Database Reference
In-Depth Information
Management allowing real-time, intelligent cross sell recommendations, retention effort, and tar-
geted marketing messages.
SAP CRM Interaction Center supports all scenarios of customer interactions for order and
follow-up through any of the interaction channels like service center, interaction center, and the
Web chat. Interaction center agents can create new sales orders or pull up existing sales orders to
provide customers with up-to-date shipping and delivery information or even make a change to
the order. Agents can also create quotations or convert an existing quotation into an order. The
SAP CRM processes are also integrated with SAP ERP allowing orders and quotations to flow
freely between the two systems. Agents can create orders in SAP CRM using the interaction cen-
ter and then replicate the orders to SAP ERP. Alternatively, they can manage leads, opportunities,
and questions in SAP CRM but then create the actual orders in back-end SAP ERP applications
(obviating the need to use the sales order capabilities of SAP CRM). Thus, the entire order man-
agement process, including pricing, could be handled using SAP ERP logic, but accessed by the
agents through the interaction center.
SAP CRM Interaction Center can help companies to provide world-class customer service
via customer-preferred interaction channel. Interaction center agents have access to a customer's
complete information and history and can quickly pull up an order or trouble ticket to provide
the customer with the most up-to-date status. Agents can also search for product information to
answer customer questions. For technical issues or troubleshooting, agents can reach a knowledge
base of solutions and knowledge articles and white papers; solutions can also be automatically
recommended to the agent based on the problem classification or product information. Agents
can provide customers with the information they need (product information, solutions, and other
documents) through customer-preferred communication channel like e-mail or the Web chat. In
case the customer has an issue with the shipment or an invoice, the agent can create a complaint
on customer's behalf and generate follow-on tasks such as return, credit memos, or free-of-charge
replacement deliveries. Finally, regarding service issues that require installation, maintenance, or
repair, agents can schedule appointments for the customer based on the customer's service contract
and preferred dates and times.
8.4.2.3 Shared Service Centers
Instead of having, for example, several regional IT help desks and employee interaction centers, a
company can consolidate its operations to a single (operationally low cost) location and provide
centralized HR and IT services. The resulting efficiency gains and cost savings are not only on
account of economies of scale but also because of the business process re-engineering and elimina-
tion of redundancies. These companies centralize their back office functions such as HR, IT man-
agement, finance and accounting, facilities management, and travel management to save money
and optimize resources.
SAP CRM Interaction Center provides an out-of-the-box solution for both IT help desks
and employee interaction centers (EIC). The IT help desk solution leverages several features of
the service ticket business transaction that were designed specifically for IT help desk scenarios,
including multilevel categorization of trouble tickets, automatic suggestion of solutions based
on categorization, an auto-complete feature for easy-to-resolve but frequently occurring issues
such as password resets and an escalate feature for unresolved tickets. SAP also provides out-of-
the-box solution for EIC that allows HR professionals to provide consistent and personalized
services.
