You are here:
How Proactive Customer Operations Works
Proactive Customer Operations connects customer service and IT service when customers report a disruption or IT identifies one first. Relate reported cases to the underlying incident, identify other impacted customers, and send updates without waiting for them to contact support. Use the same customer impact and communication workflow for planned changes.
Required Editions
| Available in: Lightning Experience |
| Available for an additional cost in: Enterprise, Performance, and Unlimited Editions with Service Cloud and Agentforce IT Service. |
Proactive Customer Operations supports reactive and proactive workflows. In both workflows, the IT team manages the underlying incident, while customer service reps manage customer cases and interactions. The workflows differ in whether a customer reports the disruption first or the IT team identifies the disruption before customers contact support.
When Customers Report a Service Disruption
In the reactive workflow, a customer reports a service disruption and a customer service rep creates a case. The case identifies the customer's account and contact and, when available, the affected asset.
The Service Assistant analyzes the case and recommends up to three active incidents, ranked by relevance. The service rep reviews the recommendations and decides whether to relate the case to one of them. If none of the recommended incidents is correct, the rep creates an incident from the case or relates the case to an active incident manually.
Multiple customers can report the same underlying issue. Relating their cases to one incident gives the IT team a linked-case count and a consolidated view of the accounts and contacts that reported the disruption. Customer service reps can review the incident's status, service-level agreement (SLA), and summary from each case.
To relate cases using AI-based incident recommendations, see Relate a Case to an Incident with the Service Assistant. To create an incident from a case or select an incident manually, see Relate a Case to an Incident Manually.
Identify and Notify Impacted Customers Proactively
In the proactive workflow, the IT team identifies a service disruption before customers contact support, or plans a change that affects service availability. An IT fulfiller associates the affected configuration items with the incident or change request. Salesforce uses Configuration Management Database (CMDB) relationships to identify the impacted assets and the accounts and contacts that own them.
Impact analysis also identifies customers who haven't opened cases, extending the customer impact beyond the accounts and contacts found through linked cases. The impacted account count helps the IT team understand the scope of the disruption and prioritize its response.
After impact analysis identifies the impacted contacts, an IT fulfiller with required access sends a broadcast communication by email to inform customers about the disruption or planned change. Proactive updates help customers understand that the issue is known and reduce the need to open cases. If customers still report the disruption, customer service reps relate their cases to the existing incident.
To review the customer impact of an incident, see View Customers Impacted by an Incident or Change Request. To notify impacted customers, see Notify Impacted Customers with a Broadcast Communication.
Example: A Shared Infrastructure Disruption
A managed infrastructure provider operates a regional gateway that supports assets owned by several business customers. In a customer-reported scenario, one customer opens a case about a connectivity issue. A customer service rep relates the case to the gateway incident. When other customers report the same issue, customer service reps relate their cases to that incident too.
In an IT-identified scenario, the IT team creates the gateway incident before customers report the disruption. CMDB relationships identify impacted accounts, contacts, and assets, including customers that haven't opened cases. An IT fulfiller with required access sends those customers a broadcast communication while the IT team works to restore service.
