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Scenarios for Partner-Led Customer Service

There are two common scenarios where the partner responds to customer service requests:

Partner Receives Service Requests and Logs Them for Tracking Purposes

Partners may receive customer service requests directly and log them in the Siebel Partner Portal for tracking purposes. Then partners can use the Siebel Partner Portal to manage service requests within their own organization, and at the same time, give you visibility to these service requests so you can track how well your partners are serving customers.

In this scenario, the partner acts as service provider on behalf of the brand owner, with no intervention from the brand owner. When customers have a problem with the product, they contact the partner with which they have a relationship.

For example, if a partner is a dealer or a value-added reseller, customers who have made purchases from the partner would call the partner directly with service requests.

Using the Siebel Partner Portal, the partner company can enter customer service requests, assign these service requests to the appropriate service agents, and track the service requests as the service agents work on them. Using the Siebel Partner Manager, the channel manager at your company can also track the progress of the service requests at partner companies.

Partners have access to a subset of the service management functionality that you have in the Siebel Partner Manager. Partners can log service requests, add activities and attachments to service requests, and associate solutions from the knowledge base with service requests.

Partners can get help in researching service requests by using the Siebel Partner Portal Solutions screen to display frequently asked questions (FAQs) and their solutions and to display troubleshooting instructions, as discussed later in this chapter.

For more information about working with service requests, see the section on service requests in Siebel Call Center User Guide and Applications Administration Guide.

This scenario consists of the following steps:

Step 1: Partners log service requests

In this scenario, your partners enter service requests using the Siebel Partner Portal. The partner might get these service requests through its call center or through other customer contacts.

To enter a new service request through the Siebel Partner Portal

  1. In the Siebel Partner Portal, the partner navigates to the Service screen.

    2. From the Show drop-down list, My Customers' Service Requests is chosen by default.

  2. In the Service Requests list, the partner selects New Record from the menu to add a new record to that list.
  3. The partner enters information about the service request in the new record.
  4. Optionally, the partner entering the service request can assign it immediately by selecting a service agent in the Owner field, so the service request appears in the owner's My Service Requests view.

    5. If the service request is not assigned immediately, it will only be visible in the All Service Requests view. The employee responsible for managing the Service Request queue would have to assign it later, as described in the following section.

Step 2: Partner assigns service requests

If service requests are not assigned by the employee logging the service request, a partner employee would have the responsibility of managing the service request queue. This employee would regularly look at new service requests in the Siebel Partner Portal's All Customer Service Requests view, and would use the Owner field to assign each service request to the partner employee who is qualified to respond to it. The appropriate employee could be a service agent who contacts the customer by telephone or a field service agent who goes to the customer site.

The employee who manages the service request queue should have a responsibility that includes visibility to All Service Requests view. For more information about using responsibilities to control visibility to views and about the responsibilities available in the seed data, see the section about defining partner responsibilities in Setting Up Siebel PRM.

To assign a service request to a partner service agent

  1. In the Siebel Partner Portal, the partner navigates to the Service screen.
  2. From the Show drop-down list, the partner chooses All Customers' Service Requests.
  3. In the Service Requests list, the partner selects the service request to be assigned.
  4. In the More Info view tab, the partner clicks the select button of the Owner field.

    5. The Pick Service Request Owner dialog box appears.

  5. In the Pick Service Request Owner dialog box, the partner selects a partner employee to be added as the owner of the service request and clicks OK.
Step 3: Partners fulfill service requests

Partner service agents and field technicians who fulfill service requests would regularly navigate to the Siebel Partner Portal's Service screen and view the My Customers' Service Requests view. They would research and respond to new customer service requests.

Alternatively, they could be notified automatically by email whenever a new service request is assigned to them. The brand owner would set up Siebel Business Process Designer to send this email. For more information about Siebel Business Process Designer, see Siebel Business Process Designer Administration Guide.

When they finish working on a service request, they change the status to closed.

Step 4: Partner company managers track service requests

Managers at the partner company can use the Siebel Partner Portal to view the service requests that their direct reports own and track progress on them.

To view your report's service requests

  1. In the Siebel Partner Portal, the partner navigates to the Service screen.
  2. From the Show drop-down list, the partner chooses My Team's Customers' Service Requests.

    3. The service requests owned by this partner company manager's reports appear.

Step 5: The brand owner channel manager tracks service requests

Although your company does not develop or work on service requests in this scenario, your channel managers can view the service requests for the partner companies that they manage. This lets them track each partner company's progress in fulfilling service requests.

Optionally, you can also produce the Partner Operations report, which lists the service requests a partner is working on, as well as that partner's opportunities, accounts, and so on.

To view the service requests of a partner company

  1. In the Siebel Partner Manager, navigate to the Partner Operations screen.
  2. In the Partners list, select the partner company whose service requests you want to view.
  3. Click the Service Requests view tab.

    4. The partner's service requests appear.

Brand Owner Receives Service Requests and Assigns Them to the Partner

In this scenario, service requests are received and entered by the brand owner company, and assigned to specific partners.

This scenario would be appropriate, for example, if the brand owner runs a call center where customers call to report problems with products they purchased directly from the brand owner or through a reseller. The call center agents log the service requests, which then are assigned either automatically or manually to a partner with the appropriate skills to solve the customer's problem. The partner the service request was assigned to retrieves the service request through Siebel Partner Portal, and then assigns it either to a partner employee who is a service agent, who telephones the customer, or to a partner employee who is a field service technician, who visits the customer's house. After solving the problem, the service agent changes the service request's status to closed using the Siebel Partner Portal. A service manager at the brand owner company can track the status of service requests to monitor customer satisfaction.

For more information about working with service requests, see the section on service requests in Siebel Call Center User Guide and Applications Administration Guide.

This scenario consists of the following steps:

Step 1: The brand owner enters service requests

Your call center agents, field service representatives, or other employees who work with your customers receive service requests and enter the service requests in the Siebel application that they use, which may be Siebel Partner Manager, Siebel Call Center, Siebel Service, or Siebel Field Service. Because Siebel applications use the same database, these service requests will be visible to you in Siebel Partner Manager even if they are entered in Siebel Call Center, Siebel Service, or Siebel Field Service.

To enter a new service request

  1. Navigate to the Service screen.
  2. In the Service Requests list, click the menu button, then click New Record to add a new record to that list.
  3. Enter information about the service request in the new record.
  4. Assign the service request to a partner service agent, as described next.
Step 2: The brand owner assigns service requests to partners

Next, service requests are assigned to the appropriate partner. You can do this manually, but it is generally better to use Siebel Assignment Manager to assign the service request by creating rules based on geography, partners' skills, expertise in a specific product, language ability, territory, workload and availability, or other criteria.

For example, you might assign service requests from Spanish-speaking customers for one of your product lines to a partner company that has expertise in that product line and employees who speak Spanish.

You can set up Assignment Manager either to assign service requests to partner companies or to assign service requests to individuals, who may be service agents at the partner company or at your own company, depending on which agent is most qualified to deal with each service request.

You can assign service requests to partners in two ways:

It is usually difficult for you to keep track of the special skills of individual employees in partner companies, so it is more common to assign the service request to the partner company and have an employee there assign it to the service agent.

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

Step 3: Partners view and work on service request

After the service request is assigned, the partner employees work on it using the Siebel Partner Portal.

When service agents resolve a service request, they change its status to Closed.

To view a service request and change its status to Closed

  1. In the Siebel Partner Portal, the partner navigates to the Service screen.
  2. In the Service Requests list, the partner selects the service request.
  3. When the service request has been resolved, the partner selects Closed in the Status field.
Step 4: The brand owner tracks service requests

You can track your partner's progress on their service requests by displaying the service requests and viewing the status fields to see which service requests have been closed.

To track a partner's service requests

  1. In the Siebel Partner Manager, navigate to the Partner Operations screen.
  2. In the Partners list, select the partner company whose service requests you want to view.
  3. Click the Service Requests view tab.

    4. The partner's service requests appear.

  4. If you want to see more details about a service request, click its number in the Service Request list.

 Siebel Partner Relationship Management Administration Guide 
 Published: 18 April 2003