-up activity might be a simple task to send a catalog or update a customer’s address, or it could be more involved, such as a series of phone calls with the customer, service appointments, or research tasks.

  • By tracking activities to a case, customer service managers can add the duration of each completed activity to the total time spent on the case. This total is automatically calculated in the Resolve Case dialog box.

  • Maintaining the status value of each case accurately is important to ensure that new issues are addressed in a timely manner and resolved as quickly as possible.

  • Cases can be marked as Resolved or Canceled to remove them from the active case list. Updating a case to Resolved or Canceled status makes the case read-only in Microsoft Dynamics CRM; however, cases with these statuses can be reactivated as needed—for example, if the customer reports the problem again or if additional edits to the case are necessary.