Keep customers coming back with follow-up services
Published: May 25, 2007
Return customers are the heart of any business. It is a lot easier to keep a customer than find a new one. The best time to schedule a future service activity is while the customer is still face-to-face with you, before they leave your store or shop.
As part of your checkout process, you can create a follow-up service activity in Microsoft CRM for anytime in the future. For example, if your business just completed an oil change for a customer, you can create a new service activity for another oil change six months from today. Using the Pane Assistant, you can create a follow-up service activity without even leaving the current service activity form.
A follow-up service activity captures only the required information: subject, service, and dates. It does not specify a resource to perform the activity. At regular intervals, you should check your Service Calendar for service activities without resources scheduled, and then call your customers to confirm and complete their follow-up service activities.
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Create a follow-up service activity
Before your customer leaves your business site, while you still have his or her service activity record open, you can create a follow-up service activity for him or her for a future date.
1. | In the open service activity, on the Actions toolbar, click Follow Up. The Form Assistant pane opens. |
2. | In the Activity List, select Service Activity. |
3. | Enter a Subject, and then select a Service. You do not have to select the same service. |
4. | To select a Start Time in the future, click the Calendar button, and then click the Month heading. The Month control for the Service Calendar opens. Select the month you want, and then select the specific date. To change the year, click the arrows on either side of the year heading. |
5. | Enter a Start Time and End Time. |
6. | Assign the follow-up activity to the person who will make the confirmation calls. |
7. | Click Save. Microsoft CRM creates a follow-up service activity for this customer with the status Pending and without a resource selected. The Service Calendar displays the service activity, but until you select a resource, the time is not available in the Service Calendar.
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Although this article is about creating a future service activity using the Pane Assistant after an on-site visit, you can use the same procedures to create quick follow-up tasks for cases, record a phone call to an account, or any other task related to a record.
Confirm and complete the follow-up service activity
Once or twice a month, check your Service Calendar for follow-up service activities without resources. Using the results of the search, you can contact the customer, confirm the service activity, and schedule a resource.
1. | In the Service Calendar, in the Type list, select Service Activity, and then in the view list, select All Service Activities. The list displays all service activities. |
2. | In the Calendar pane, click the month and year heading, and then select the month you want to view, and then click Month to view the entire month. |
3. | On the Actions toolbar, click Show Conflicts. All of the service activities with issues, such as no resources selected or conflicts with another service activity or an appointment, are displayed in the Service Calendar with a bold, red outline. |
4. | Double-click a service activity to open it. If there are issues with the service activity, an alert at the top of the form explains the issue. |
5. | To view the customer record, double-click the name of the customer. |
6. | Click Schedule to open the Schedule Service Activity form. |
7. | Based on your conversation with the customer, you can select additional search criteria, and then click Find Available Times.  Tip If you recorded your customer’s preferences in his or her customer record, you can view those preferences in the Form Assistant pane on the Administration tab. |
8. | Select an available time, and then click Schedule. |
9. | If you have an e-mail template set-up, click Send Direct E-mail and send a reminder e-mail. |
10. | Click Save and Close. |
A timely follow-up can make sure you don’t lose important customer contact opportunities. It can also help you keep your Service Calendar full and your business successful.
