ServiceDesk 4.7.132 Update 04/06/16

Major Upgrades in Full-Custom Source-of-Business Survey System:

First, let's be explicit in agreeing that it is super-important to have a solid and accurate understanding regarding which marketing investments are having what effect in bringing customers to you.  You really need to know this.  Where a particular marketing endeavor is producing tremendous "bang for the buck," you likely want to do emphasize that one more.  Where another is hardly performing in spite of large cost, you likely want to abandon it.  It's critical information. 

Since a long time ago, ServiceDesk has had what we sometimes call a "canned" source-of-business survey system (see Chapter 10.G in the ServiceDesk Manual).  It's structure is pre-defined, and all you must do to set it up is create the list of yellow-page ads that is applicable to your business at the time you are surveying (yes, it was created when most service companies looked primarily to the yellow pages as their primary source of new COD calls).  For the shape of the world in which it was developed, this system provides superb structure and analytics, all pre-built and assembled for you (well, except for your list of yellow-page ads). 

But the world changed.  Service businesses began using several advertising mechanisms that our "canned" survey system did not contemplate (most especially, of course, the internet).  Around eight years ago (see notes under release of Ver. 4.3.94, below), instead of seeking to modify our "canned" system to make it accept every new possible variation and nuance, we decided to build a new system (as an alternative to the still-existing "canned" one) that offers complete, unbridled customizability, and while still permitting a hierarchical query structure (i.e., depending on the answer to one question, it can lead to a different set of sub-questions, and depending on what's answered there, it can lead to another new sub-set, etc.). 

Regardless, while robust in its core, this new, Full-Custom Source-Of-Business Survey system has been somewhat bare-bones in terms of what's offered on its periphery.  It has not, for example, offered any built-in analytics on survey results, other than just providing you with raw-numbers regarding the quantity of hits in answer to each survey question (and even there it's been an un-augmented Excel spreadsheet that provides such info, which (and at least absent further analysis) is quite less than exciting on its face.  Our thinking had been, in exchange for our triumph in having provided you with full and complete flexibility at the core, you may need to perform the final and ultimate analytics on your own. 

Recently (upon talking with a client in need), I decided it was long past time for us to finally beef-up this Full-Custom Source-Of-Business Survey system.  Here is a list of present improvements:

1. The Exported Results-Tally Report now includes not just the quantity of hits-in-answer per query.  It also includes a figure indicating the amount of revenue earned from jobs which, when surveyed at the outset, resulted in a hit on that answer. To state it more simply, it's now not just quantity that's reported; it's now revenue too. 

2.  In regard to both quantity and revenue, the Exported Results-Tally now includes not just raw numbers, but also does some underlying math to provide you with added columns that indicate what is the average per-day rate as applicable to hits on each item (both quantity and revenue) and what is the percent-of-total-overall as attributable to each. 

3. Since results data is now stored in a much improved (more information-dense) manner, it is now possible for you to conduct your survey continuously, yet report on only a particular, date-defined sub-period.  (Previously the Exported Results-Tally was inclusive to whatever actual/total period as was included in a particular survey setup.) 

4.  Since it now contains six results columns (as compared to the prior just one), the Exported Results-Tally now also has informative column headers, plus an overall header at top indicating the date range included, and other elements of enhanced formatting to make the information more obvious and attractive. 

5. When a CSR has been prompted to conduct the survey (this happens when scheduling a new job) and is mid-way into it, then suddenly realizes that a prior question was answered incorrectly, he/she can now hit Esc to re-start the sequence.  He/she can also re-initiate and replace a prior-completed survey, so long as doing so before the Job/Sale transition (just right-click on the Callsheet's Criteria button; this has always been a method to manually initiate the survey queries, if not wanting to otherwise wait for the auto-prompt). 

6. Many businesses receive jobs via automation (whether via SBDL SPDL, LGDL or SSDL), in which case (at least most typically) a CSR will see a Callsheet with appointment info already filled in, and will do the Job-Sale transition without ever having typed into the Callsheet's Appointment box (which is the normal trigger for invoking the survey).  Until now, these instances of incoming jobs have escaped the Full-Custom survey.  Now they are captured too.  Specifically, when a user does the Job-Sale, the system looks to see if a survey was completed.  If not, the survey query invokes at that time.

7. If you choose now to use a .csv alternate as your source definition file, it no longer must be direct-designated in lieu of the more proper .xls instance.  It can simply be an added file, while you maintain designation of the .xls instance as your actual source.  Each station, if seeing a same-path and otherwise same-name .csv alternate, will use that alternate for the purpose of loading the survey structure for survey-taking purposes.  Thus, each station will load much faster, and there is no concern with non-Excel equipped stations being able to load.  Even better, there is no need to switch the Settings form based designation back from .csv to .xls when wanting to export a Result-Tally report, because it should simply be set and always stay as a .xls designation there. 

8. There is no longer a concern with different stations "seeing" the source file via different absolute paths.  So long as you place your source file in the NetData folder on your server (which, really, is the only logical place), ServiceDesk will behind-the-scenes appropriately interpret that path for each station.   

The applicable mini-manual has also been updated to reflect current changes.  We think you'll find these improvements finally make our Full-Custom Source-Of-Business Survey system into the super robust tool that you have wanted and needed.  

Most of you enjoy doing direct claims submissions to ServiceBench and ServicePower.  There is no need to first save a claim file and then upload it.  Instead, ServiceDesk directly uploads the claim for you.  Boda bing, boda boom: it's done! 

We also had direct claims submissions working with LG between 2008 and 2010.  However, in that latter year LG changed to its then-new GSFS system, which lacked the ability to receive direct submissions.  Since then, y'all (at least if you are an LG an servicer) have been using the comparatively old-fashioned file-upload system for your LG claims. 

Well, now you can be fully modern again. 

A little while back, LG finally added ability in its GSFS system to accept direct claims, and with this release of ServiceDesk you may employ that ability.  Just make the appropriate pick when going to transmit your claim.  

Formerly, these reports (Alt-F3) had a field to indicate the amount of revenue received in labor on each job, but not the amount received for parts and merchandise.  That added field is now included.