The Microsoft Download's center now has a BING search box at the top of the screen making it easier to find exactly what you are looking for.
If you are not sure if you have all the tools you need for Dynamics CRM take a peek here
Microsoft Dynamics CRM has a fairly detailed system around capturing and tracking knowledge base articles and knowledge in general; however, when talking about this feature in the field I have found people want to "upload" a word document or who might not want to "change".
The key with the Dynamics CRM KBA is that you have a process for filtering good "will be useful for a long time" knowledge from "every bit of detail" that might cross a support person's desk.
The product wants a human to think about what they are putting into the KBA and the product has a "draft, review and publish" feature for management as well.
I have found that even at the smallest firms this systematic approach can increase their ability to offer high quality and extremely efficient support. After just a few months, junior resources can look to the KBA as opposed to using up valuable human bandwidth when they are first researching a problem and as any of us who have managed a support department know, 80% of all questions are redundant.
Teach your team to share what they know will be asked again with a simple process and let the noise go. Then teach your resources to leverage the internal Search tools.
The Process:
From Microsoft Dynamics CRM,
Choose Service,
Choose Knowledge Base,
Create a new Item
1. Create a title
2. Add some key words
3. Type the "Question" or "Problem Addressed"
4. Cut and Paste in the solution (most likely from an e-mail that you already sent to the client)
Total Time = 5 minutes
It is all habit, good management and process
Yesterday I used advanced find to create a filtered list of a subset of our clients. I then realized that I really only wanted to send a letter to a selected few of these and as such I quickly used CNTRL click to highlight each of the Accounts I was interested in.
Using the menu item on the Outlook client, CRM Mail Merge, I proceeded to create a new letter in Microsoft Word which merged in key account and contact information.
Wow, that was easy and one of the tasks on my todo list was completed.
For more information on utlizing Microsoft Dynamics CRM mail merge click here or Here is more.
The tracking of tasks, activities, parts, and a variety of offerings is a core offering within Dynamics CRM. This core feature does not necessarily have to be classified as a sales function, service function or marketing function. This core need to "track" is a deep embedded need met by Relationship Management Software and met extremely well with Microsoft Dynamics Customer Relationship Management Software.
If you take your thoughts to another level realize that Microsoft Dynamics CRM also synchronizes the internal task list (open activities) with Outlook tasks so those key items that you personally need to get done and track, click right in.
Check off a task in Outlook, and it completes the activity in CRM. This completed activity (task in this case) becomes part of that specific client and/or user's historical record.
Now if Tasks are Activities why is Microsoft Dynamics CRM not using the term task? They do use the word task (as a category of Activity) An ACTIVITY can be a task or it can also be a phone call, an appointment, a service call or an e-mail.
Dynamics CRM has a very deep offering around support and yet it definitely needs to be bundled with some thought. Each and every support department has a specific style. Some departments are very pro-active calling and anticipating every need with regards to services and others are reactive. Customers call and the immediate crisis of the day needs to be solved AND tracked. You also have departments which are a mix of both.
For the pro-active services the Microsoft Dynamcis CRM Scheduling functionality is a life saver. What I have seen however is a frustration because companies do not realize that they need to take time to originally configure it. This includes adding what services will be scheduled, who will be scheduled, what each person's working calendar looks like and more. You see if you setup an individuals calendar than the scheduling module can prevent that person from being scheduled in conflict or during time when an individual is not in the office. On the other hand if you do not take the time to learn about the scheduling component or if you try to hack through the setup in 10 minutes then you just generate confusion and misunderstanding.
When it comes to scheduling take a few extra minutes to read a chapter or set aside some time during your install to only focus on utilization of the scheduling component.
When it comes to reactive support the most common question is how do I capture time? For any given ticket that is created you can have a long list of activities that you perform. Time is captured on the activity record. The activity record has a start time and an end time and a duration time field.
If you do not want to use activities or if you do not want to use tickets (both are optional) then these are business process thoughts. Decide on your business process with a knowledgable CRM resource. You can then move forward quickly with utilizing Dynamics CRM to capture and track not only all the activities associated with any given ticket/case but also all the time invested.
