CSM System Setup and Configuration

This is half the exam. If you master one domain, make it this one. It covers the customer data model, case management, assignment, roles, entitlements/SLAs, and the agent experience.

The customer data model: Account, Contact, Consumer

CSM extends the platform's Customer Service application with records that describe who you support. Three core record types anchor the data model:

• Account: a company or organization you provide support to. Accounts can be hierarchical (parent/child) so a global enterprise and its subsidiaries are modeled as related records. Accounts can be subdivided into Business Units and child accounts for large customers. The Account is the B2B anchor.
• Contact: an individual person who belongs to an Account. Contacts are the people you interact with in a B2B relationship. A Contact's underlying sys_user record is what logs in to the portal.
• Consumer: an individual customer in a B2C model who has no associated company. Consumers are stored in the Consumer (csm_consumer) table and are the direct customer in business-to-consumer support.

Engagement models you must distinguish:

• B2B (business-to-business): you support Accounts and their Contacts. Cases are tied to an Account.
• B2C (business-to-consumer): you support Consumers directly; there is no Account/Contact layer.
• B2B2C (business-to-business-to-consumer): a layered model where a business sells through to end consumers. The data model links a partner/seller Account, the products/assets sold, and the end Consumer, so you can support the consumer while still tracking the business relationship that delivered the product. This is the model to reach for when an enterprise serves consumers through partner organizations.

Related records that round out the model: Products and Product Models, Assets, Sold Products (what a customer purchased) and Install Base Items (what is installed or in use at the customer, linked to sold products through Installed Products), Partners (organizations that resell or service on your behalf), and Relationships between accounts/contacts.

Case management and case types

The Case (sn_customerservice_case) is the central work record in CSM: it represents a customer's request, question, issue, or complaint. The case lifecycle typically flows New → Open (Work in Progress) → Awaiting Info → Resolved → Closed, with states configurable per business need. Cases support Case Tasks for breaking work into assignable pieces.

Case types let you tailor forms, fields, flows, and behavior to different kinds of work. Out-of-box and configurable case types commonly include:

• Standard / support case: the general issue or question.
• Order case (Customer Service for Orders / Order Management): handles product orders and order-related issues.
• Major case (Major Issue Management): used when a single root issue affects many customers. An agent proposes an existing case as a major case candidate; when a major issue manager or customer service manager approves it, a new major case is created and the original case becomes one of its child cases. Other affected cases are added as children, and updates such as comments, state, close notes and resolution code sync from the major case to them.
• Case from interaction: created from an Interaction record (chat, phone, messaging) captured in the Agent/Configurable Workspace.

Create Case can be initiated by agents in the workspace, by customers in the portal, by email (Inbound Email Flows such as Create case from email; inbound email actions are the legacy method), and via integrations. Cases capture the Account, Contact/Consumer, Product, Asset/Install Base, Priority, Contact type/channel, and entitlement/contract context.

Advanced Work Assignment (AWA)

AWA automatically pushes work (cases, case tasks, chats, interactions) to the right agents based on availability, capacity, and skills, replacing manual queue cherry-picking. Core building blocks:

• Service Channel: defines a type of work to be routed (e.g., a case channel, a chat channel). Each channel carries a work item capacity cost that consumes agent capacity.
• Queue and routing conditions: each queue belongs to a service channel, and the queue's routing condition decides which work items enter it. The queue's Work Item Sort Order decides which pending item is assigned first.
• Assignment rules: after an item is in a queue, the assignment rule (for example Most Capacity or Last Assigned, with skills and shifts) picks which eligible agent in the queue's groups receives it. Items not accepted or rejected within the timeout can be reassigned; AWA does not move work an agent has already accepted.
• Agent capacity / Agent presence: each agent has a maximum capacity; presence states (Available, Busy, Offline) gate whether work is pushed. AWA only assigns to available agents who have remaining capacity.
• Skills: skill-based routing matches required skills on the work item to skills on the agent.

Set up an AWA channel for cases/case tasks so work is auto-assigned rather than manually picked.

CSM roles

Roles control who can do what. The CSM-specific roles you must know (namespace sn_customerservice):

• Agent (sn_customerservice_agent): internal service rep who works cases in the workspace.
• Manager / ESM Agent / Senior Agent: supervisory roles that add reporting, escalation, and team management. Customer Service Manager (sn_customerservice_manager) oversees agents and teams.
• Customer (sn_customerservice.customer): an external Contact who can log in to the Customer Service Portal, open and track cases for their Account, and use self-service. This is the standard external end-user role.
• Customer Admin (sn_customerservice.customer_admin): a privileged external Contact who can manage other Contacts within their own Account (add/disable users, manage account info), i.e., delegated administration of their company's users in the portal.
• Consumer (sn_customerservice.consumer) and Consumer Agent: for B2C support.
• Partner (sn_customerservice.partner, partner_admin): for partner organizations in B2B2C/partner scenarios.

Key distinction for the exam: Customer = manage my own cases; Customer Admin = manage my company's other users; Agent = internal worker; Manager = internal supervisor. Never grant admin or itil to an external contact.

Entitlements, service contracts, and SLAs

CSM ties what support a customer is owed to the case:

• Service Contract: the agreement between you and the customer defining the support they're entitled to (term, products covered, support hours).
• Entitlement: defines the type of support and the supported channels (for example phone, chat, web), optionally with case or hour units. An entitlement is associated with an Account (or Consumer), Product, Asset or Contract. Contact is not an entitlement attribute, and entitlements do not select SLAs.
• Entitlement calculation: when a case is created, CSM scores each candidate entitlement against the case's Account or Consumer, Product, Asset, Contract and channel (Contract weighs most; Sold Product and Install Base count when Proactive Customer Service Operations is active) and assigns the highest-scoring one.
• SLA (Service Level Agreement): SLA definitions are attached to a service contract, a company or a product and attach to cases when their conditions match (conditions can reference the case's contract or entitlement). CSM uses the platform's SLA Definitions (Task SLA) with schedules/business hours; SLAs can pause (e.g., Awaiting Info) and breach.

Special Handling Notes

Special Handling Notes are configurable, condition-based alerts that surface important contextual instructions to agents at the right moment, for example, "VIP account, escalate immediately," "Do not contact after 6pm," or compliance warnings. They are tied to records (Account, Contact, Consumer, Product, etc.) or to records matching conditions, can be scheduled (effective dates), and display as a pop-up or a list in the workspace so agents see them before acting; agents can dismiss pop-up notes. They only display guidance: they do not enforce handling, restrict access or record an acknowledgment. They are a common exam topic because they're a CSM-specific way to guide agent behavior without code.

Agent experience: Configurable Workspace

The CSM Configurable Workspace (built on UI Builder / Next Experience) is the modern agent interface, succeeding the older Agent Workspace. Agents use it to work cases, run Playbooks, view the customer's information and history in Customer Central, launch interactions, and access guided processes. Know that the Configurable Workspace is the current recommended agent UI and that legacy Agent Workspace customers are guided to migrate to it.

---