Salesforce’s email-to-case is a fickle tool. It takes a large step out of the process of case creation, but adds some other obstacles to overcome.
Benfits:
- All case information is in one central location
- All issues are visible and automatically tracked
- Managers have increased visibility into SLA Agreements and Turn around Time
- Better reporting on case age, owner load, and totals
- Fewer systems to manage (-email)
Drawbacks:
- There is a definite learning curve in Salesforce
- Systems may not integrate fully
- Extra time spent parsing email information
So although email-to-case can create efficiency, companies must look at the costs as well. Many assume that enabling the feature will save time and money, but my thought is that it needs to be enabled in combination with “email from case.”
Email from case refers to instructing users to handle every case completely inside of Salesforce. At the moment maybe they work out of their Outlook inbox and update the case object as they complete steps to resolve the case. Unfortunately, enabling Email-to-case doesn’t solve the main issue – that they are using two systems. Even after email-to-case is enabled, they may still be looking at their Outlook or worse replying from their personal emails and tracking nothing in the Salesforce org.
Sending emails from the case object and managing everything within the tool may present some resistance at first since it is so foreign (and probably inefficient sounding) for most users. However, to see a real gain in efficiency and effectiveness, anyone in Salesforce should be maximizing their use of the tool.
So the final recommendation is to look at the full lifecycle of your cases when trying out new features in Salesforce so that your company can be sure the decision is worth the pain.