Enhancing Customer Service with Cases

Cases are the foundation of the customer service experience in Salesforce. A customer can open a case to report an issue or ask a question. Cases are connected to a contact and the account related to that contact to show the person and the business that originated the case. While Service Cloud includes more robust case functionality, Sales Cloud includes the basic functionality for cases. These Sales Cloud features include creating a case, escalation rules, Web-to-Case, and Email-to-Case. This basic functionality supports sales operations that want to track the customer service experience but do not have a dedicated customer service department. Service Cloud includes add-ons and extended functionality that does not come with Sales Cloud. Service Cloud includes modules such as entitlements, a knowledge base, and a service console. These modules are meant for full customer service teams.

In this chapter, we will cover the basic case functionality...

Technical requirements

For this chapter, make sure to log in to your development org and follow along.

Introducing cases

A case is a file that contains all interactions between a customer and a company from the problem description (or complaint) to its resolution. A case may contain several back-and-forth questions and responses.

Business use case

You are a customer service rep at XYZ Widgets. You get a call about a mechanical issue from one of your customers. You will need to create a case to log the issue. We will look at how to deal with this use case, and then explore how to create escalation rules and how customers submit cases through the web, as well as through email, that may end up in your queue.

Creating a case

Let’s take a look at how to create a case in Salesforce and go through the fields included when creating a case.

In the following screenshot, I clicked on the Cases tab to start the process:

Figure 7.1: Creating a case by clicking on New under the Cases tab

Once I was on the Cases tab, I clicked on New. This took me to the case...

Understanding case status

The case status field drives the case life cycle. This field allows you to see where the case is at a point in time.

The following screenshot shows the options for case status. These values can be customized for the business use case, as needed:

Figure 7.7: Case Status dropdown in the Details section of a case

As you can see in the preceding screenshot, there are four case status values, as follows:

• New: The default status when a case is created.
• Working: The case is being actively worked on.
• Escalated: The case has been escalated to another department or a manager due to an issue not being resolved in a timely manner, or because of needing a different skillset to resolve the issue.
• Closed: The case has been resolved.

Now that we have created the case and seen how case status works, let’s dig a little deeper into case escalation in the following section.

Creating escalation rules

Escalation rules allow you to automatically reassign a case and/or notify a manager that there is an issue with a case and it may not be resolved in a timely manner. An example would be a technical issue that needs to be escalated to a more skilled technician. Another example may be if a customer asks in a comment or on a phone conversation for a case to be escalated to a manager for review. Escalation rules allow you to automatically escalate cases based on set criteria such as the number of hours the case is open and assign to who the case is escalated, as well as who to notify of the escalation. Let’s take a look at how to build escalation rules.

In the following screenshot, I clicked on the gear icon to start the process:

Figure 7.8: Clicking on Setup at the top-right of the screen

As you can see in the preceding screenshot, after clicking on the gear icon, I clicked on Setup to take me into the configuration section of Salesforce...

Using Web-to-Case to generate case capture forms

Very similar to Web-to-Lead, which we covered in Chapter 3, Creating and Managing Leads, Web-to-Case is an easy way to generate HTML code that you can drop into your website to create a case capture form. A case capture form lives outside of Salesforce but creates a case directly in Salesforce when the form is saved. This can be a page on your website or any other form where you would want the case to be automatically added to Salesforce. Let’s see how this is done.

In the following screenshot, I started typing web into the search bar. This brings up any items in Setup that contain these letters:

Figure 7.13: Reaching Web-to-Case by using the search bar

As you can see in the preceding screenshot, after clicking on Web-to-Case, it takes you into the section where you can set this up.

Note: This section is only available to users with the view setup and configuration permission.

In the following...

Setting up Email-to-Case

Whereas Web-to-Case allows you to capture a case submission through your website, Email-to-Case allows you to set up a specific email address that converts any email sent to that email address to a case. A good example of this is a support email. You may want to set up an email address such as [e-mail], to which your clients can send an email with an issue. Salesforce will take that email and create a case for the issue. All subsequent correspondence will be captured on that case until the case is resolved. Let’s take a look at how to set up Email-to-Case.

In the following screenshot, I started typing case into the search bar. This brings up any items in Setup that contain these letters:

Figure 7.16: Reaching Email-to-Case by using the search bar

As you can see in the preceding screenshot, I clicked on Email-to-Case to take me into the section where we can set this up.

Note: This section is only available...

Summary

From this chapter, we have learned what a case is and how it is used to keep customers satisfied by being the building block of customer service. We understood what the case Status field is used for and how the values drive the process. We also learned how to create a case and update the Case Status field. We learned what escalation rules are, and gained the skills to configure escalation rules for our Cases. We gained an understanding of the use cases for Web-to-Case and Email-to-Case, as well as the steps needed to set these two features up in Salesforce.

In the next chapter, we will look at reports and dashboards, and how having visibility into KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) helps drive the business!

Questions

1. What is the main use case for Salesforce Cases?
2. Why is case status so important?
3. What is an example of when a case may be escalated?
4. Why is there an order field on case Escalation rule entries?
5. Why do you need to generate HTML code for Web-to-Case?
6. What is a use case for using Email-to-Case?
7. What happens if you don't set up On-Demand Service?
8. Why is it important to verify your email address when setting up Email-to-Case?

Further reading

• Trailhead Module—Create and Manage Cases: https://trailhead.salesforce.com/en/content/learn/modules/nonprofit-client-services-with-service-cloud/create-and-manage-cases
• Trailhead Module—Create an Escalation Rule: https://trailhead.salesforce.com/en/content/learn/projects/create-a-process-for-managing-support-cases/create-an-escalation-rule
• Set up Web-to-Case: https://help.salesforce.com/articleView?id=setting_up_web-to-case.htm&type=5
• Set up Email-to-Case: https://help.salesforce.com/articleView?id=customizesupport_email.htm&type=5