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Service and Communications > Solutions > About Managing Solutions

About Managing Solutions

Consider implementing a process similar to the following to build and manage a knowledge base of solutions:

1. A company administrator imports your existing solutions into the application (optional).
2. Service agents and other experts add draft solutions to expand the breadth and depth of your knowledge base over time.
3. Service managers review, approve, and publish solutions.
4. Agents score existing solutions to make sure the most helpful solutions rise to the top.
5. Service managers monitor the solutions knowledge base to ensure that only valid and current information is represented.

Best Practice Tips for Managing Your Solutions Knowledge Base

Having a well-organized and peer-evaluated library of solutions helps you consistently serve your customers more effectively. Here are some best practice tips for setting up and managing your solutions knowledge base.

1 – Import Your Existing Solutions

Before you import solutions, compare the information in your existing solutions with the Solution record in Oracle CRM On Demand. You might want to add, rename, or remove fields from the record to match the information that you want to import.

You can use the Custom Field Setup Template, available in the Tools and Templates page in the Training & Support Center, to help you plan changes. This document will help you plan for and keep track of any custom changes that you want to make to the application.

2 – Add Draft Solutions

Establish guidelines for creating solution records and communicate these to anyone who might create draft solutions, such as service agents, product or, service experts. Be sure to emphasize the importance of the Title field in a solution record. This is a searchable field which appears on most lists and Lookup windows for solutions. Therefore, service agents will use it to quickly identify appropriate solutions to their questions or problems.

When a new solution record is created, it has a status of Draft. Draft solutions are not available to be added to service request records and will not appear in the solution Lookup window until they are published. So, if an agent creates a Service Request and enters a draft solution during the call, the agent can add the draft solution to the Service Request, but the draft solution will not be accessible to other agents until it is published.

3 – Review, Approve, and Publish Solutions

The approval process ensures that your identified experts get a chance to review all solutions before releasing them for general use by your service agents. Establish review and approval guidelines to ensure that all solutions are valid, easy to follow, and consistently useful to those who need them.

You must have a role with the Publish Solutions privilege to change a solution status to Approved and to publish the solution. For more information, see Approving and Publishing Solutions.

4 – Rate Solutions

Ask your service agents to rate the solutions that they use and add to their service request records. They can easily do this from the Solution Detail page by clicking the Rate Solution button. Solutions are rated on a 1 – 5 scale. If the solution was highly effective, rate it a 5. If it was not effective or valid, rate it a 1.

Every time a solution is rated, its rating score is recalculated and displayed on the record. Having your agents rate the solutions gives you information you can use to monitor the quality of your knowledge base. For more information, see Rating Solutions.

5 – Monitor Solutions

Make sure that you regularly monitor your solutions knowledge base so that your service agents have the best and most current information and instructions. Some recommendations are:

• Assign an owner for certain areas or types of solutions and have each owner regularly review and update those solutions. Make each owner responsible for the accuracy and approval of his or her area.
• Over time, your solutions can become obsolete. Solutions related to products that are no longer supported are just one example. Create a Solution list to locate these solutions, filtering by the Product field, for example. Then, use the Mass Update feature to remove them from the searchable solutions.
• Do not delete a solution, unless it is a duplicate. Instead, set the status to Obsolete. Obsolete solutions no longer appear on the list when searching for a solution to add to a service request. However, you can still use the lists on the Solutions Homepage to access them if you need them.
• Review all solutions that are rated low. To find them, create a custom list that shows you all published solutions rated a 1 or 2.
• Use the prebuilt Solution lists on the Solutions Homepage to review your top-rated solutions and most active solutions. By doing so, you have an indication of any areas where you can potentially add more knowledge and expand your library.
• Routinely analyze your closed service requests for trends, and identify key problem areas where additional information should be added to your knowledge base.