Getting Started with PeopleSoft Enterprise CRM Call Center Applications

This PeopleBook describes the three PeopleSoft Customer Relationship Management (PeopleSoft CRM) call center applications: PeopleSoft Enterprise Support, HelpDesk, and HelpDesk for Human Resources. Although these applications differ in ways that optimize them for their specific purposes, they all share the same basic case-related architecture.

This chapter provides an overview of PeopleSoft Enterprise CRM call center applications and:

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

PeopleSoft Enterprise CRM Call Center Applications Overview

PeopleSoft Enterprise CRM 8.9 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 CRM self-services applications, they can access information that can help them solve their problems online without intervention from an agent.

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

PeopleSoft Enterprise Support enables you to manage your customer support operations.
HelpDesk enables you to manage your workforce support operations.
HelpDesk for Human Resources enables you to manage employee human resources inquiries and issues.

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.

Note. This PeopleBook documents all of the call center applications. Common functionality is documented once, and differences between the applications are clearly marked. Throughout this book, references to call center functionality indicate that the functionality is common to all call center applications.

PeopleSoft Enterprise CRM Call Center Business Processes

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

Business Processes for All Call Center Applications

All three call center applications 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 by using text searches. You can search for and view defects, and enhancements.
Track both successful and unsuccessful attempts to resolve cases.
Embed service 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.
Manage work using structured task lists known as business projects.
Use troubleshooting scripts and customer satisfaction scripts to gather information from callers.
Assign system access to users by role using authentication tokens.
Invoice customers for services rendered, regardless of whether or not a service agreement is in place.
Associate service-level agreements with HelpDesk 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 Enterprise Support Business Processes

PeopleSoft Enterprise Support enables you to:

Access the 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 or not 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 Enterprise Quality Management.
Use smart views, reports, and charts to analyze and manage overall call center operations.

PeopleSoft Enterprise HelpDesk Business Processes

PeopleSoft Enterprise HelpDesk enables you to:

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

PeopleSoft Enterprise HelpDesk for Human Resources Business Processes

PeopleSoft Enterprise HelpDesk for Human Resources also enables you to:

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

PeopleSoft Enterprise CRM Call Center Integrations

The 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 the PeopleSoft Customer Connection Website.

Integration with Other CRM Applications

The 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, process flows can move smoothly from application to application without the need for integration-specific configuration.

For example, if you license both PeopleSoft Enterprise Support and 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 Enterprise products:

FieldService
Sales
Real-Time Advisor
Order Capture
Change Management
Quality Management
Contracts

Integration with External Systems

Customer, worker, product, and Business Analysis Modeler integrations are common to multiple PeopleSoft CRM applications. The call center applications support the following additional integration points:

Integration with PeopleSoft Enterprise 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 that was 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 human resources data 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.
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.
The Case EIP enables integration with a separately licensed Natural Language Processing search engine, which permits advanced searching of solutions in the knowledge base, increasing agent and technician efficiency and problem-solving accuracy.
Through the Case EIP, third-party IT asset management applications launch IT asset discovery and desktop remote control from HelpDesk.
The Systems Management integration framework provides a mechanism for integrating third-party network management applications.
Integration with PeopleSoft Enterprise Contracts or any third-party billing application to allow the invoicing of agreement-based service orders as they are generated during a support call.

PeopleSoft Enterprise 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 Enterprise call center applications also provides 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 all of the components that have component interfaces:

Component	Component Interface	References
RC_CASE_TYPE	RC_CASE_TYPE_SCI	See Setting Up Prompt Tables for Cases.
RC_CA_TY_DE	RC_CA_TY_DE_SCI	See Setting Up Prompt Tables for Cases.
RC_PRIORITY	RC_PRIORITY_SCI	See Setting Up Prompt Tables for Cases.
RC_PROBTYPE	RC_PROBTYPE_SCI	See Setting Up Prompt Tables for Cases.
RC_SEVERITY	RC_SEVERITY_SCI	See Setting Up Prompt Tables for Cases.
RC_STATUS	RC_STATUS _SCI	See Setting Up Prompt Tables for Cases.
RC_QUICK_CODE	RC_QUICK_CODE _SCI	See Setting Up 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.

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 Enterprise CRM 8.9 Application Fundamentals PeopleBook, with information about where to find the most current version of each.