What are Work Items and how do you use them?

Overview

Work Items are used for both Prospects and Customers, but in this article I will just refer to Customers for sake of brevity.

Customers need work done, such as sending them product information, explaining their quiz results, fixing problems with shopping cart, fixing billing issues, fixing shipping issues, etc.  Employees need a way to know that Customers have requested work to be done and need a way to track the progress of those requests.  Generically, we call these requests Work Items.

These Work Items are mostly triggered from Call-to-Actions in marketing emails, from the website or other interactions the customer has with the various Dr. Berg websites. Typically, the customer will click a button which shows a Request Form that they fill out and submit. 

The CRM is programmed to run a scheduled update to pull these records from other Dr. Berg websites into the CRM. The CRM then automatically turns these requests into Work Items that can be assigned to the correct employee for handling.

Alternatively, if the customer calls or sends an email directly to the CRM system, the CRM user can manually create a work item (Support Ticket type, or Product Info Query type, or others as set in Admin/ Manage Work Item Types page), from that verbal or emailed request.

How It Works

1. Access:

   1. Automatically created Work Items would be loaded to the CRM following a scheduled process and assigned to the Reps based on predefined routing logic. The Work Items will then show up in the Assigned Rep's Inbox:

      1. If this is a New Lead (meaning this contact is not already in our database) then the system will automatically create a Contact and load the Work Item to such Contact. Work Item will then show up in the Unread section of the Inbox.

      2. If this Work Item is from an Existing Contact (meaning this contact is already in our database) then the Work Item will show up in the Unread section of the Inbox.

      3. Note: Since the quantity of Work Items, especially those from quiz takers in Main Websites, is significantly large for each Rep everyday, we do not want this to overshadow other important interactions such as missed calls, incoming emails, SMS. Thus, for "All Entities" filter in the Inbox, the Unread and Read would only show communication interactions (calls, emails, sms). The User needs to select "Work Items" to see the list of Work Items assigned to them. Moreover, there is a filter applied for this view that by default, only the High priority Work Item Types would be showed up. The User needs to select other filter to see their needed Work Items in the list then.

   2. From the Inbox, you can navigate to the Customer's Detail page or directly to the Customer's Work Item. From the screenshot below, you can see there are two hyperlinks in each inbound message: Work Item hyperlink, and Customer hyperlink.
      

      1. If you click the "Body Type Quiz" or "Health Evaluation Quiz" hyperlinks in this example, you will be redirected directly to those specific Work Items.

      2. If you click "Sarah Bays", "Abdulrahman Alz", or "Cathy Slater" hyperlinks in this example, you will be redirected directly to those specific Customer Detail pages.

   3. From the Contact Detail page, the Rep can view the list of associated Work Items as well as each Work Item details from WORK ITEM tab
      

2. Design: Basic design of a Work Item is displayed through the Work Item tile (in the list) and Work Item detail section, which is a two-tab panel for viewing information and managing the Work Item.

   1. Work Item tiles: the left section in the WORK ITEM tab of a customer. It lists the Work Items associated to that specific Customer, with some basic information, such as: Work Item Type, Description, Created Date Time, Callback Date Time, Assignee, and Status.
      

   2. Once a Work Item is selected, you will notice that the left border of the tile will be highlighted, to indicate it is selected. The highlight color will match the status-color code. In the above example, it is highlighted with the color green, which is the color-code for the status of New. Also, by selecting the tile, the detail section to the right of the tile would display the following corresponding information:

      1. Work Item Action: from this tab, the user can view the history of the status changes, as well as reviewing all of the interactions that have occurred between the CRM User and the customer, related to this Work Item. Therefore, this tab is also used to initiate interactions with the customer, such as sending emails and/or SMS messages, making phone calls, setting reminders or taking notes.
         

      2. Work Item Reference: this tab provides the Rep with personalized and specific information relating to the Work Item. The reference information is specific for the different Work Item Types, so it should provide relevant information the Rep will need to resolve the Work Item. Following is the sample reference of a Body Type Quiz Work Item reference
         

3. Manage Work Items:

   1. By default, the Work Items list only shows the active Work Items. If you click the filter icon, you can see the filtering options. To the right of the filter icon, you will see two numbers: Number of Filtered Work Items and Number of Total Work Items.
      

   2. The Rep can use the filter function to see a specific list of Work Items. Available filtering criteria includes Work Item Categories and Work Item Statuses

   3. The Rep can manually created a Work Item, using the create icon.

   4. The Rep can update the information of the Work Item such as Description, Assignee and Status by clicking on edit icon in the bottom right corner of each Work Item tile.

4. Work Item General Proposed Process: Depending on the Work Item type as well as practical working scenario, the process to handle a Work Item might vary. However, the general one would be

   1. Newly created Work Item would be in Status of NEW

   2. Once the Rep starts to work on the Work Item, change the Status to IN PROGRESS
      At this point, the Rep would be analyzing the information and request in the Work Item then work on contacting the Prospect/ Customer for consultation/ feedback or other assistance.
      NOTE: if the Rep needs to review Contact's Shop site related information, click SYNC WITH MAGENTO button in Status & Marketing panel to get the most updated information pulled over to the CRM.

   3. While waiting for the Contact's reply, the Rep can change the Work Item Status to PENDING, indicating this state of the Work Item.
      Note: Contact might call back or send SMS/ Email to the CRM regarding the request for certain Work Item, these interactions will show up in the Rep Inbox as general Contact interaction. If it deems that the interaction should be related to a specific Work Item, the Rep should add this interaction to that Work Item, which then moves the interaction to the Work Item's Action tab. By doing so, all interactions regarding certain Work Item can be kept under such Work Item for later review or reference.

   4. If the contact is pleased with the consultation and does not have further request, the Rep can update the Work Item Status to RESOLVED, indicating that the issue the contact encountered has been successfully handled.

   5. If there is product purchase request, the Rep can change the Status to SELLING for following up with this request. After the Order is created for this, the Rep can change the Work Item Status to SOLD, indicating such result.

   6. In case there is no incoming interaction/ feedback from the contact for a long time OR there is other reason preventing the Work Item from being completed and nothing can be done for that, the Rep can update the Status to CLOSED then.

NOTE: Detailed description and explanation of each specific Work Item Type used in the CRM will be provided in other training articles.