Siebel Systems Inc. announced Tuesday the release of customer service capabilities for its UpShot Edition hosted CRM service, some capabilities of which will carry over to the companys future go-to market service offering.
Siebel completed the acquisition of UpShot earlier this month. The San Mateo, Calif., company plans to merge UpShots hosted customer relationship management service with its own Siebel CRM OnDemand service by the second quarter of next year.
Keith Raffel, former chairman of UpShot and now vice president at Siebel, said that “elements” of this release of UpShot Edition, such as e-mail management, will carry over to the merged product.
“Theres nothing good thats going to be left out of the merged product,” said Raffel. “Its going to be the best of both worlds.”
For now, UpShot Edition customers get new customer service and support capabilities to add to the its sales and marketing services.
Case management is a key feature in this release, with support for managing customer service requests; gaining visibility into customer information and activity, from initial lead identification through customer support; directing cases to individuals or team queues; and accessing the product catalog and specific products a customer has purchased.
Theres also support for workflow and access control, including use of workflow rules to match business processes and control of access to customer issues.
E-mail management capabilities allow users to track incoming and outgoing customer communications. Theres also support for customer surveys.
Customers meanwhile will have access to up-to-the-minute case status. Other features include search capabilities and reporting tools to identify common support issues, measure support processes and determine customer needs, Siebel officials said.
“We continue to add new features,” said Raffel, who reiterated that Siebel will continue to support UpShot customers. “Were listening to customers and giving them what they want.”