Implementing Carrier-Grade Ticketing with Salesforce

Out-of-the-box Salesforce Service Cloud is an excellent ticketing system but — in our opinion — does not match enterprise- or carrier-grade systems like ServiceNow or BMC Remedy. This is especially true for cloud and communications services (data center, SaaS, storage, SD-WAN and others) with complex underlying element structures, multiple underlying vendors, complex SLA plans, etc.

However, the key benefit of Service Cloud is that it’s already integrated into Salesforce. With some configuration and adaptation, it can meet the standards required for carrier- and enterprise-grade ticketing.

This post outlines key steps, based on our experience, to elevate Service Cloud to the carrier- and enterprise-grade level.

Goals, Support Process, Metrics and KPIs

Before jumping into implementation, it’s essential to define your business goals, determine how they will be measured, and establish the support process required to achieve them. Key questions to address at this stage include:

  • Business Objectives: What are the primary objectives? For example, reducing Time to Resolution (TTR), improving prioritization of high value customers, lowering support costs per issue, or other specific goals?
  • Metrics: Which metrics will be used to evaluate whether the goals have been achieved?
  • Process: What support processes will be implemented to ensure these goals are met?

This is a strategic step, essential for ensuring long-term success. We recommend starting by identifying key metrics and KPIs and implementing them on Salesforce cases. Typical metrics include:

  • Time to Assign: The time elapsed from when a customer submits a request or issue to when it is assigned to a specific team member or department.
  • Time to Work Started: The time between when an issue is assigned to a team member and when they actively begin working on it.
  • Time to First Response: The time it takes for a team member to provide the initial non-automated response to a customer after their issue is received.
  • First Contact Resolution (FCR): The percentage of customer issues resolved during the first interaction, indicating support team effectiveness.
  • Time to Resolution (TTR): The time to fully resolve a customer issue.
  • Customer Satisfaction: Measured as CSAT or NPS (see this blog for more information on measuring customer satisfaction).

More advanced metrics may include the number of handoffs, customer touchpoints, time spent waiting for customer input versus effective work time, time allocation per support team member, and more.

ImportantImplementing case metrics as direct data points on cases is critical to ensure they can be easily used in list views, dashboards, and reports without requiring additional transformations.

Initial Case Assignments and Handoffs

Initial case/ticket assignments in trouble ticketing refer to the process of assigning incoming issues or requests to the appropriate team or individual. Assignments can be based on agent loads, availability, required skill sets, request types and other factors.

The process is typically measured using the Time-to-Assign metric, defined as the interval between when an issue is reported (i.e., a ticket is created) and its initial assignment to an agent. Since Time-to-Assign directly affects the overall Time-to-Resolve — a key customer metric — it is critical to perform case assignments as quickly as possible.

Salesforce Omni-Channel is one option for case assignments (which can also be implemented in various other ways); however, fine-tuning requires extra coding and techniques such as case enrichment.

Handoffs in trouble ticketing refer to the process of re-assigning a ticket or a case from one agent or team to another during its lifecycle (i.e., when a ticket or case is still unresolved). Handoffs occur when, for instance:

  • The issue requires skills beyond the current owner’s expertise,
  • As a result of ticket escalation,
  • Agent load and availability (e.g. shift change).

Poorly designed handoff procedures can lead to resolution delays and negatively affect customer satisfaction and SLA compliance.

Again, Omni-Channel and Salesforce process flows can be helpful in implementing handoffs, but complex scenarios may require custom coding. Additionally, generating detailed handoff reports – such as tracking case ownership duration, transit time, number of handoffs, and more may involve additional implementation effort.

Information Integration / 360° Visibility

Once a case is assigned, the first step for a support agent is to gather all the information necessary to resolve the issue. This data may include:

  • Customer Details: Who is the customer? Is the customer paying the bills?
  • Service Information: Which service is affected? What is the service status? Is there an open maintenance window on the service?
  • Open Orders: Are there any open orders affecting the service, such as a configuration change?
  • Root Cause Analysis: Is the issue caused internally or by a third party (e.g., a vendor)?

Delays in data collection consume valuable time, increasing resolution costs and extending the time-to-resolve, which negatively impacts customer satisfaction.

By consolidating ticketing, account management, and service management, support teams can accelerate access to information as well as implement a case enrichment process, which will automatically aggregate all the required information on a case and present it in a single pane of glass to the agent.

A screenshot of a case with service, product and account information (service MRR, account MRR, and others)
A case with service, product and account information (service MRR, account MRR, and others)

Data Quality

The importance of data quality is often overlooked, but poor data quality can negatively impact customer support and prevent providers from realizing the benefits of highly-sophisticated ticketing systems.

From a business perspective – and in any digital transformation projects, not just ticketing – ensuring data quality should be prioritized or at least initiated as soon as possible.

For actionable strategies on improving data quality, explore this three-step approach detailed in this post.

Multi-Channel Customer Support

Multi-channel customer support is a customer service strategy that provides support through multiple communication channels, such as web, chat, voice, and email. These channels share the same underlying database, allowing customers to choose their preferred channel at any time.

Salesforce offers key components to support a multi-channel strategy, including Email-to-Case, Service Cloud, Experience Cloud, and more. However, achieving a truly seamless multi-channel experience often requires significant development, implementation and systems orchestration effort. This is especially true for legacy systems, such as customer portals built using traditional programming languages outside Salesforce or critical information housed in external systems like billing platforms.

A screenshot of case view in the Nextian Customer Portal
Nextian Customer Portal – Case View

Workflows

Workflows are essential in the trouble ticketing process because they define the steps and automation needed to manage, track, and resolve tickets efficiently. Here, by “workflows” we mean not general case workflow determined by case status like created, assigned, acknowledged, resolved, but additional workflows determining steps to resolve a particular issue type.

Salesforce provides a workflow design system and supports task-based execution, enabling organizations to customize workflows for various needs. However, implementing workflows for trouble-ticketing may require considerable effort.

Public and Private Comments

Most cloud and communications providers utilize case or ticket comments during issue resolution:

  • Private comments are visible only to the internal teams and facilitate internal communication.
  • Public comments are visible to customers across multiple-support channels and often trigger email or text notifications.

Comments in Salesforce can be implemented in several ways, including Salesforce Chatter, off-the-shelf AppExchange extensions, or custom development. The choice of implementation depends largely on integration requirements with other support channels, particularly the self-care portal.

One important consideration is the limitation on the number of external emails (notifications) that Salesforce can send. For organizations handling large volumes of emails, integrating Salesforce with external email services may be necessary to avoid exceeding these limits.

Self-Care Portal Integrations

Having a web or self-care portal as a support channel is essential in today’s competitive landscape. A well-designed customer portal typically supports the full range of ticketing operations, including:

  • Opening a case,
  • Updating and providing comments,
  • Escalating a case, and,
  • Closing a case.

Support portals often include dashboards and other views to enhance customer experience.

When using Salesforce Experience Cloud for portals, adding ticketing to self-care is relatively straightforward. However, if different portal technology is in place, additional integration is required.

AI Integration

While at Nextian we are strong proponents of “human first” approach, we believe that AI has a lot of applications augmenting customer support, such as:

  • Case routing to the most qualified technicians depending on problem type, product, required skills, and more.
  • Root cause analysis to help support technicians shorten overall issue resolution time, especially for complex services involving multiple elements.
  • Resolution suggestions to search for potential problem remedies.
  • Response generation. AI can be used to help generate support responses (such as case updates) similar to using traditional templates, but enabling more customized message content based on the case information.

The choice of which AI provider to use with Salesforce is a broad topic explored in detail in this post.

A screenshot of generating customer case response with OpenAI in Salesforce
Nextian OpenAI Connector: Generating customer case response with OpenAI in Salesforce

Conclusions

Customer support is a cornerstone of delivering cloud and communications services, with a direct impact on customer satisfaction, churn, and customer lifetime value (LTV).

Salesforce Service Cloud is a powerful system; however, in our view, it requires some configuration and customization to meet enterprise- and carrier-grade ticketing standards. The effort to customize and adapt Salesforce can be well worth the result: a unified customer support system featuring:

  • Multi-Channel Communication,
  • Automated Case Assignments and Handoffs,
  • Issue Resolution Workflows,
  • AI Support,
  • Accurate Reporting & Analytics, and more.

Nextian brings extensive experience building and enhancing customer support utilizing Salesforce, Service Cloud as well as integrating third-party ticketing systems with Salesforce. We also offer out-of-the-box network monitoring integration with CRM/Service Cloud to improve customer experience by bringing network and infrastructure status and performance information into the CRM.

Contact us today to find out how we can help you!

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