Acumatica CRM offers many useful and practical features. In my last blogpost I discussed setting up Outlook Integration to allow those users who spend a lot of time in their mailboxes to get two-directional data flow with Acumatica. In this blogpost, I’ll explore another CRM feature in Case Management.
Cases, or service tickets, are used to record customer requests, problems, complaints, and other inquiries received by phone, email or any other medium. Case Management has 3 key elements: 1) Case Creation & Assignment to make sure every case has internal ownership, 2) Case Processing to move a case through a workflow to its resolution and 3) Case Billing to process and invoice billable works.
For companies already processing Leads in Acumatica CRM, the same concept of creating leads, assigning leads to owners, nurturing leads through activities and converting leads applies to Case Management.
While these are nice features to have, I want to focus on ‘why do you use case management’ and not ‘how to use these features’. After all, it must add value to a sales organization for case management to be relevant.
To determine if your organization can take advantage case management, ask yourself these questions:
1. Do we have a consistent process for handling cases?
2. Are we capturing/recording our case interactions consistently?
3. Can we recall customer interactions and know exactly what happened and when?
4. Are our processes providing the best possible service while remaining flexible and efficient?
5. Are our employees enabled to solve problems with a complete view of all the information they need to complete their work?
Implementing case management has the following benefits:
1. Improved customer continuity with a central repository of case information. This avoids information, notes, and customer conversations from being misplaced or lost. Dates and times for all activities are recorded along with interactions to ensure continuity.
2. Effective handoffs and collaboration. A single source of information that is accessible any time allows the organization to increase collaboration and reduce repeat work.
3. Consistency of data in a single interface. All activities, notes, updates, tasks and events for a case are handled in the system without toggling between emails, spreadsheets, etc.
4. Improved visibility and control. Dashboard and activity history can help the organization identify areas for improvement.
5. Increased productivity and adherence to processes. Integrated workflows and business processes make sure the appropriate data is collected, user is assigned, and process is followed.
Hope that helps, Get in touch if you have questions.
Eric.