Microsoft Dynamics CRM: Email to Case – limitations and comparison with IOTAP solution
The spring '14 release brings in Enterprise Case Management functionality for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 Online and On-Premise. The features include automatic case creation, managing entitlements (how much service to provide to customers), managing SLA's (First response time, resolution time), dynamic routing, case merging, case hierarchy, etc. A big part of the functionality is the automation of emails to case.
For business benefits, considerations and options for implementing email to case automation you can refer my earlier blog: Microsoft Dynamics CRM Spring ‘14: Email to Case - business benefits, considerations and option for CRM 2011 customers.
In this blog I am going to compare and contrast some of the out-of-box email to case features with the IOTAP Email to Case solution:
1. Handling emails received from unknown senders: In Microsoft email to case, emails received from unknown senders could either be ignored from case creation or automatically the new contact would be created in CRM and linked to this newly created case.
However... what if you receive lot of emails from customers and do not want a new contact to be created for each one of them? With IOTAP email to case Automation, emails received from unknown senders could be linked to a configurable dummy account or contact. Also there is an option to auto-create the contact in CRM and link to this newly created case.
2. Link new case exclusively to Account or Contact based on configurable settings: In Spring release of the email to case, the email sender of incoming email is matched against a contact in CRM and if they are found then the newly created case is linked to the parent account of the contact. If parent account is not found then the case is linked to a contact. So cases are sometimes linked to contact or sometimes to account.
With the IOTAP email to case: you can configure this settings to link a case exclusively to the contact or exclusively to the parent account of the contact based on your case management process.
3. Email Spam protection: We all know that the support addresses like support@ or help@ get a lot of spam. If you do not have a mechanism to filter this spam then you will end up with lot of junk cases.
In IOTAP email to case , you can not only specify the domains and email list that you would like to exclude from case creation but also configure the keywords that would be matched with the email subject (like out-of-office, undeliverable, etc.) and filtered out.
4. Email loop protection : if email sender also has a built-in email to case set-up then this may result an infinite loop of emails and cases.
IOTAP email to case has a built-in mechanism to detect and break such loops.
5. Link an incoming email to existing case based on Case Number in email subject : Microsoft email to case uses smart matching technique to identify if incoming email is part of communication of existing case. This is not a fool proof mechanism (as customers most of the times modify the email subject) and this may result in duplicate cases in CRM.
IOTAP email to case in addition to smart-matching also provides a very effective "case number search" algorithm, which searches the case number present anywhere in email subject to all cases logged in CRM. This way even when customer modifies the email subject (but still has case number somehere in email subject), the add-on will correctly identify the email as part of communication regarding an existing case (and no duplicate case will be created).
6. Copy contents of email body to Case description : Microsoft email to case does not copy the email body content to case. IOTAP email to case will strip the HTML tags from the email body and copy the contents to the case description for easy reading.
7. Copy attachments to the case: Microsoft email to case does not copy the attachments to the case.
IOTAP email to case allows copying the attachment to the case as well as there is an option to remove the attachment from email (if needed).
8. Automatic Case Owner assignment : Microsoft email to case: provides Routing rule sets in order to set the case owner based on particular condition.
IOTAP email to case: in addition to out-of-box "Routing rule sets" also provides number of different algorithms to automatically set the owner of the newly created case. For example: round robin assignment of cases, assignment of cases to account\contact owner of the linked case, assignment of cases to preferred user for account\contact owner of the linked case.
9. Email notifications on new case creation or new communication received regarding an existing case : Microsoft email to case provides a configurable email template for sending an auto-response to sender of email on case creation.
IOTAP email to case: provides 2 sets of notification options: External notification: provides a configurable email template for sending an auto-response to sender with an option to have the CC recipient as the owner of this newly created case. This is helpful, because the support person in CC… can then directly reply to the sender of the email and the email chain can continue. Internal notification: provides a configurable email template for sending auto-response to your team when a new case is created (with direct URL to the case record in CRM) or new communication is received regarding an existing case.
10. Event logging : IOTAP email to case provides a very detailed event logging which can help you diagonise any anomaly easily. We have some customers who use more than 20 different incoming support queues and are constantly bombarded with emails…this event logging feature has been a life saver to easily troubleshoot any issues and take corrective steps immediately.
Below is a tabular comparison between CRM 2013 email to case and IOTAP email to casesolution:
Functionality – Email to Case
|
Microsoft
|
IOTAP
|
Creating case from email received from unknown senders by creating new contacts in CRM &
linking to the case |
√
|
√
|
Creating case from email received from unknown senders by linking to a dummy account \ contact
(option to auto-create case in CRM without the need to create a new contact) |
√
| |
Linking new case exclusively to Account or exclusively to Contact based on configurable settings
|
√
| |
Email Spam protection (ability to detect configurable keywords in email subject and stop creation of the case)
|
√
| |
Email Loop protection
|
√
| |
Link an email to an existing case by using CRM smart matching technique
|
√
|
√
|
Link an email to an existing case based on case number present in email subject
(smart matching is not very effective in detecting follow-up emails) |
√
| |
Ability to re-open an existing case if email is received regarding it
|
√
|
√
|
Copy contents of email body to case description
|
√
| |
Copy attachments from email to case notes (and optional ability to remove the attachments from the email)
|
√
| |
Case Owner Assignment using Routing Rules
|
√
|
√
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Case Owner Assignment Options- Round robin, Account\Contact Owner, Account\Contact Preferred User
|
√
| |
Auto-Response email notification to Customer on case creation (based on configurable email template)
|
√
|
√
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Auto-Response email notification to Customer marking the Case owner in CC on case creation
(so that the respective case owner could receive the notification too) |
√
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Email Template selection
|
√
|
√
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Detailed event logging from email received to sending an auto-response to customer for easy diagnosis
of any anomaly (essential tool for trouble-shooting) |
√
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Microsoft has done a good job by bringing email to case creation as a part of standard functionality in CRM. However if you find certain gaps mentioned above as critical or good-to-have then feel free to try the email to case add-on from IOTAP store.
CRM Dynamics is great platform to build CRM solutions for small business to enterprise organization. However to enhance the platform, add-ons from different partners provide a great way to improve the user experience and improve productivity. Check out the various add-ons that you can purchase from our online store:
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