CRM task management overview
In responding to a customer interaction, any number of activities will need to be triggered in order to progress the recorded CRM communication through to final resolution and completion. Depending on the nature of the customer interaction, any number of separate tasks may be required, and these potentially quite varied in nature. In its simplest form, a CRM communication will be linked to a single case and the inherent activities - the defined tasks - will be a series of discrete and chronological actions to be carried out by an owner within a specified timeframe. Naturally, this scenario can be expanded further on a number of different levels. For instance, the required tasks might be quite diverse and spread across different departments; hence, tasks would need to be assigned to different owners. Similarly, a single customer interaction might transcend a number of different subjects, each with quite separate tasks resulting from the individually created cases: the first case capturing, say, a repair request; the second case an instance of anti-social behaviour. To maximise the efficient progression of cases, it might be acceptable to progress some tasks in parallel i.e. the completion of one task being independent of another. Conversely, some tasks may be inextricably linked and therefore dependency rules must exist to define the task relationships and any in-built time lags i.e. dictating the commencement of one task in relation to the completion of its predecessor.
Any number of tasks can be created on the system, mapping the constituent elements of all likely case scenarios arising from the services provided by the housing organisation. These tasks would typically be created in advance, as part of the CRM configuration, and then linked to different subjects, as required. A single task - perhaps generic in nature - can be linked to multiple subjects but can only appear once within the same subject. In the event that an individual task needs to be replicated within the same case, a clone of the original task definition must first be created and added to the subject. Simply by adding the task definition to the subject workflow, an end user is able to map out the critical path for progressing an individual case scenario through any combination of tasks. Thus, when a new case is created in response to a customer interaction, those tasks linked to the path will be triggered automatically. Naturally, there will always be instances where the specific circumstances of a case demand that additional tasks be included; hence, these can easily be added manually, provided they exist within the subject definition.
Before an individual task can be progressed, it must be assigned an owner. The owner can be a specified user, or any one of a group of users through their association to a specific system role. Task ownership can be set in advance within the individual task definition, and therefore applied automatically when the task is triggered for a live case. Alternatively, an owner can be assigned manually at the point of initiating the live task. Ownership of a task can also be reassigned at any point to take account of workload, staff absence, etc.
Separate help articles have been created for each key aspect of CRM task management, including:
In addition, separate help articles focus on the progression of CRM tasks, specifically: