Urgency is the name of the game when it comes to Salesforce case management in Service Cloud. Regardless of your role, industry, or how your team uses Salesforce cases, the initial response time to customers’ problems is the most crucial factor at play. Hence the need for case teams to demonstrate attention to detail and immediate understanding of the problem, or else escalate unanswered question to the right agent, case owner, or case team quickly.
After all, from the perspective of a support manager, case management is just like any other obstacle we face that depends on the response of another person: it’s all about managing expectations quickly and accurately.
But you don’t have to take our word for it, our team sat down with Tiffany Joseph, a seasoned Salesforce Service Cloud consultant at Uptima with over a decade of experience in case management.
In this article you’ll find tips and advice on Salesforce Case Management best practices from this 6x certified Salesforce consultant’s perspective.
“When you’re talking about sales, you’re always trying to make the sales cycle shorter. It’s the same way with Service Cloud, because when you’re focused on case management, when you’re dealing with customer issues, you’re always trying to make sure your response happens in the shortest period of time.”
Service channels start and end with the service console
Any Salesforce case management system depends on having a solid foundation: a customer portal, assignment rules, escalation rules, a centralized platform to manage cases and so on.
Without an optimized interface and dashboard for your support agents, it can be challenging to follow case status, case ownership, or prioritize based on case scoring.
This is where a Salesforce consultant like Tiffany excels: helping businesses launch their own Salesforce Service Cloud implementation with the right tools for the job.
A Salesforce case object is used to represent any ticket submitted through a customer portal or via web form that represents a problem facing customers or clients, as well as internal teams and departments. The object type is generally housed in Salesforce Service Cloud where each case record is then shared with the appropriate case team. Often (though not always) cases are created via email-to-case settings in Salesforce.
How are Salesforce cases typically used?
IT departments might run a Salesforce case management system for equipment requests, vetting software purchases, etc. Perhaps they would be sent a notification email when an internal team submits a ticket or they’d have automated rules to filter out the same case, a closed case, or prevent them from reopening cases that had already been resolved.
Customers might email support who would then have access to a complete view of that customer in Salesforce in order to best respond to the issue. The case might include related records, a previous solution provided, relevant details etc.
Visitors to your website might submit questions or queries about your product that can be tracked as cases. In this case (pun intended), the case object might have less information and urgency than the previous two examples, so it would likely be a lower priority for case teams.
According to Tiffany, Salesforce case management helps the most when the object is used a ticketing system, and not for any other use case.
“A lot of companies take the case objects and they use it for something else. But this is a core functionality of Service Cloud. Don’t use it outside of what it was intended for. You can customize virtually anything in Salesforce, but this is one of the things that you want to treat as sacred.”
Which Salesforce modules are meant for case management?
Successful case management depends on your team being able to assign cases to the appropriate agents, prioritizing them quickly, and ensuring consistent follow-up and resolution.
Whether you’re a medium-sized business or a larger enterprise organization with a Salesforce implementation, there are a suite of cloud-based applications that can be tailored to support cases fairly readily.
Salesforce Service Cloud
Service Cloud is the flagship support tool for Salesforce users. It’s designed with tools ready to support case management, knowledge management, cross-channel communication, self-service portals, and field service management. At its core, the product enables businesses to track customer interactions, automate workflows, and measure KPIs.
Salesforce Field Service
Field Service is a Service Cloud add-on for businesses with technicians and teams who operate on-site or on-location. It provides tools for scheduling, dispatching, work order management, asset tracking, inventory management, and mobile workforce enablement.
For ITSM use cases, there’s Salesforce’s Customer Service Incident Management (CSIM) module for Service Cloud. It’s designed to help teams handle incident identification, tracking, communication, and resolution. CSIM helps provide businesses with a unified workspace for managing incidents and cases related to customer data.
4 key considerations for successful Salesforce case management
Case management in Salesforce isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution. Two businesses can implement the same Salesforce products and still use them in completely different ways for completely different ends. Here are some of the key considerations of a successful case management process:
Prioritize quick resolution times
Quick resolution times are critical to maintaining high levels of customer satisfaction. Consider applying automation (or a Salesforce integration) to your workflow to speed up case prioritization (through scoring, for example).
Setting the right expectations for customers (without unwanted surprises) goes a long way towards ensuring a positive experience for everyone. So if a customer sends a ticket, your team should respond promptly and be upfront about when and how their issue will be resolved.
Manage the case lifecycle carefully
Effective case management requires assigning cases to the appropriate agents, prioritizing them based on urgency, and ensuring consistent follow-up and resolution. Be sure your team leads understand the lifecycle of the average case inside out. Don’t hesitate to enroll your colleagues in a few Trailhead courses or watching Salesforce webinars to learn the basics from experienced pros.
Salesforce case management is the backbone of an effective customer service strategy that starts with understanding the case lifecycle. But, you can’t manage those cases without the right processes in place. In other words, a tool is only as good as the hands holding it. So, once you’ve chosen your selection of modules, apps and tools, begun to learn the basics, and better understand how to triage cases, it’s time to establish a clear process for case management.
Plan out a clear process for your organization to best serve customers with careful attention to how you create case, response time, and time to a closed case.
Throughout Tiffany’s career, she’s been adamant about the fact that if your company uses Service Cloud, then you likely understand the importance of keeping customers happy. Or, as she puts it:
“You put a lot of effort into acquiring your customers, but your efforts don’t stop there. Maintaining and supporting that relationship is key. It’s fundamental to your business’s success, today more than ever. Word of mouth and referrals sell, especially in B2B if your product starts at a higher price point. A happy customer is a happy champion for your brand.”
5 best practices for optimizing your Salesforce Case Management system
Respect the core functionality
As mentioned above, if you’re using case objects from the Salesforce platform, use them as intended. Cases are best used to represent tickets, customer complaints, customer inquiries and as a pre-req for a work orders. If you’re planning on using cases for something else, stop and add a new custom object instead.
Empower internal teams with the tools they already use
The Salesforce platform is highly versatile and full of functionality that not even the experts always know about. We asked Tiffany which out-of-the-box functions or features in Service Cloud are most often overlooked:
“There are a lot of tools that aren’t admin configurable that users never look at: macros, action plans, just the regular actions available on the page. There are so many ways users can increase their productivity. Automation tools, for example, can be used without an admin and that often gets overlooked. Consultants tend to ignore those functions because they never use them – their focus is always on launching the product and setting up functions that require configuration.”
The best way to improve performance over time is by looking back for trends, especially from your best case teams. Or as Tiffany says: “You can get so many insights from your reporting, especially by paying attention to your high performers. What are they doing to be a high performer? Look at their behaviour and actions. Leverage that and use it to support and raise up the entire team. Turn your best people into leaders!”
Another issue Tiffany has experienced first-hand is the lack of two-way communication. Support teams are overloaded with tickets, and it can feel as though there’s no time to stop and reflect on how to work better with a focus only on getting work done.
“I’m going to say something controversial here. Most call center teams or case management teams, particularly small businesses are led by women in middle management positions who leadership doesn’t listen to. Compound that with service teams getting smaller budgets than sales and it’s no wonder they’re overloaded. It’s a less flashy job that doesn’t get as much credit as the sales team, but they support the business financially almost as much. Pay attention to the woman in the room because she always knows what’s up.”
Maintain clear communication channels between L1 and L2 teams
Tiffany further highlighted the need for open channels of communication between the teams receiving tickets and the teams resolving them. So do your best to mitigate tension between teams, reduce toxicity where you can, and encourage a team-first attitude.
“So let’s imagine a case is created and then probably triaged by an L-1 team to review and assess. Once the work order goes ahead, they start scheduling someone to go on site or address the ticket virtually. That’s a tier two team. They’re highly specialized, better trained; it could be an escalation team or a team with more experience.
So L-1 is the go-between for the customer and L-2. They send information back and forth, or the customer is just escalated to the second tier. It depends on how the org is set up. But that dynamic is so important. It needs to be flawless to work properly.”
Service Cloud screen flows, action plans and macros
Salesforce case management helps with centralizing customer interactions (keeping everything in one place) so that nothing gets missed. It’s also useful to simplify the support process for internal case teams. Setting up a few automated rules or incorporating macros and action plans makes collaboration easier, and delivers results to customers faster.
Screen Flows
Screen flows let your agents triage customers faster with a simplified intake process that asks the right questions upfront. Here’s a more in-depth explanation of Screen Flows and how to use them from Salesforce admin evangelist, Jennifer Lee.
In short, service agents’ screen flows both collect data and can be used to display data to customers. It’s all about helping the support team or technical support agent to deliver consistent and high-quality service.
Macros
Salesforce macros work like shortcuts for the support team to get through single-click tasks faster. Agents can use them to send emails from a template, update cases, perform repetitive tasks and a lot more. This saves valuable time, eliminates manual errors, and ensures a consistent approach to customer interactions.
Action plans allow you to create templates for common processes. That might include onboarding a new client or handling an application of some kind. An action plan would then allow you to automate those sequences. After that, it’s easy to assign tasks, sets deadlines, approve budget requests, etc. You can even set up reports quickly to monitor real-time progress.
Action plans are like templates that users can create to automate sequences of tasks, think: follow-up calls, cadences in both case management and sales scenarios, and so on. They’re extremely useful.
Functionality: Executes a predefined set of instructions, such as sending an email, updating a field, or logging a call.
Use Cases: Responding to common inquiries, updating case statuses, performing data entry tasks.
Benefits: Saves time on redundant tasks, reduces human error, ensures consistency, and improves agent productivity.
Automation and analytics for your case management system
Process Builder and Auto Response Rules
Salesforce’s Process Builder and auto-response rules are essential for automating the case management process in Salesforce. Process Builder allows users to create complex automation without code, making it easier to trigger actions based on specific criteria.
Auto-response rules can automatically acknowledge customer inquiries, enhancing communication and setting clear expectations for resolution.
Monitoring case escalation
Setting up an automation to help monitor case escalation is critical for gaining immediate insights into support operations. Tracking interaction times and analyzing performance metrics helps companies identify areas for improvement and enhance case management strategies.
Salesforce’s reporting tools enable businesses to monitor key metrics like average handle time and customer satisfaction. This helps teams make data-driven decisions to improve customer support. Here’s how to set up a rule to monitor case escalation in Service Cloud.
Salesforce is extremely customizable. It’s like a big toolbox with many different tools to achieve the same goal. And you really want to make sure that you’re using the right tool at the right time, so that you’re efficient and you can scale… And you’re not causing problems for your team down the road.
Embrace these strategies to transform your customer service and build stronger, more loyal customer relationships. And of course, here are some final thoughts from Tiffany for teams working in Service Cloud:
When you’re talking about sales, you’re talking about forecasting, hitting sales goals or targets, tracking regions and products… But when it comes to Service Cloud, you’re looking at a story that comes after all of that. You need to be able to support the product your team just sold. How do you do that? By supporting the people serving your customer’s needs. Your sales team is there to bring in new customers, the support team is there to help you keep them.
Ready to integrate your service workflows with the rest of your stack?
Salesforce Service Cloud is a powerful tool in its own right with unique strengths and weaknesses. But once you’ve completed your implementation, what happens if you need to expand your tool stack? The cost of third party consulting services is often more than the IT department’s budget can afford.
Luckily, there are secure alternatives to syncing Salesforce objects and records with other tools – or even other Salesforce objects.
Unito is a 2-way integration platform that turns any standard or custom Salesforce object into items in 50+ leading apps. That includes tasks, tickets, issues, calendar events, contacts, records, spreadsheet rows, and other Salesforce objects.
Best of all? It’s no-code, yet fully configurable so anyone on your team can create a flow in minutes flat. That means you don’t have to be an engineer or understand script (although it helps!) to start integrating immediately. Here’s our documentation for Salesforce integrations.
Ready to sync Service Cloud with the rest of your stack?
A case in Salesforce is essentially a record that helps you manage and track customer issues or inquiries, giving you a clear overview of all interactions. It’s a vital tool for providing excellent customer support.
How does Email-to-Case work in Salesforce?
Email-to-Case in Salesforce simplifies your workflow by automatically turning incoming emails from customers into case records, allowing for quicker responses and better management of customer issues.
What are the key features of Salesforce case management?
Salesforce case management runs at its best when your organization makes use of automation and categorization. Tools like the Service Console and Process Builder further enhance your team’s responsiveness.
How can businesses prioritize cases in Salesforce?
To effectively prioritize cases in Salesforce, implement scoring systems, use flags, and set up automation rules. These are simple, yet well-practiced processes among service teams to put the most important tickets up front.
Why is merging duplicate cases important in Salesforce?
Merging duplicate cases is crucial because it maintains data integrity and prevents confusion, ensuring that your support team doesn’t mistakenly reach out to the same customer multiple times.
How can I improve my customer service strategy?
Even though each Salesforce organization’s use cases will be slightly different, there are clear similarities across any case lifecycle: the customer or user sends a ticket, the support team receives customer activity alerts, your tools collect cases, support emails provide options for self-service, support managers or automated workflows assign cases with relevant information to each agent or other departments, agents then resolve cases, etc.
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