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Assignment Strategy for Service Organizations

In a service organization, service requests can often be resolved by the first customer service representative (CSR) who services the customer. However, when the request cannot be resolved, or when the service request is logged through the Internet, ownership must be transferred to a service representative who possesses the expertise to handle the request.

In this environment, it becomes critical to assign employees with the proper expertise and skills to service requests. Therefore, you should assign employees to objects because some employees possess specific skills that are different from those of other CSRs or field service engineers. When service representatives are on vacation, are promoted, or assume different responsibilities, work assigned to these employees must be reassigned based on the skills and workloads of other employees in the service organization.

Use the following strategy to develop assignment rules for your service organization:

• Determine the different assignment objects to be assigned.

  Service organizations need to assign ownership of a wide variety of tasks. These tasks may include service requests, activities, and accounts. In addition, a product development organization may need to assign ownership of product defects to engineers. For instance, you may decide to assign only service requests and product defects, because the associated activities are manually assigned by owners of those objects.

• Determine if multiple assignment objects are assigned using the same assignment rules.

  Multiple assignment objects can be assigned using the same assignment rules. For example, if you are assigning accounts and service requests in the same manner, you can use the same assignment rules by associating those rules with multiple assignment objects.

• For each assignment object, determine which of the objects is assigned using the same assignment rules.

  The Compare to Object comparison method allows you to assign different groups of objects using different rules. Typically, complex service environments assign different groups of service requests using different rules, such as segmenting the service requests based on service request priority.

• Determine the strategy for each group of objects to be assigned using the same assignment rules.

  Use the skill criteria to minimize the number of assignment rules. One assignment rule can match different candidates to various objects based on the object characteristics and candidate skills. To determine optimal assignment, determine the criteria that you want to evaluate for each candidate to make sure that the candidate possesses the proper skills to handle the task. This is the primary type of criteria you use most frequently for implementing assignments in a customer service environment. These criteria are defined using the Compare Object to Person comparison method in the Assignment Criteria view.

• Define workload rules.

  Determine the various methods of calculating workloads for employees in your organization. Each workload rule is associated with a specific assignment object. For instance, you can define two workload rules to calculate:

  • Open Service Requests for an employee
  • Critical Service Requests submitted through Siebel eService
• Define assignment rules, assignment criteria, assignment criteria values, and assignment workloads.

  Using the strategy, rules, and criteria discussed above, define the assignment rules and the corresponding detail using assignment administration views. In defining rules, criteria, values, and workloads, you can specify scores for each component. These scores are aggregated in determining the total score for each candidate of an assignment rule.

• Define candidates.

  Using the All People value in the Person Candidates Sources field or the assignment rule Employee Candidates view, define the eligible employees for assignment. You may further restrict or weight employees who have different skills using the Compare to Person assignment criteria.

• Define employee skills.

  After the assignment rules and the corresponding details have been defined, a customer service manager must update the employee skill information (such as product expertise, language skills, and geography). Assignment Manager uses these attributes when evaluating Compare to Person and Compare Object to Person assignment criteria.

• Release assignment rules.

  In the Assignment Rules view, click the Release button. You can then run Batch Assignment to assign objects affected by the assignment rules. For more information about Batch Assignment, see Running Assignment Manager in Batch Mode.

Figure 9 shows a sample assignment rule for assigning support representatives to a service request.

Figure 9.  Assignment Rule for a Service Organization

The assignment rule shown in Figure 9:

• Matches any service request:
  • For Pentium III 600 products
  • With a priority of High
• Uses two criteria with the following values:
  • Product Wildcard. A list of products that include the value CPU Pentium III 600
  • Service Request Priority. A list of service requests whose priority level is High