MB2-714 – Introduction to Customer Service Concepts

This post is aimed at helping people preparing for the MB2-714 exam (Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2016 Customer Service).
Before “diving into” the specifics of various aspects of customer service its important to gain an understanding of the key service principles, entities involved and any associated terminology. If you have been working with CRM for any length of time these concepts should be pretty familiar but a bit of revision never hurt anyone!
The service module within CRM can be used to address multiple customer scenarios. Including customers reporting faults, scheduling service activities  and resolving issues. Or alternatively a customer may simply phone for some advice or guidance, in this scenario the use of the knowledge base may be required. These types of scenario can be supported by business process flows which help guide the operators, ensuring consistantency.
Before we dive deeper, lets quickly look at some key areas that make up the service offerings within Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2016;

Item	Description
Cases	Cases are the key entity used for servicing a customer, their basic usage is pretty straight forward but you will need to have an appreciation of several related topics. Including contracts, entitlements, service level and agreements.
Service Scheduling	The service scheduled module allows users to find qualified resources that are available to provide specific services to customers.
Knowledge Base	CRM 2016 has seen improvements in the knowledge basis to include a new approach to knowledge base articles.
Interactive Service Hub	The interactive service hub gives an enhanced user experience designed specifically to aid service agents.
Unified Service Desk	Unified Service Desk is a tool which brings together multiple technologies into a single interface. You can use USD to quickly create a “solution” which can help simplify the processes followed within high volume contact centres. (Regular readers of my blog might know I often write about this!)
FieldOne	FieldOne is a field service application that helps organizations with their field service management. It adds capabilities into CRM including work order creation and management, work order scheduling, mobile access for field agents, inventory management etc. (Regular readers of my blog might know I often write about this!)
Reporting	Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2016 supports an organisations reporting requirements by making use of dashboards, goals and Power BI.
Customer Surveys	Customer surveys are possible using the Voice of the Customer. This can be used to help obtain metrics on customer satisfaction levels following incidents of service.

It is important to understand the key record types applicable to servicing with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2016;

Item	Description
Customer Records	When the term customer is used this can refer to the “contact” or “account” records that require service.
Cases	Key record type in service management, each case represents a single incident of a service request.
Activities	Interactions between a business and their customers important enough to track, typically including phone calls, emails, tasks and appointments. Although beyond these other bespoke activities could also be created to reflect addition scenarios unique to a particular organization.
Resolution Activities	Activity type regarding resolved cases, these are a “special” activities type created when cases are resolved. And can later be used for reporting on service effectiveness.
Knowledge Base Articles	A knowledge base is a repository of informational articles used to help resolve cases.
Entitlements	Used to specify the amount of support services a customer is entitled, for example a new customer maybe entitled to 8 hours of phone support within the first three months of a contract. Entitlements include “entitlement channels” that further define how much support can be given by specific channels.
Service Level Agreements (SLA)	A service level agreement defines level of service that your organization agrees to offer a customer. This maybe for the time to respond to a service request and / or the time to resolve a request.
Queues	Queues are essentially lists, they offer a place to organize and store activities and cases waiting to be processed.
Subject Tree	Hierarchical list of subjects an organization can use to classify service cases and other records
Products	Products are defined in the product catalogue and can be sued to provides a detailed view of service events at a product level
Goals	Goals are used to establishes and tracks progress against target values for key performance indicators. They can be useful in sales situations for tracking progress towards to sales target but can also be used to measure service KPIs. (Key performance indicators)
Scheduling Module	Allows users to find available resources to provide services via service activities.

 Hopefully this post has given you an introduction into the concepts needed for the customer service certification (MB2-714). In my next post I will build on this and start to look at the more detailed aspects of cases and case management.