Here's my tips for setting up and using Cases.
This does not include using cases via Portal or Communities yet.
This also does not include any social media monitoring tools.
As much as you try to get people to only submit emails to your support@ or via your Support form on your website, it just does not work. People are going to email their favourite Sales Rep, Support Person, or The Boss directly. Or they are just going to whinge on Social Media. Also, people are going to add many support items in the one ticket, and they are going to respond to a closed case with a new open case. You need to deal with all of these scenarios. |
Things to help are:
Case Feed is going to be the only way to use Cases in the future, so if you are setting up Cases now, use Case Feeds.
No exceptions. If the person who normally handles cases is out sick for the day, an important case could get missed because it is owned by them.
With Case Queues there is only one place that new Cases exist.
This isn't my rule, it is Salesforce's rule.
If you are working on the Case, you are the owner of it.
This is a general rule and may be broken in special circumstances.
Yep. Leave Salesforce alone - and go and grab some paper.
I want a simple flowchart or a simple list of statements in the form of IF this THEN do this.
I need to know what your support process is before we even start looking at cases.
It does not need to be a fancy Visio or Online diagram like this one or this one with swim lanes.
etc.
The default Case settings page.
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Queues are a great way to manage Cases in the initial stage. See Case Queues.
Create the Queuehttps://help.salesforce.com/HTViewHelpDoc?id=setting_up_queues.htm&language=en_US To email all queue members, you need to set up an email address on your mail servers. My suggestion is to not check Send Email to Members. The emails go to everyone in the queue and you don't want to bombard people with emails. Add Users to the QueueIf you have lots of team members then set up Public Groups. https://help.salesforce.com/htviewhelpdoc?id=user_groups.htm&siteLang=en_US Otherwise, just add the users to the Queue. Remember to add this to your New Staff Onboarding Procedure document. |
Set up Email to Case. Unless you are a large organisation with an internal IT support team, you are going to use Email To Case On Demand. https://help.salesforce.com/HTViewHelpDoc?id=customizesupport_email.htm&language=en_US Email To Case On Demand allows for attachments up to 10MB. Enable Email to CaseSettingsNew Case EmailsMy suggestion is to not check Notify Case Owners on New Emails. It should be automatic that people log in and deal with new cases every day. The only time I would suggest this is if you have a very sporadic case load and don't need to check for new cases every day. See Case Queues. Thread IDCheck both of the checkboxes in When sending email from a case, insert Thread ID in the following sections: Yes, it can make your emails look a bit ugly, but it definitely helps in tracking return emails. Email RoutingDo you have different people that handle different cases? Do you have different email addresses that need to be created as Cases? (eg productasupport@ productbsupport@) SettingsSave Email HeadersCheck this unless you have very tight storage requirements on your Org. You never know when you are going to need it. And you can always uncheck it later. Accept Email FromDo you do internal support only? Then set up your domains in here. Task SettingsI really don't know who's stupid Idea this was to create a Task as well as a Case. So, you get an email, which you have to deal with, you deal with the case, then you deal with the task to say you have dealt with the case? WHY!!! Just don't set Create Task from Email. Save your sanity. PriorityI don't like the idea of auto setting a priority because then priority becomes meaningless. Case OriginSet to Email. Helpful to distinguish emails that come from the Web. See Web to Case. Verify your EmailOnce the routing settings are done then verify the email address. This means that someone has to receive the email and click on the link in the email. (annoying if you don't have access to that email account). OutlookIf you use Outlook (I'm sorry), then be able to create Cases from Outlook. Add the new Cases to the Queue you set up earlier. If you use Outlook for Mac (I'm really sorry), then you are out of luck. You will need to forward emails to the support@ email address. |
Assignment rules are very handy. Assign cases to different queues based on State or where the case came from.
You have limited options with email. You might try by pre-filling the subject when linking from your website, and then but how often do people overwrite it with their own subject. Assignment Rules also act as an Auto Responder and you can choose a different email template to send to people. I would set up Assignment Rules to start, rather than default settings in Support Settings, even if you only have one support team processing Cases, because then it is easy to just add others. |
You will need the flowchart you worked out earlier to do this.
This is only for non Case Feeds setup.
See Case Feeds
The ThreadID is used by Salesforce to link any existing emails to Cases that are emailed into the Case. If there is no ThreadID the case will be created as new, which is annoying because there is no Case Merge functionality except in a paid app. Use this formula to create the Thread ID https://success.salesforce.com/ideaView?id=087300000006trk
The biggest tip I can give for using Cases is to Respond to all emails from a System Address.
Depending on your business, and the way they use Cases, you may need to use Email to Case Premium, which has some extra features to handle Case Threads.
Quick Text is great, and it only works with Case Feeds.
https://help.salesforce.com/HTViewHelpDoc?id=case_interaction_using_quick_text.htm&language=en_US
See Knowledge
See also Portals, Self Service etc
https://success.salesforce.com/answers?id=90630000000h12ZAAQ
Email Loops
Using the Thread ID in emails helps ensure that email Subjects are not the same, so it knows which Case to attach the email to.