Email to Case automation involves converting inbound emails received at your companies support or sales mailbox directly in to a support ticket or case in CRM.
Now the first question that comes to mind is why we need to automate the conversion of email to case? The traditional approach in CRM would be:
- Email is received at support mailbox. The Service agent retrieves the mail and adds it to CRM either by manually creating a new case and linking it to this email or converting to a case using "Convert To" option available in Outlook.
- Agent then searches the customer database in CRM (accounts and contacts) to see if senders email address matches with either of email fields. Please note that in total there are three email address fields in account and three in contacts. If a match is found then the new case is linked to the customer.
- Agent then sets case origin, enters case title & description and then adds the new case to the support queue. Further a new case notification can be sent to the customer with the case id.
This would easily involve 10-15 clicks per new case that is being created. Automating this process will result in an instant ROI!!!
Following are some of the benefits:
- Increased Agent productivity
- Increase ROI by reducing number of clicks per response
- Customers receive better service
- Improved and consistent support process
This functionality can be built by a CRM administrator using CRM workflows. However there are various limitations in this out-of-the-box approach. Some of them are as below:
- Workflows cannot directly search the customer database to find out if the email sender is actually a customer.
- Spam and auto-response emails would result in lot of junk cases being created in system. Also if an auto-response has been added then there is a possibly of going in to an infinite loop of case creation and email notification.
- An email received regarding an existing case with slightly modified subject line will result in an incorrect creation of new case. The desired functionality would have been to link this email with the existing open case.
Support Queue: Email to Case Premium can monitor multiple mailboxes creating tickets or cases in CRM automatically whenever emails are received.
Exclusion \ Inclusion Configurator: Unwanted case creation can be avoided by excluding emails received from specific domain and email addresses. Further email loop protection settings will also allow exclusion of auto-responded emails. (There is also a provision to over-ride the exclusion criteria for certain user-scenarios)
Case Creator: Case record is created with case-fields automatically populated from email as well as fields that have been configured with default values. Some of the fields that could be auto-populated are: case title, description, origin, subject, etc.
Case Linker: Case record is linked with either contacts or accounts based on the settings. If no match is found then the case could also be linked to a dummy account or dummy contact.
If the email is regarding an existing case then the search algorithm can also search for case ID in the subject line (all of this is configurable).
Auto-Response Management: Automatic email notifications (both internal and external) could be sent on case creation based on the email template selected. Further there is an additional functionality to add direct URL for case record in CRM (this would allow CRM users to directly browse to the case record in CRM).
Below are some of the features:
- Supports multiple queues
- Automatic linking to Contact or Account
- Email spam protection
- Email loop protection
- Email domain address exclusion
- Supports HTML email
- 100% Native - works from within CRM
- Multiple Email Templates with additional functionality to add direct links to CRM record
- Fully configurable
- Can be extended based on individual requirements
CRM Dynamics is great platform to build CRM solutions for small business to enterprise organization. However to enhance the platform, add-ons from different partners provide a great way to improve the user experience and improve productivity. Check out the various add-ons that you can purchase from our online store:
- Record Clone
- Auto Number
- Report Scheduler (for online and on-premise)
- EmailToCase Premium