How can I efficiently create incidents from incoming phone calls?

Environment:

Creating incidents from customer phone calls
Oracle B2C Service

Resolution:

Oracle B2C Service can be used to capture questions and issues that are submitted and handled through a telephone call. This allows your staff to capture the nature of the issue and specify what information was provided to the customer. Time can be billed to these incidents to allow for reporting and future reference.

When a call is received, the agent is responsible for creating the incident from the administration console. A simple process for creating a customer record and incident from a telephone call is provided below. Specific steps used depend on which version of the application is used.

You can either create a new incident and then search to see if an existing contact record exists and associate the contact record or you can search for the contact record first and then create a new incident for that contact record. If the caller does not have a contact record in the application, the staff member creates the new incident and new contact record at the same time.

Option 1: Searching for the contact record first 

1. The agent should be logged in to the console and have a report configured to allow them to search for contact records by email address or name. 
   
   Note that it is the email address that makes a contact record unique in the application so the agent needs to be able to easily distinguish records by the email address listed.
   
   
2. The agent receives the call and asks for the name or email address of the contact. The agent performs the search for the record.
   
   If a contact record exists: the agent can right click on the record in the report grid and select New > Incident (for selected contact). When the incident opens, the contact information is populated from the contact record. The agent can proceed with recording the incident information.
   
   If the contact record does not exist: the agent can click New > Incident from the upper left corner of the console. From the Contacts tab, the agent can add a new contact to be associated with the incident. Or the agent can right click in the Contact ID field and select Add New to create a contact record for the caller.
   
   

Within the application, a staff member can open a contact record, click the Incidents tab and click New to fill out the new incident.  When using this approach, the staff member can click OK to close the incident record.  However, at this point, the incident has not yet been created since it is a child record to the contact record. The staff member must save the contact record as well in order to actually create the incident -- even if the contact record itself was not edited. 

Option 2: Opening a new incident and associating the contact record

1. The agent is logged in to the console and receives a call.
   
   
2. The agent clicks New > Incident from the upper left corner of the console.  A blank incident opens in the console.
   
   
3. The agent can search for the contact record by clicking the magnifying glass to the right of the Contact ID field. If the record exists, the agent can associate the new incident to the record. Otherwise, the agent can right click in the field and select Add New to create a contact record for the caller.

Configuration Considerations  

Typically, assistance requests that are phoned in are often handled during the call and do not require a response to be sent to the customer. As a result, the customer's email address is not necessarily required.

Review the incident and contact workspaces to determine and verify which fields should be required when agents use those workspaces. Open the workspace for editing and click on the field. In the Properties box, review the RequiredOption property to determine under which conditions the field is required.

For additional information, refer to the 'Add a Contact' and 'Add an Incident' sections in online documentation for the version your site is currently running. To access Oracle B2C Service manuals and documentation online, refer to the Documentation for Oracle B2C Service Products.