Connect the Contact Center to the Field with Oracle Service Cloud

Transcription

1 Connect the Contact Center to the Field with Oracle Service Cloud O R A C L E W H I T E P A P E R J U N E Disclaimer: This document is for informational purposes. It is not a commitment to deliver any material, code, or functionality, and should not be relied upon in making purchasing decisions. The development, release, and timing of any features or functionality described in this document remains at the sole discretion of Oracle.

2 Introduction You re already using Oracle Service Cloud to seamlessly serve customers across all channels, but have you incorporated the most intimate customer channel into your strategy? Field service appointments may be the only time your customer will engage with your organization face-to-face. Plus, these interactions happen on their home turf your field staff is standing on the carpet where their kids play, at the reception desk, or on the factory floor. If your contact center and field service operations are still functioning as independent entities, you re missing out on opportunities to elevate customer satisfaction and drive efficiencies in your service processes. An Example of Connecting the Contact Center with Field Service Meet Lauren. Lauren, a busy mother of three, has a big problem. Her air conditioner (AC) stopped working and the temperature keeps climbing. Lauren lives in Miami, where it can get uncomfortably hot. Meet Katie. Katie is a contact center agent at Sunrise Heating & Cooling, the manufacturer of Lauren s AC unit. Every day, Katie fields customers questions and solves product issues. Meet John. John is a heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) technician at Sunrise Heating & Cooling. John uses his trusty tablet to manage and complete his daily installation and repair appointments. Before Field Service Automation Consider how these three people might work together to get Lauren s AC unit fixed using the standard customer service methods organizations have been relying on for years. Lauren would call the Sunrise customer service number, where she might hear one or more of the following:» Please hold.» I m sorry; I don t have access to information about your warranty.» If it s not XYZ, I can t help you over the phone. Someone will need to come out and take a look.» Someone will be in touch to schedule an inspection.» Someone can be there between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. next Tuesday. Will you be home?» You ll have to call our field service department. The number is on our website. It s not really Katie s fault. She s trying her best, but all she can do is help walk Lauren through common problems using the reliable but lengthy and cumbersome help manual, or her own personal knowledge and experience. If that doesn t work, she can confirm that the incident requires a field appointment, but scheduling that appointment is up to the person who has access to John s schedule. Katie could make some calls to coordinate an appointment, but that will be time-consuming, requiring back and forth communication between the customer and the field service department that her manager just can t let her spend time on. The result: Lauren s left to coordinate the solution to a complex problem on her own, and she has zero say in when the appointment will occur. By the time the job is assigned to John and he knocks on the front door, Lauren is 1 CONNECT THE CONTACT CENTER TO THE FIELD WITH ORACLE SERVICE CLOUD

3 frustrated and angry. John is walking into a bad situation. He knows Lauren has an AC unit that needs repair, but he has nothing else to go on. The Old Approach: Field Service Automation as a Standalone Solution The old approach to scheduling field work as described above can certainly be improved upon by adding a field service management solution, which can be managed functionally through process flows and software integrations. The customer relationship management system Katie s using in the contact center might send a work order to a field service automation tool via an API. That solution would assign the job to an available technician, but it likely would not take into account the best person for the job or when Lauren would prefer that person arrive. John would receive the job assignment on his tablet, then round up the parts and equipment he is likely to need. However, field service managed this way often fails because:» Customers aren t allowed to choose the day or time that works best for them.» You can only offer very long appointment windows and/or you miss appointment windows altogether.» Field service employees arrive late and don t notify the customers.» Field service employees don t have the right equipment, parts, or skills for the job.» Field service employees don t have any insight about special requests or circumstances. This legacy approach is a good start, but you can drive greater efficiencies and build better customer relationships if you embed field service appointment scheduling within your contact center application. The New Approach: Visibility and Continuity Across All Channels Including the Field Contact center agents using Oracle Service Cloud already have the ability to seamlessly serve customers across channels. Not only can the customer choose their favorite channel, but they can move seamlessly from one channel to the next from social to web self-service, live chat and even a phone conversation while maintaining complete case history and context. But what about the most intimate customer channel of all? Field service appointments may be the only time your customer will engage with your organization face-to-face. Plus, these interactions occur in the places most familiar to the customer in the home where their children play, in front of their reception desk or on the factory floor. Now that Oracle Field Service Cloud Service has joined the Oracle Service Cloud application family, you can incorporate this final customer engagement channel to deliver truly holistic service. Customer service agents can end every call with a resolution, even if it means scheduling a field appointment. And every field service appointment is set up for success from the start. Here s how Lauren, Katie and John would work together to troubleshoot and repair Lauren s AC unit, leveraging Oracle Service Cloud applications that work together fluidly for a new, modern complete customer care model. First, Lauren visits the Sunrise Heating & Cooling website to try to resolve the problem on her own. She runs a few searches that return related help articles, but quickly realizes that she needs an expert to help. This is much more complex than resetting a switch. Lauren calls the Sunrise Heating & Cooling customer service number. Immediately, she s routed to an agent with extensive experience in AC unit troubleshooting Katie. Katie can see what Lauren s searched on the website, so she does not need to waste time walking Lauren through information she s already read. 2 CONNECT THE CONTACT CENTER TO THE FIELD WITH ORACLE SERVICE CLOUD

4 Katie taps into Oracle Service Cloud s Knowledge capabilities, and finds an appropriate trouble-shooting guide for Lauren s particular AC unit. She asks Lauren some simple questions, but determines it s necessary to send an HVAC tech out to take a look. With the old approach, this is typically where Sunrise Heating & Cooling would leave Lauren to coordinate a field appointment. But who has time for that? Not a busy mom of three. Instead... While Lauren s still on the phone, Katie pulls up a calendar displaying the real-time capacity of Sunrise s field workforce for the next week powered by Oracle Field Service Cloud. Like booking a restaurant reservation or flight online, Lauren simply tells Katie what time is convenient for her. Katie books the first available appointment for tomorrow, which is sent to the field service solution for optimized routing and scheduling. Before hanging up, Katie can efficiently capture any missing contact details such as a customer zip code or service level agreement (SLA) requirements. She also attaches a note that Lauren would prefer that someone come out this afternoon, if any free time opens up. The job arrives in Oracle Field Service Cloud for scheduling. Tomorrow, the time-based, predictive routing engine will assign it to the most optimal field employee, taking into account travel requirements, employee skills, and potentially required parts and equipment. In the dispatch center, the Sunrise field service manager notices that John s afternoon appointment has just cancelled. Thanks to Katie s note, he sees that Lauren would much prefer an appointment this afternoon. After confirming that John is knowledgeable about the AC model installed at Lauren s house, the field manager gets in touch with Lauren and reassigns the job to John. John pulls up Lauren s contact details on his tablet via his browser-based field service mobile app, and heads to her house. Because he has the right skills and certifications and can review Katie s helpful notes as well as the service history of Lauren s AC unit on his tablet, John wastes no time fixing the AC. From the moment Lauren picked up the phone to call support, every step of the repair was documented and updated within the Oracle Service Cloud. This is helpful for Katie, whose has the responsibility of following up with Lauren, or answering any follow up questions Lauren has along the way. And the next time Lauren calls in, a record of the appointment will be available for the agent assisting her. With this new, connected approach, Sunrise HVAC solved Lauren s problem faster and with less effort, while providing Lauren with a superior customer experience. In fact, Lauren is so happy with her service that she decides to tell her friends about via social media. Conclusion This elegant, yet simple, approach is built on powerful, easy-to-use technology. Connecting the contact center to the field is now as easy as adding the new Oracle Field Service Cloud Service solution to your existing Oracle Service Cloud applications. To quickly and easily connect these cloud applications, Oracle has introduced the Oracle Service Cloud and Oracle Field Service Cloud Accelerator. Contact your account manager or sales representative to learn more. 3 CONNECT THE CONTACT CENTER TO THE FIELD WITH ORACLE SERVICE CLOUD

5 Oracle Corporation, World Headquarters 500 Oracle Parkway Redwood Shores, CA 94065, USA Worldwide Inquiries Phone: Fax: C O N N E C T W I T H U S blogs.oracle.com/oracle facebook.com/oracle twitter.com/oracle oracle.com Copyright 2015, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. This document is provided for information purposes only, and the contents hereof are subject to change without notice. This document is not warranted to be error-free, nor subject to any other warranties or conditions, whether expressed orally or implied in law, including implied warranties and conditions of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. We specifically disclaim any liability with respect to this document, and no contractual obligations are formed either directly or indirectly by this document. This document may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, for any purpose, without our prior written permission. Oracle and Java are registered trademarks of Oracle and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners. Intel and Intel Xeon are trademarks or registered trademarks of Intel Corporation. All SPARC trademarks are used under license and are trademarks or registered trademarks of SPARC International, Inc. AMD, Opteron, the AMD logo, and the AMD Opteron logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Advanced Micro Devices. UNIX is a registered trademark of The Open Group Connect the Contact Center to the Field June 2015