Before it became synonymous with ‘Google it’, searching was how we all went about our business on our web browsers when a particular item needed some clarification or a certain question needed some answering. With regards to the Q-Suite, searching can be custom tailored to meet specific needs, as far as how data is entered in order to query the database with efficiency. Search templates hold these structures so let us take a bit of a look as to how and why you may want to use them.
The Q-Suite has a standard default search template that contains a basic set of fields that can be effective at retrieving customer lead records: Phone Number, First Name, Last Name, and Disposition. While this may be entirely sufficient for some users, it may not provide enough information, both for entering and returning data. Something of note may be that the results of these searches will only contain the data corresponding to the fields that are present in the template. So as an example, the default template would return four columns of data for each successful result, and those columns map in a 1:1 ratio to the fields in the template. Many users, however, find themselves in the situation where they need more types of search parameters available in order to intelligently construct their data queries. Using a custom search template, any available lead fields as well as any custom fields in the Q-Suite can be selected as a search parameter. User generated fields, like Account ID or Customer Code for example, which can be unique for every record, can be used to pinpoint your desired results.
Another important distinction a template creator can choose is whether or not the search template will be available for agents to use via the agent portal. With this in mind, templates can be created with either an administrator’s or agent’s point of view. There may be some areas of interest regarding a customer record that are irrelevant to agents, and therefore it’s unnecessary to have those types of fields in agent accessible searches, but an administrator may be reliant on those fields, so taking the steps to have to correct data available to the proper user is paramount.
Searching doesn’t have to be complicated but it also doesn’t have to be unintuitive. Using specific templates to increase the speed and efficiency of your searches can greatly improve the way data is accessed, which can help streamline many of the processes in the day to day operation of a call center.