Service Requests and Trouble Tickets in Siebel Communications

This chapter describes the procedures for initiating and managing service requests and trouble tickets in Siebel Communications. It includes the following topics:

About Service Requests and Trouble Tickets in Siebel Communications

Siebel Communications service requests and trouble tickets are primarily used by customer service representatives (CSRs), their managers, and network operations center (NOC) agents.

Service requests and trouble tickets are database records that are used to manage problems with equipment or general requests for service. This chapter is mostly about trouble tickets, but it also explains the differences between trouble tickets and service requests and tells you where you can find more information about service requests. The following information is included in this chapter:

This chapter guides you in setting up features that help to automate trouble ticket management.
This chapter describes procedures typically used by end users to create, monitor, and close trouble tickets.
This chapter describes procedures that you can use for overall management of trouble tickets.

Service requests and trouble tickets perform similar functions. The main differences follow:

Trouble tickets functionality supports parent-child relationships.
Trouble tickets are typically used to record and track problems with the functioning of services and networks, while service requests are typically used to record and track general customer problems and requests. Examples of general problems and requests are billing problems, requests for new equipment, and requests for billing statements.

Service requests and trouble tickets are managed through the Service Requests and Trouble Tickets screens.

Initiation of Service Requests and Trouble Tickets

Service requests and trouble tickets can be initiated in the following ways:

A customer calls the call center to report a problem with the phone line.
A network communications management application that is integrated with Siebel Communications automatically creates a trouble ticket record in the Siebel Communications database.
Agents can reassign service requests and trouble tickets to other groups or individuals for resolution. Alternatively, agents can break a service request or trouble ticket down into different activities, which can be assigned to different owners. In this case, the agent can monitor progress towards completion of the activities and close the service request or trouble ticket.

Creation of Service Requests and Trouble Tickets

Service requests and trouble tickets can be created within Siebel Communications or moved into Siebel Communications by the following methods:

Customers using Oracle’s Siebel Self Service.
Customers and partners using an Automated Call Distributor (ACD).
Call center agents responding to phone calls or email from customers.
NOC agents responding to network problems.
Automated network communications management applications that are integrated with Siebel Communications.

Trouble Ticket Referral

Trouble tickets can be referred from Siebel Communications to trading partner software through integration with an electronic bonding gateway, using Siebel Enterprise Application Integration (Siebel EAI).

Additional Information About Service Requests

The remainder of this chapter describes trouble ticket management. For more information about service requests, see Siebel Field Service Guide and Siebel Applications Administration Guide.

Scenario for Using Service Requests and Trouble Tickets in Siebel Communications

This topic gives one example of how service requests and trouble tickets might be used. You might use service requests and trouble tickets differently, depending on your business model.

A customer service representative (CSR) receives a call from the owner of a software company. He is phoning from his mobile phone and explains that he has no dial tone on his office phone. The CSR verifies the customer’s service configuration and identifies the specific phone line to which he is referring.

The CSR creates a trouble ticket and attempts to use the problem resolution capabilities in Siebel Communications to resolve the customer’s problem. The CSR is unable to solve the problem and passes the trouble ticket to the Network Services Group. The CSR ends the call and creates a follow-up activity on the trouble ticket.

Two minutes later, the CSR receives a broadcast message indicating that there is a circuit break that is affecting customers in a particular exchange. The CSR looks up the network-reported problem for the circuit outage and finds the specific trouble ticket. The trouble ticket details indicate that a construction crew sliced through a cable that carries network traffic for the exchange. The estimated repair time is five hours.

The CSR performs a search in Siebel Communications to find all open trouble tickets that have a service item equivalent to the affected exchange. The search produces a list of 15 trouble tickets, including the network-reported trouble ticket.

The CSR associates each of the 14 customer-reported trouble tickets with the one network-reported trouble ticket for the following reasons:

The 14 customer-reported problems are related to one network outage.
Your company’s Siebel administrator has configured the Siebel applications so that all the customer-reported troubles are resolved when the network-reported trouble is resolved.

The CSR assigns the network trouble ticket for the cable break to a technician in the Repair and Maintenance department and receives a message from the on-site maintenance crew that the cable has been repaired and tested and is fully operational. The technician creates a series of notes in the network trouble ticket, indicating the resolution, and closes the trouble ticket.

When the technician closes the parent trouble ticket, the child trouble tickets are not automatically closed since it may be necessary to verify that each customer’s problem has been fixed. Because your administrator has configured it to do so,Siebel Communications determines that the trouble ticket for the customer previously described can be closed. It then sends a text message to the customer’s mobile phone notifying him of the resolution.

At the end of the day, the manager examines all of the trouble tickets generated that day.

The following image shows the sequence of procedures that end users might follow to manage trouble tickets. The sequence of events are as follows:

Customer Service Representative:
- Receives trouble report.
- Creates trouble ticket.
- Assigns the trouble ticket to the appropriate person.
- Associates the trouble ticket with a parent trouble ticket.
- Verifies entitlements.
- Resolves the problem.
- Closes the trouble ticket.
Manager:
- Analyzes the day’s trouble tickets.

Example of Sequence for Trouble Tickets. Described in the surrounding text.

Setting Up Service Requests and Trouble Tickets in Siebel Communications

Administrators can make the CSRs’ job easier by creating scripts and automating the assignment of trouble tickets as follows:

You can use Oracle’s Siebel SmartScript to provide scripts that guide CSRs as they collect information about trouble tickets. For more information about creating scripts, see Siebel SmartScript Administration Guide.
CSRs or other qualified personnel can manually assign ownership of a trouble ticket to themselves, to another employee, or to a group. With the appropriate setup, Oracle’s Siebel Assignment Manager can be used to give the CSR the option of automating the assignment.

For more information about setting up Siebel Assignment Manager (including rules, criteria, workload, employees, positions, and territories), see Siebel Assignment Manager Administration Guide.

Creating a Trouble Ticket Record in Siebel Communications (End User)

End users can create a trouble ticket record.

To create a trouble ticket

Navigate to the Trouble Tickets screen, then the Trouble Ticket List view.

Add a record, and complete the necessary fields in the record and the More Info form. To access more fields, click the show more button in the form.

Some fields are described in the following table.

Field	Comments
Ref #	Type the reference number An external application can identify the trouble ticket by using this number.
Last Name	Select the last name of the person reporting the problem.
Owner	Select the user ID of the person or group responsible for resolving the trouble ticket (for example, an end user, another service representative, or a service group).

Assigning a Trouble Ticket in Siebel Communications (End User)

If end users are unable to resolve trouble tickets themselves, then they can assign them to another qualified CSR or to a group. In general, trouble tickets can be assigned in these ways:

Batch assignment. Siebel Assignment Manager can assign many trouble tickets at a scheduled time. For more information, see Siebel Assignment Manager Administration Guide.
Dynamic assignment. Siebel Assignment Manager can automatically assign trouble tickets at preset intervals. For more information, see Siebel Assignment Manager Administration Guide.
Interactive assignment. Siebel Assignment Manager is invoked manually from the menu button in the More Info view, as described in the next procedure.
Manual assignment. Users select the owner in the Trouble Tickets screen, as described in the next procedure.

To assign a trouble ticket manually to a person or group

Navigate to the Trouble Tickets screen, then the Trouble Ticket List view.
Drill down on the ticket ID of the trouble ticket.
In the More Info form, click the show more button, and then perform one of the following steps:
- To assign a trouble ticket using Oracle’s Siebel Assignment Manager, click the menu button, select Assign, and then select a person.
- To manually assign a trouble ticket to a person, select a person in the Owner field.
- To manually assign a trouble ticket to a group, select a group in the Group field.

Associating Parent and Child Trouble Tickets in Siebel Communications (End User)

The general procedure for setting up a parent-child relationship is to create the child trouble ticket and then associate it with an existing trouble ticket for the parent.

End users can group many child trouble tickets under one parent trouble ticket. Grouping several trouble tickets under one parent can be useful for managing a single network problem that results in calls from many customers.

Associating Child Trouble Tickets With Parent Trouble Tickets

To associate a child trouble ticket with existing parent trouble tickets, follow this procedure.

Note: A list of children of a selected trouble ticket appears in the Related Trouble Tickets view.

To associate a child trouble ticket with existing parent trouble tickets

Navigate to the Trouble Tickets screen, then the Trouble Ticket List view.
Drill down on the ticket ID of the child trouble ticket.
Click the Parent Trouble Tickets view tab.
The Trouble Ticket Details form appears with the Parent Trouble Tickets list.
In the Parent Trouble Tickets list, create a new record.
In the Add Trouble Tickets dialog box, select one or more parent trouble tickets.

Verifying Entitlements for Trouble Tickets

To verify an entitlement associated with a trouble ticket, follow this procedure.

To verify the entitlement associated with a trouble ticket

Navigate to the Trouble Tickets screen, then the Trouble Ticket List view.
Drill down on the ticket ID of the trouble ticket.
Click the More Info view tab.
In the More Info form, click the show more button to access more fields.
In the Entitlement Name field, select an entitlement.

Note: For information about determining how this dialog box is populated, see Siebel Field Service Guide.
In the More Info form, click Verify.
The Due Date field is automatically populated with the appropriate time period. For instance, if the customer is entitled to have a problem fixed within two hours, then the Due Date field reflects this time period.

Viewing Fallout Orders for Trouble Tickets

A fallout order is an order that has failed in the fulfillment system, and for which processing has stopped. To help resolve order failures and resume order processing, Siebel Communications uses Oracle Application Integration Architecture to receive order failures as trouble tickets.

When an order is submitted from a Siebel CRM application for fulfillment, the order may fail either in Oracle Application Integration Architecture, the fulfillment system, or the provisioning system. Information about the order failure is sent by way of the integration to Siebel Communications, and a trouble ticket is created with order failure information.Siebel Communications users work the order failure-generated trouble ticket normally to correct the issue. Correcting the issue might involve resubmitting the order in the fulfillment system, or revising and resubmitting the order from Siebel CRM. After the issue is corrected, the trouble ticket can be closed automatically from the fulfillment system or manually in Siebel Communications.

Note: If multiple order failures are associated with the same batch or bulk order, the fulfillment system might generate a single consolidated trouble ticket for all the order failures from that batch or bulk order. For more information about processing order failures, see the chapter on employee asset-based ordering in Siebel Order Management Guide Addendum for Communications.

To view fallout orders associated with a trouble ticket, follow this procedure.

To view information about a fallout order for a trouble ticket

Navigate to the Trouble Tickets screen, then the Trouble Ticket List view.
From the Saved Queries drop-down list, select Order Failure Trouble Tickets.
The view displays a list of trouble tickets created for order failures.
Identify the trouble ticket associated with the fallout order that you want to view, and click the link in its Ticket Id field.
Click the Order Failure Information view tab.

In the Order Failure Information list, view the fallout order information associated with the current trouble ticket.

Some fields are described in the following table.

Field	Comments
Order Id	Order ID code generated by the fulfillment system. Click the link to display the order that generated this trouble ticket.
Order Line Item Id	Order line item ID code generated by the fulfillment system.
Common Order Id	ID code mapped by the Oracle Application Integration Architecture integration to the application-generated Order Id.
Common Order Item Id	ID code mapped by the Oracle Application Integration Architecture integration to the application-generated Order Line Item Id.
Application Error Code	Error code from the external fulfillment system (if any).
Global Error Code	Maps the application error code to a standardized error code that can be used to map to recovery procedures.
Failure Code	System failure code supplied by Oracle Application Integration Architecture.
Fulfillment Transaction Id	Transaction ID generated by the external fulfillment system for the order component. Note: Some fulfillment systems do not generate a transaction ID for an order.
System of Failure	Application in which the order failed. This field maps to the common Oracle Application Integration Architecture identifier for the application in which the order failure occurred.

About Trouble Ticket Solutions

Customer service organizations estimate that approximately 85 percent of assigned trouble tickets are related to problems that have been previously encountered. Siebel Communications provides access to descriptions of how previous trouble tickets were resolved. When there is no existing solution to a trouble ticket, a member of the organization can research the problem and create a new description in the form of a solution record.

Solutions Defined

In Siebel Communications, the term solution specifically means a record in the Siebel Communications database that includes a description of how a previous trouble ticket was resolved or how an anticipated future trouble ticket can be resolved. The word solution is also used in general terms to mean an answer to a problem.

Further Information

End users can review and create solutions for trouble tickets using the same methods used to review and create solutions for service requests. For more information about working with solutions, see Siebel Field Service Guide.

Resolving Trouble Tickets in Siebel Communications (End User)

This topic describes the ways of resolving trouble tickets.

Adding an Activity to a Trouble Ticket

Resolving a trouble ticket might require several procedures, performed by multiple people or groups. End users can create an activity for each step and assign the activity to themselves, another qualified person, or a group.

To add an activity to a trouble ticket

Navigate to the Trouble Tickets screen, then the Trouble Ticket List view.
Drill down on the ticket ID of the trouble ticket.
Click the Activities view tab.
In the Activities list, add a record, and complete the necessary fields.

Associating Activity Plans With Trouble Tickets

Activity plans include a list of activities to be completed to resolve a problem. If an appropriate activity template exists, then end users can select the template to populate their activities list with a defined set of activities. Then end users can customize the list, if necessary. For more information about working with activities and activity plans, see Siebel Applications Administration Guide.

To associate an activity plan with a trouble ticket

Navigate to the Trouble Tickets screen, then the Trouble Ticket List view.
Drill down on the ticket ID of the trouble ticket.
Click the Activity Plans view tab.
In the Activity Plans list, add a record.
In the Template field, select an Activity Template.

Closing a Trouble Ticket

When a trouble ticket is resolved, end users can change its status to Closed in any Trouble Ticket list or form. Changes cannot be made to trouble tickets that are closed. To continue working on a closed trouble ticket, first change its status to Open or Pending.

To close a trouble ticket

Navigate to the Trouble Tickets screen, then the Trouble Ticket List view.
Drill down on the ticket ID of the trouble ticket.
Click the More Info view tab.
In the More Info form, select a value of Closed in the Status field.

Note: When you save or click outside the record, the Sub-Status field changes to Resolved and the Date Closed field reflects the current time and date.

Using the Customer Satisfaction Survey in Siebel Communications (End User)

Customer satisfaction surveys allow end users to conduct a survey with the person who initiated a trouble ticket. If they have Chart Works Server (a third-party application) installed, then a chart displays a measurement of the customer’s satisfaction as they record the customer’s responses. On a subsequent occasion, they can conduct another survey without overwriting existing survey records.

As part of closing a trouble ticket, end users can conduct a customer survey in person, or they can use the Correspondence screen to send a letter and survey to the originator of a trouble ticket. When they mail a survey, an activity is automatically generated for the mailing. For information about using the Correspondence screen to send out customer satisfaction surveys, see Siebel Applications Administration Guide.

To conduct a customer survey

Navigate to the Trouble Tickets screen, then the Trouble Ticket List view.
Drill down on the ticket ID of the trouble ticket.
Click the Customer Satisfaction Survey view tab.
Scroll down to the Survey Details form, and add a record.
Ask each of the questions on the Survey form and record the customer’s answer for each field.

Analyzing Trouble Tickets Data in Siebel Communications (End User)

You can use charts to perform various types of analyses on your group’s trouble tickets.

To analyze trouble tickets data using charts

Navigate to the Trouble Tickets screen, then the Chart view.
In the Trouble Ticket list, select the trouble ticket.
In the Charts form, select appropriate chart settings.

Additional End-User Tasks for Trouble Ticket Management in Siebel Communications

This topic contains information about other tasks related to trouble tickets.

Customer Verification

When a customer telephones a call or service center, end users must verify whether the person is an existing or new customer. End users navigate to the Accounts or Contacts screen and perform a query of information about the customer, such as the last name, social security number, and so on. If information about the customer is available, then end users can review the requests that have already been entered for the customer. If no information about the customer is available, then end users can enter the customer information. For more information about accounts and contacts, see Accounts in Siebel Communications and Contacts in Siebel Communications.

Entitlement Verification

When creating a trouble ticket, verify the type of service agreement and entitlements connected with it. For more information about service agreements and entitlements see Agreements and Entitlements in Siebel Communications

Communication with Field Service Agents

End users can contact a field service agent. Siebel Communications allows you to send messages about trouble tickets in several ways, including sending a text message to a pager. For more information, see Siebel CTI Administration Guide.

Trouble Tickets and Attachments

At any time, end users can store additional information relating to a trouble ticket in the database by associating an electronic file with the trouble ticket record. For information about associating an attachment with a record, see Siebel Fundamentals.