Siebel Partner Relationship Management Administration Guide > Managing Service >

Managing Partners' Service Requests

Partners often encounter situations in which they need assistance from the brand owner because they have questions about the partnership, requests for marketing collateral, questions about commission payments, or other questions.

Your partners can use the Self-Service screen in the Siebel Partner Portal to log service requests, if they have questions about the partnership, questions about using Siebel PRM software, or any other questions or needs that require personal service.

To reduce the number of service requests you receive, you can create a repository of FAQs, solutions, and SmartScripts to help partners solve their own problems without logging service requests. These will be covered in Using Solutions and SmartScripts to Help Partners Solve Problems.

NOTE:  Be sure to tell your partners to use the Self-Service screen of the Siebel Partner Portal to log their own service requests. The Service screen is used to log customer service requests.

Assigning Service Requests

Your company's service requests are listed in the Siebel Partner Manager and other Siebel applications in the All Service Requests view of the Service screen. As they are received, each request should be assigned to the appropriate service agent. After the service agents resolve service requests, they change their status to Closed.

Service requests may be assigned in two ways:

• Assignment Manager. You can set up Siebel Assignment Manager to assign service requests to the appropriate service agent at your company using criteria such as expertise, availability, and workload.
• Manual Assignment. Service requests logged by the partner are displayed in the All Service Requests view in the Siebel Partner Manager. An employee at the brand owner company with access to this view can assign the service requests manually to the appropriate service agent.

For more information about Siebel Assignment Manager, see Siebel Assignment Manager Administration Guide.

For more information about working with service requests, see Siebel Call Center User Guide, Siebel eService Administration Guide, and Applications Administration Guide.

Business Example Using Partner Self-Service

The following example shows how a partner might use a service request to get marketing materials.

One of your partners wants to organize a marketing event such as an executive seminar about partner relationship management. It needs to get appropriate marketing material from you for this event, where it will display both your brand name and its own brand name.

The Partner logs a service request for the marketing materials through the Self-Service screen in the Siebel Partner Portal.

The service request is routed to the appropriate person at the brand owner company by Assignment Manager, or it is assigned manually by the person responsible for assigning service requests at the brand owner company.

The service agent fulfilling the service request follows up by finding the appropriate marketing material and routing it to the partner.