PeopleSoft CRM 9.1 Call Center Applications PeopleBook

Getting Started with PeopleSoft CRM Call Center Applications

This chapter discusses

PeopleSoft CRM call center applications.
PeopleSoft CRM call center business processes.
PeopleSoft CRM call center integrations.
PeopleSoft CRM call center applications implementation.

Note. This PeopleBook describes the PeopleSoft Customer Relationship Management (PeopleSoft CRM) call center applications: PeopleSoft Support, HelpDesk, HelpDesk for Human Resources, Service Center for Higher Education, Quality Management, and Change Management. Although these applications differ in ways that optimize them for their specific purposes, they all share the same basic PeopleSoft architecture.

PeopleSoft CRM Call Center Applications Overview

PeopleSoft CRM 9.1 call center applications provide a collaborative framework for streamlining employee help desk and customer support operations. Through a standard web browser, agents can access workforce, customer, and enterprise information. When employees or customers use the PeopleSoft employee or customer portal with PeopleSoft CRM self-services applications, they can access information that can help them solve their problems online without intervention from an agent.

PeopleSoft CRM offers six distinct applications to provide complete support management for your internal and external customers:

PeopleSoft Support enables you to manage your customer support operations.
PeopleSoft HelpDesk enables you to manage your workforce support operations.
PeopleSoft HelpDesk for Human Resources enables you to manage employee human resources inquiries and issues.
PeopleSoft Service Center for Higher Education enables you to manage constituent and staff inquiries and issues.
PeopleSoft Quality Management enables you to manage information related to product defects, enhancement requests, and resolutions (fixes).
PeopleSoft Change Management enables you to effectively manage change requests.

Note. For PeopleSoft Support, HelpDesk and HelpDesk for Human Resources, there are two types of self-service applications: one for employees (HelpDesk) and one for customers (Support).

These applications provide complete solutions for tracking and resolving problems and change requests. Together, they provide end-to-end management of all customer and workforce support issues. Because the applications use the same technology foundation, an organization that uses more than one can leverage information technology resources and implementation processes across applications.

Each application provides functionality tailored to its unique audience. Cases are tracked based on data that is appropriate to the specific application. HelpDesk cases are tracked by employee, department, and other data relevant to internal cases. Support cases are tracked by customer, contact, and other data relevant to external customers. Analyst Service Center (Service Center for Higher Education) cases are tracked by customer contact, consumer (constituent), employee, and other data relevant to an educational institution.

PeopleSoft CRM Call Center Business Processes

This section discusses the business processes that you can perform using PeopleSoft CRM call center applications. We discuss these business processes in greater detail in the business process chapters in this PeopleBook. You'll find greater detail for each in the corresponding business process chapter.

Business Processes for Call Center Applications

These business processes apply to PeopleSoft Support, Service Center for Higher Education, HelpDesk and HelpDesk for Human resources. They enable you to:

Create and manage cases, including those originating in a third-party system.
Configure the Case page to display the information, fields, and layout specific to your support and information-gathering requirements.
Use a skills-based assignment engine to assign cases to the agents and provider groups that are most qualified to handle the cases.
Create and manage solution libraries, search the solution library using text searches, and search for and view defects and enhancements.
Track both successful and unsuccessful attempts to resolve cases.
Embed analytics to suggest next actions and provide related dialogs based on the information and responses entered for a case.
Deploy self-service transactions that callers can use to search for solutions and to report, review, and update their own cases.
Relate cases to each other.
Enable chat for self-service customers.
Manage work using structured task lists known as business projects.
Add and track tasks.
Use troubleshooting scripts, customer satisfaction scripts, and surveys to gather information from callers.
Assign system access to users by role using authentication tokens.
Invoice customers for services rendered, regardless of whether a service agreement is in place (used only for PeopleSoft Support).
Associate service-level agreements with cases to gain insight into performance against targeted service levels and related agreements.
Use reports and charts to analyze and manage overall call center operations.

PeopleSoft Support Business Processes

PeopleSoft Support enables you to:

Access the actionable customer 360-Degree View page to see an enterprise view of any customer.
Manage material returns.
Generate new service orders from a case.
Invoice customers for services rendered, regardless of whether a service agreement is in place.
Run lead qualification (upsell and cross-sell) scripts and generate new sales leads and orders from a case.
Relate cases to defects using PeopleSoft Quality Management.
Associate a task list to a case.
Use interactive reports and charts to analyze and manage overall call center operations.

PeopleSoft HelpDesk Business Processes

PeopleSoft HelpDesk enables you to:

Access the HelpDesk 360-Degree View page to see PeopleSoft CRM-related data for any worker.
Relate cases to defects in the PeopleSoft Quality Management.
Manage assets, including asset discovery and remote control tasks, with PeopleSoft HelpDesk or with third-party IT asset management applications.
Initiate and track change requests for a worker.
Use reports and charts to analyze and manage help desk operations.

PeopleSoft HelpDesk for Human Resources Business Processes

PeopleSoft HelpDesk for Human Resources enables you to:

Access the HelpDesk for Human Resources 360-Degree View page to see a summary of relevant human resources (HR) and CRM data for any worker.
Give agents single-click access from a case to specific transactions in the HR system.
Use reports and charts to analyze and manage help desk operations.

Service Center for Higher Education

PeopleSoft Service Center for Higher Education enables you to:

Create cases relevant to IT or support (non-IT) issues, or to create blended cases (using pre-defined display templates).
Access the Constituent 360-Degree View page to see PeopleSoft CRM-related data for any constituent or worker.
Use Action Links to quickly access relevant pages in PeopleSoft Campus Solutions.

PeopleSoft Quality Management

PeopleSoft Quality Management enables you to:

Track reported defects and enhancement requests and keep a record of how they are resolved.
Record defect and fix information with user-defined codes and comprehensive product descriptions.
Move the defect through the resolution process by automating worklist assignments and notifications using workflow functionality.
Identify and access the correct records using the search tool.

PeopleSoft Change Management

PeopleSoft Change Management enables you to:

Manage basic change request information.
Link cases and defects to a change.
Link similar change requests in either a parent to child relationship or an equal relationship.
Link impacted product groups, products, and assets to a change request.
Manage the phases and tasks that are associated with a change request.

PeopleSoft CRM Call Center Integrations

The PeopleSoft CRM call center applications integrate with other PeopleSoft CRM applications and with external systems. We discuss integration considerations in the implementation chapters in this PeopleBook. Supplemental information about third-party application integrations is located on My Oracle Support.

Integration with Other PeopleSoft CRM Applications

The PeopleSoft CRM call center applications are part of the PeopleSoft CRM product suite. Because the call center applications reside in the same database as the other PeopleSoft CRM applications, data can move smoothly from application to application without the need for integration-specific configuration.

For example, if you license both PeopleSoft Support and Integrated FieldService, you automatically have the ability to create service orders from within your support cases.

The use of component interfaces for this type of cross-component flow ensures the triggering of all data validation and other PeopleCode processes.

Call center applications integrate with these PeopleSoft applications:

Integrated FieldService.
Sales.
Real-Time Advisor.
Order Capture.
Contracts.
Asset Management.
Services Procurement (work order integration).
On-Line Marketing (surveys).

Integration with External Systems

Customer, worker, product, and Analytic Calculation Engine (ACE) integrations are common to multiple PeopleSoft CRM applications. The call center applications support the following additional integration points:

Integration with PeopleSoft Supply Chain Management or similar systems enables you to generate return material authorizations (RMAs) in PeopleSoft Support for customers returning stock for replacement or repair or for orders that were shipped in error.
The Credit Card enterprise integration point (EIP) enables you to integrate with third-party credit card authorization and payment vendors in PeopleSoft Support.
Real-time EIPs for HelpDesk for Human Resources enable you to view relevant HR data (from PeopleSoft Human Capital Management or Oracle E-Business HCM) while using the security that is already established in the human resources system to control access to the data.

To protect sensitive data, the information is not stored in the PeopleSoft CRM system.
Real-time EIPs for Service Center for Higher Education enable you to view constituent data from PeopleSoft Campus Solutions.
The Worker EIP synchronizes worker information with other systems.

When you implement the Worker EIP, the system publishes application messages when users add or modify worker records in PeopleSoft CRM. You can also set up PeopleSoft CRM to subscribe to Worker EIP application messages that are published when users modify these records in other systems. The Worker EIP gives PeopleSoft CRM the ability to accept and create future-dated workers that were created in other systems and subscribed to by PeopleSoft CRM.
Through the Case EIP, third-party IT asset management applications can launch IT asset discovery and desktop remote control from PeopleSoft HelpDesk.

Note. You can launch IT asset discovery and desktop remote control without the case EIP. Using the IT Asset Management Integration with your third-party discovery and remote control software, an agent can perform administrative and diagnostic functions from the Case page.
The Systems Management integration framework provides a mechanism for integrating third-party network management applications.
Integration with PeopleSoft Contracts or any third-party billing application enables the invoicing of agreement-based service orders as they are generated during a support call.
Integrations with PeopleSoft Service Procurement and Maintenance Management enable users to create work orders in PeopleSoft Financials.

Service Oriented Architecture (SOA)

SOA has emerged as a standard form of integration. To lower customer costs and provide interoperability, PeopleSoft has made certain transactions available through SOA. PeopleTools has converting existing Integration Broker messages to web services. These web services have specific PeopleSoft structures. Part of this feature includes the delivering of more generic web services that could be used with other CRM systems.

This feature provides web services for existing Case functionality so that any business process can call the web service and leverage the features. To support business processes for the Case component, PeopleSoft has built these web services and operations:

Operations	Message Type	Description
Create Case	Synchronous	User sends specific information through a request message. The return message includes the case ID when the operation is successful. If the message fails, the system displays an error message.
Update a Case	Synchronous	User sends specific information, including the Case ID, and user information, through a request message. The return message includes the Case ID when the operation is successful. If the message fails, the system displays an error message.
Get Case	Synchronous	This operation requires a case ID. The return message includes case information.
Search Case	Synchronous	User sends specific search criteria information through a request message. This operation returns a list of cases the meet all the given criteria.

PeopleSoft Call Center Applications Implementation

PeopleSoft Setup Manager enables you to generate a list of setup tasks for your organization based on the features that you are implementing. The setup tasks include the components that you must set up, listed in the order in which you must enter data into the component tables, and links to the corresponding PeopleBook documentation.

PeopleSoft call center applications also provide component interfaces to help you load data from your existing system into Call Center tables. Use the Excel to Component Interface utility with the component interfaces to populate the tables.

This table lists some of the components that have component interfaces:

Component	Component Interface	References
RC_CASE_TYPE	RC_CASE_TYPE_CI	See Setting Up Basic Prompt Tables for Cases.
RC_PRIORITY	RC_PRIORITY_CI	See Setting Up Basic Prompt Tables for Cases.
RC_PROBTYPE	RC_PROBTYPE_CI	See Setting Up Basic Prompt Tables for Cases.
RC_SEVERITY	RC_SEVERITY_CI	See Setting Up Basic Prompt Tables for Cases.
RC_STATUS	RC_STATUS _CI	See Setting Up Basic Prompt Tables for Cases.
RC_QUICK_CODE	RC_QUICK_CODE _CI	See Setting Up Basic Prompt Tables for Cases.
RBT_TGUIDE_SETUP	RBT_TGUIDE_SETUP_SCI	See Configuring Troubleshooting Guide.
RC_SOLN_LIB_SETUP	RC_SOLN_LIB_SETUP_SCI	See Configuring Troubleshooting Guide.
RC_CTD_DEFINE	RC_CTD_DEFINE _CI	See Setting Up Basic Prompt Tables for Cases.
RC_CTD_COMBINE	RC_CTD_COMBINE_CI	See Setting Up Basic Prompt Tables for Cases.

Other Sources of Information

In the planning phase of your implementation, take advantage of all PeopleSoft sources of information, including the installation guides, table-loading sequences, data models, and business process maps. A complete list of these resources appears in the preface in the PeopleSoft CRM 9.1 Application Fundamentals PeopleBook, with information about where to find the most current version of each.