How to Use Case Management

This topic provides an overview of how an organization might use the functionality provided by the Case Management application. Each step below links to additional topics where applicable.

1. Prior to using the application to track customer interactions and cases, an organization defines its Case Management implementation. This includes:
   
   • Collecting information about the types of cases it processes. Once defined, an administrator creates metadata records as necessary in Aptify to track these options.
     • The Case Management application includes a number of services whose records populate drop-down lists on a Cases form. These services, such as Case Categories Form and Case Report Methods Form, are described in About the Campaign Management Forms.
        
   • Designing the standard workflow for case resolutions. Once defined, a developer creates process flows in Aptify to automate aspects of this workflow.
     • The Case Management application includes two sample process flows to illustrate how this functionality can be used to automatically send messages when cases are created and assigned. See Sending an Automatic Notification to Customers and Primary Assignees for more information.
     • Developers should refer to Developing Process Flows and Managing Process Pipelines for information on working with Process Flows.
        
2. Once Case Management has been implemented for an organization, customer service personnel can begin creating cases when customers contact the organization and assigning cases to employees for resolution.
   
   • Users can create cases using the New Case wizard see Creating Cases from the Wizard or manually from the Cases service see Creating Cases from the Service.
      
3. Employees work on assigned cases following the workflow model defined by the organization (using Contact Logs, Tasks, and Process Flows). 
4. If the problem or request reported by a customer is applicable to other customers as well, an employee can create an Issues record to track the resolution to that general problem or request.
   
   • See Creating Issues for information on creating issues. See Specifying Related Issues for information on linking issues to cases.
      
5. When an employee resolves an issue, information about the resolution can be specified in the Issues record, and the Issues record can be closed.
   
   •  See Processing and Closing Issues.
      
6. When a case is complete, a manager reviews the results if necessary. Then, an employee closes the case. If applicable, an organization can send out customer satisfaction surveys and the results can be tracked directly on a Cases record.
   
   • See Closing Cases and Tracking Customer Satisfaction.
      
7. Periodically, management can generate reports to analyze and summarize case response time, case costs, customer satisfaction, and issue information.
   • See Reviewing Case Statistics and About the Issue Service Reports for more information on analyzing case results and issues.

Related topics

• About the Case Management Dashboard
• Understanding the Customer Support User Role-based Profile
• About the Case Management Services