Spice Help Desk User Guide

From SpiceCSM

Contents 1 Introduction 2 Home Tab 2.1 Brand Selection 2.2 Event List 2.3 Review Cases 2.4 Quick Search 2.5 Global Alerts 2.6 Brand General Information 3 My Cases 4 Advanced Search 4.1 Adding New Customer Accounts 4.2 Setting Your Search Options 4.3 Navigating Search Results 5 Case Search 5.1 Setting Your Search Options 5.2 Navigating Search Results 6 Customer Account Tab 6.1 Account Information 6.2 Cases 6.2.1 Creating New Cases or New Responses 6.2.1.1 Guided Process 6.2.1.2 Knowledge Base 6.2.1.3 Journal 6.2.1.4 E-Mail 6.2.2 Case Wrap Up 6.2.2.1 Schedule Event 6.3 Brand Details

Introduction

Spice Help Desk is the newest incarnation of our web-based, customer support and knowledge base management software. Perhaps the most significant new feature in Spice Help Desk is the ability to integrate with virtually any other CRM solution via our API.

SpiceCSM Community Edition allows for a single brand/company, however in this guide you will see sections that make reference to SpiceCSM Enterprise and On-demand Editions multi-brand installations.

This guide will walk you through the features of Spice Help Desk. If at anytime the guide is not enough to get you going please do not hesitate to seek help from our forum at www.opencsm.org/forum.

Home Tab

In the home tab of Spice Help Desk a user can select a brand to work with, view a list of events, view a list of review cases, execute a quicksearch for a customer account, review global alerts, and review a brand's general information. Also their is a panel where a user can enter links to resources and save them for future reference. Once a brand has been selected the home tab will only display information and function in relation to the brand which has been selected.

Brand Selection

The Brand Selection combobox is located in upper left section of the Spice Help Desk home tab. It is labeled #1 in the screenshot to the right.

In order to view brand details, use advanced search, or in general filter out data from brands you are not currently working with a user must select a Brand. The brand selection box is located on in the upper left portion of the home tab. In single-Brand installations the user does not need to select a Brand and can ignore this section. There are two ways a Brand may be selected, manually when no IP Telephony (computer-based phone system) is being used or auto-selection by an IP Telephony system.

To select a Brand manually:

1. Click the Brand pull-down menu.
2. Scroll along the menu, finding the name of the desired brand.
3. Click the name of the brand

To select a brand automatically:

Your contact center must be using an IP telephony system that is integrated with Spice Help Desk. If it is, when the telephony brand rings it will pass the information to Spice Help Desk and the correct brand will automatically appear on the Brand pull-down menu.

After a brand is selected, either manually or automatically, brand-specific settings and information will be displayed in the home tab.

Event List

The Event List panel is located in left section of the Spice Help Desk home tab. It is labeled #2 in the home tab screenshot.

The Scheduled Events panel displays a listing of pending outbound calls, e-mails, tasks, and webchats. Events can be filtered by brand or agent tier by clicking the 'filter' button in the upper left corner of the panel. Just use the available brand and tier listings to make your selections and click the accept button in the upper right corner of the window. If at any time you decide you do not wish to filter the cases you either close the window or click the cancel button.

Clicking the plus sign to the left of an event will expand the event and provide more details about it. If you wish to open the customer account associated with the event simply double click on the event and the customer's account tab will open. On the account tab under the case history section you will see the case which the event pertains to. In order to view all the cases associated with the account click the 'All Cases' button at the top of the case history panel.

Review Cases

The Review Cases panel is located in left section of the Spice Help Desk home tab. It is labeled #3 in the home tab screenshot.

Review Cases is a listing of all cases which have been set to the case status of review. The review cases window is only visible to Spice Supervisors. Each case can be expanded by clicking the plus sign to the left of it. By clicking the link the customer account the case is associated with will open in a new tab.

Quick Search

The quick search feature is located in the upper middle portion of the home tab (Labeled #5 in the home tab screen shot).

Quick search allows you to search for a customer account by account name. Simply type 4 or more characters into the search field and quick search will automaticaly start searching for accounts. Quick search will first try for a perfect match, if it can not find a complete match it will return results closest to you search term.

In the example to the right the search term 'smith' returned two results, both with 'smith' in the account name. Hovering the mouse over a result will highlight it as shown in the first result of the example. Clicking on an account will open the account in an account tab.

Global Alerts

The Global Alerts panel is located in the middle portion of the home tab (Labeled #6 in the home tab screen shot).

A global alert is a brand specific message that appears on the Home tab Global Alerts section. The purpose of a global alert is to convey an important message to all spice users. This panel will display alerts only for the brand that is currently selected in Spice or if all brands is selected it will display all alerts.

A Spice user with an access level of 'Power User' or higher can add/edit/delete alerts. To add an alert simply click the 'Add Alert' button and a window like the one pictured to the right will appear. To edit an alert simply double click the alert you would like to edit or click the alert to highlight it and the press the 'Edit Alert' button, the same window will appear. To delete an alert, highlight the alert by clicking on it and the press the 'delete' button.

Brand General Information

The Brand General Information panel is located in the middle-bottom portion of the home tab (Labeled #7 in the home tab screen shot).

Brand General Information displays information about the brand selected in Spice. The information contained within this panel can be defined in the settings module under Administration->Brand Management.

My Cases

The My Cases tab of Spice Help Desk allows a Spice user quick access to all of the cases they are assigned to. By default the My Cases tab only tab only displays cases which are not closed. The filter option can be used to filter the cases displayed to a specified case status.

The screen shot to the right illustrates how the My Cases panel appears in Spice Help Desk. In the screenshot case 1 (the fourth case down) has been expanded to show each individual response to the case. The third response to this case has an event attached to it. Clicking on a case's case id will open the account of the customer the case belongs to.

Advanced Search

Spice Help Desk has the ability to search a local customer database or other customer databases accessible via the Internet. There is little to no difference in the way you search either type of customer information database.

Adding New Customer Accounts

Advanced search houses the mechanism to add new customer accounts to you database. In order to add a new account just click the add new account button and a window prompting you for an account name will appear. Enter the account name and click 'Add New Account' this will open an account tab for the account you just created.

Setting Your Search Options

It is possible to perform searches using customer’s account/contact information other than the username. If a customer does not know or cannot obtain this information, they may use any of the text boxes available for a search. It is important to note that just because a search field is displayed does not insure that the customer database contains that particular data item about the customer. As with the username search, all or just part of the word or number may be used for a search.

To search by other customer information:

1. Type the text you would like to search by in one of the text boxes.
2. Click the Search button.
3. A list of search results will be displayed below in the search results panel.

In between searches it is recommended that you use the clear button to clear your text fields.

It is possible to perform searches using more than one item of customer information, which will narrow the search results. For example, you could search for a customer with the first name of “John” and a phone number of “555- 5555”.

Navigating Search Results

Search results are displayed in the panel below the search parameters. Each search result will contain a clickable link to the account tab the particular result is for, along with contact information for the account. In the screenshot you can see the account 'test' in the search results.

Case Search

Setting Your Search Options

If a customer knows the case number associated with their problem, there is no need to look up their customer account information first. To retrieve information by case number or other case parameters:

1. Click on the Case Search tab in the CRM Area.
2. Define the parameters that you want to search on, including
   • Case ID
   • Current or Previous Case Status
   • Current or Previous Issue Type
   • Current or Previous Sub-Issue Type
   • Assigned Agent
   • E-mail or Journal Entry Text
   • Case and Ticket Creation Date range
3. Click on the Search button
4. The results will appear in the case results panel below.

In between searches it is recommended that you use the clear button to clear your text fields.

Navigating Search Results

As depicted in the screenshot for Case Search the search results will include Case ID, Account name, Issue, Sub-Issue, Assigned Agent, Date Created, Date Updated, and current Status. Each result can be expanded to show individual responses to the case. Also, each result contains a link to the customers account in the Case ID.

There are buttons at the bottom of the result panel which are used to navigate from one result page to next, assuming there are more than one page of results.

Customer Account Tab

Account Information

The Account Information panel is located in the upper middle portion of the account tab (Labeled #1 in the account tab screen shot).

Each customer account in spice can have an unlimited number of sets of contact information. This can be useful for storing multiple users under the same customer account. In order to create a new contact for a customer simply click the 'add new contact button' in the lower left corner of the Account Information panel. This will bring up a new contact that will only have the fields "Account" and "Password" filled in as well as any custom data fields. In the upper right corner of the panel there are a series of numbers, these number represents the customers contacts. The current contact will always be blue. To delete a contact, make sure you have the contact you want to delete selected then click the delete button. You will be asked to confirm the deletion.

Cases

The Case History panel is located immediately below the Account Information panel (Labeled #2 in the account tab screen shot).

Creating New Cases or New Responses

To create a new case first make sure you have the correct customer account opened and then click the new case button. The new case window will open and allow you to choose which issue to associate with the case along with an optional subissue. From this window you can also assign an agent tier to the case. There will be 4 types of support options available from this window: Guided Process, Knowledge Base, Journal, and E-Mail. To begin one of these support types simply click the button associated with the desired support type.

To create a new response to an existing case simply click on the case id of the case you want to make a new response to.

Each support option gives the agent the ability to switch support types using the buttons at the top of each support panel. These buttons will open the new support type in a popup window therefore not interfering with previous work on the case response. This allows an agent to have a guided process open while also having a journal open so they can document the case as they go.

Guided Process

Knowledge Base

The Spice Help Desk Knowledge Base support option gives a support agent the ability to search through a database of articles for material relevant to the support case.

To use the knowledge base one must first enter any number of search terms in the field labeled search. They can then select a type of search, 'Exact Phrase Match', 'Include All Words', or 'Any Word Match'. Optionally the user may choose to omit articles from the results by specifying terms that occur in these articles in the 'Exclude' text field. After configuring the search click the search button and any results to the search will appear below.

To view an article double click on it and it will pop up in its own window. The article can then be attached to the case to show that it was used in the case or the agent can click cancel to close the article.

Journal

In cases where structured support is not needed, (e.g., unsuccessfully contacting a customer), it is possible to make notes about the support attempt and then proceed to wrap-up. Often used in conjunction with “unscripted, free form” support, the agent should make complete notes about the support process. To create a Journal Entry:

1. Click the Journal button on the new case window.
2. The Journal Entry will panel will open.
3. Click in the Journal Entry text box (the white area).
4. Type or Paste any notes into the Journal Entry text box.
5. Click the Wrap Up button to save the entry.
6. The Wrap-Up window will load.

Check the content of the Journal Entry before submitting it because once submitted it cannot be edited.

E-Mail

Spice Help Desk combines the Custom and Canned E-mail features of previous versions into a common interface. Clicking on the E-mail on the new case/response window in the will open the E-mail Contact feature which contains standard e-mail fields (To, CC, BCC, Subject and the body).

To create a custom e-mail:

1. Enter a valid e-mail address in the To field.
2. Click in the Subject text box and add a subject as you would with any traditional e-mail.
3. Click in the Body text box and type or paste the e-mail message.
4. Click the Wrap Up button to send the e-mail.
5. The Wrap-Up window will load.

Case Wrap Up

After support has been completed and the agent has clicked the wrap up button the wrap up window will pop up. The wrap up window contains options to change the status of the case (In progress, escalated, review, etc...), change the issue/subissue of the case, or assign the case to a different tier/agent.

After selecting the desired options simply click the complete button at the bottom of the window.

Schedule Event

While in support of a case, before wrap up, an agent can schedule an event for the case. In order to schedule an event the agent should first click the schedule event button on the support panel they are using. The schedule event window will pop up and the agent will then be able to configure the event.

The types of events that can be scedules are phone, email, webchat, or task. Events can be made urgent so they show up with a red flag on the Home Tab Scheduled Events panel. They can be schedule to happen before, at, or after a time on a day the agent specifies. There is also a text field where an agent can add notes to the event.

After configuring the event click the attach to case button to add the event to the case you are working on.

Brand Details

The Brand Details panel is located in the upper lefthand corner of the account tab (Labeled #3 in the account tab screen shot).