Supporting customers is a necessary part of doing business in today’s
world. And the ubiquity of the internet means customers wish to seek
support via multiple methods. Fortunately, with advancements in technol-
ogy, organizations can offer high levels of customer support at a fraction
of previous costs.
SugarCRM allows users to better manage their customer service and
support operations in many ways. SugarCRM users can address inbound
customer communications via multiple channels. SugarCRM also allows
users to centrally store and manage important support information in a
core Knowledgebase module. Customers can also be offered self-service
options via SugarCRM’s strong web portal technology offerings. And call
center manager as well as other support leads can gain greater visibility
into how the company is responding to customers through strong report-
ing tools that offer out of the box insight to service operations.

Introduction
Organizations of all sizes have one thing in common - customers. While
the ideal scenario is to have 1005 happy customers 100% of the time, the
reality is that customers can and will have issues with your products or
services. Meeting customer support needs has generally been consid-
ered a necessary cost of business, one that rises gradually as your
business grows in kind. But with an intelligent customer support software
package, fully integrated with other customer relationship management
(CRM) functions, supporting customers can be a less costly endeavor.
Customer support falls into many categories, and many activities can be
considered customer support processes. For example, simply respond-
ing to a curious customer’s email can constitute a support experience.
Answering questions about a new product via the telephone, or explain-
ing how to install or troubleshoot a product are common support activities.
And allowing customers to find answers to their questions in special areas
of a corporate web site is also a common customer support issue.
These activities seem diverse in nature, and cover a wide range of access
points and data types utilized in the interaction. Without a single, central
platform to house all of these activities, it becomes difficult or impossible to
offer a consistent support experience to customers. But when organizations
leverage SugarCRM as a core support platform, they can better manage all
of their customer interactions, and create a unified face to the customer to
better address their needs in a cost-effective and complete manner.
Multi-Channel Case Management
The core of SugarCRM’s support capabilities reside in the Case manage-
ment module. This module allows users to see a detailed view of customer
requests and responses. These can be phone calls, emails or other types
of exchanges – all tracked and easy to view within the Sugar user inter-
face. This allows not only a centralized area for housing multi-channel
communications with the customer, but can help bridge the gap between
sales and support. Since sales agents can see into case history, they can

see if a support issue has not been resolved. This insures that sales rep-
resentatives are not calling on unhappy customers, or can make sure that
priority customers receive top notch service by simply checking their sta-
tus and taking appropriate action if a case is unresolved.
Inside the case management system is also an escalation engine. This
allows users to better manage more difficult customer issues. If a cus-
tomer calls into a call center, or sends an email that cannot be easily
addressed by a support agent, they can escalate that service issue to a
more qualified agent with the click of the mouse. These escalations can
be tracked and measured, which in turn allows call centers to see how
many complex calls or emails are coming in to the company. This may
prompt staffing changes in the support staff, or signify a more pressing
product issue or other support trend that can be addressed before ser-
vice levels hit critical mass.
A major part of the multi-channel case management capabilities in
SugarCRM focus on handling large volumes of inbound emails.
SugarCRM’s email management tools allow support managers to better
route inbound emails to the right support agents, using simple workflow
tools and business rules. Also, the email management tools automatically
attach customer emails to the customer account record, which allows for
a more holistic view of customer interactions over time. The email tools
also allow users to give priority to certain email types.
In Sugar 5.0, we have added an all new email client. This new feature
allows support users to manage all of the inbound email directly inside of
SugarCRM. Therefore, agents can handle inbound requests and other
support tasks without changing from one application screen to the next.
This increases productivity as well as user adoption of the CRM system.

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SugarCRM Executive Brief
Centralize Knowledge
Part of providing a consistent and satisfying service experience for cus-
tomers is having the right information available to every support individual.
SugarCRM provides users with a central Knowledgebase Module to better centralize important corporate information. The Knowledgebase can
store product information, company data, as well as other articles geared
towards supporting customers such as troubleshooting best practices or
previous issue resolution processes that have proven most effective.
The Knowledgebase Module can also support frequently asked question
(FAQ) sheets, that can aid support representatives handle common prob-
lems, or the FAQ can be pushed out to users via the web portal (see below).
The information stored in the Knowledgebase can be easily accessed by
users through full-text search, tagging, categorization and approvals. The
interface itself is much like a Wiki, which is easy to navigate for users.
The SugarCRM Knowledgebase Module allows users to create a central-
ized data repository, which both internal employees and customers can
access. Users can search for relevant content simply and quickly. The
Knowledgebase can be branded to match your corporate web properties.
To better control the data being added to the Knowledgebase, and to
insure that all the information that may touch a customer is consistent
with corporate messaging, administration rules can be applied. A content
staging process can be easily put in place so new material is reviewed by
a manager who approves and then posts the content for support agents
or customers to access.

Provide Self-Service
Multi-channel customer service can also equal lower cost support. This
can be managed through utilizing SugarCRM’s robust Self-Service Portal.
This tool allows users to enable their customers to perform tasks tradi-
tionally done by agents or other employees, all without picking up a
phone. Self-Service Portal provides your customers the ability to log a
new support issue, upload information to their account or access data
from the Knowledgebase, and receive status updates on their own sup-
port case tickets. Therefore, companies leveraging Self-Service Portal
can reduce inbound calls and emails and in turn service more customers
without adding head count inside their support organization.
The Portal also allows users to update their own account data if their
address or other contact information changes. This allows the CRM sys-
tem to have the most correct data and reduces data the time, effort and
costs associated with data cleansing of the CRM system. The Self-Service
Portal can also be used to communicate with customers. For example, a
simple to use newsletter subscription management tool is included in the
module. And, all of the activities of a customer visiting Self-Service Portal
can be tracked in the main Case Management module.
SugarCRM’s Self-Service portal allows users to expose data to custom-
ers for use in self-service scenarios. Customers can log new cases, read
FAQ sheets, or check case status, without picking up a phone – saving
themselves time and saving your organization money.

Gain Visibility into Support Operations
Without gaining a sharp picture of how well your support operation is run-
ning, you could be incurring unnecessary costs in staffing and other support
resources. SugarCRM offers users strong reporting tools out of the box that
provide support managers greater visibility into their operations to help
identify trouble areas and other trends that affect support operations.
Pre-built, easy to use reports roll up data stored in the case Management
system and provide insight into case resolutions. Users can drill down
into open cases based on such factors as time period, support represen-
tatives, priority and entitlement. These reports can determine the
effectiveness of certain agents or types of resolution methods. The reports
can also identify trouble spots, allowing support managers to prioritize
activities by agents accordingly.
The reporting tools in SugarCRM’s support module allow you to gain valu-
able insight into support activities. For example, this out of the box report
indicates the number of new cases logged per month, which can aid in
cost-effective agent scheduling and staffing.
The reporting capabilities also allow support staff to rank cases, insuring
that the most pressing cases are addressed first. The reports also allow
for management of service entitlements, so that customer service meets
any and all service level agreements.

Conclusions
Supporting customers does not have to be a high cost operation in your
business. By utilizing a CRM product like SugarCRM, you can decrease the
cost to serve in many ways. By adding more channels of communication,
you allow customers to gain information and answers without having to
pick up the phone for an expensive support call off the bat. Using the
Knowledgebase in SugarCRM allows organizations to centralize knowl-
edge and issue resolution information, which provides for higher first call
resolutions, as well as streamlined and more efficient support processes.
Enabling customers to initiate self-service sessions through SugarCRM’s
Self-Service Portal can eliminate the need to scale agents in a call center,
saving the support organization even more. And the built-in reporting
tools in the SugarCRM system allow for even greater savings. With the
deep business insight provided, support managers can more effectively
and efficiently staff their call centers or other support areas to meet actual
inbound volume and eliminate guesswork.
support module allow you to gain valuable
insight into support activities. For example,
this out of the box report indicates the
number of new cases logged per month,
which can aid in cost-effective agent
scheduling and staffing.