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Using the Customer Expectations Manager

Managing customer expectations around the length of time it takes to complete their requests is crucial in maintaining customer satisfaction. Although many financial transactions complete in seconds, a number of key relationship—enhancing tasks require lead time of one or more days to complete. For example:

• Bank check deposits may not be available for immediate withdrawal and are subject to clearing.
• Credit and insurance applications typically undergo an underwriting process where the application is evaluated for its creditworthiness, risk profile, and other factors that go into approval and pricing. Fast turnaround is a competitive differentiator.
• Healthcare service complaints and grievances are handled through a structured review and appeals process. In many jurisdictions, the processing of the complaints and grievances must meet regulatory standards.

The Siebel Customer Expectations Manager (CEM) provides the ability to use historical estimates of task completion times to aid the customer service representative in setting expectations for service completion. It is most useful in situations where a standardized process is being executed, and there is a need to estimate the expected completion date. Siebel CEM has the following two key features:

• Ability for an administrator to input the factors governing the time to complete task.
• A run-time engine that sets Due Date and Expected Close Date for the enabled objects.

NOTE:  For CEM versus Agreements/Entitlement Metrics, it is possible to establish an agreement for an account that includes entitlements mandating the completion of Service Requests within specified entitlement metrics. When these are setup, and the user navigates to the Service screen, they see a Verify button. Clicking this button invokes the calculation of an Agent Committed Time. The entitlement metrics will calculate a contracted due date. In contrast, CEM calculates an estimated completion time or due date based on how long a process historically takes to complete. In cases where a service agreement is in place, the contracted dates take precedence.