In the SAP CRM system, mail forms are pre-defined email templates that can contain "canned text" (pre-written messages) including HTML formatting as well as images and logos. Mail forms are very useful when sending marketing information to target groups or for an agent to reply to an email. In this blog, I am going to focus on the usage in Interaction Center. With SAP CRM mail forms you can define an email template, attributes and conditions so that the content itself can be tailored accordingly when being sent to the target audience. It can also save time for the agents on a regular basis. For example the agent can use the mail form to automatically insert a signature, or simply to make a few changes to predefined content when replying to similar customer questions. When chatting with a customer, the agent can also leverage the mail form to speed up the response. If your call center is using SAP E-Mail Response Management System (ERMS) to send auto response, auto acknowledgement etc, mail forms are powerful and unavoidable.
Besides internet E-mail, mail forms can also be used to send Fax and SMS (if your call center has an SMS gateway). You can even use a mail form to define a list of business partners and corresponding specified attribute values; this usage is named as File Export.
Searching an existing mail form or creating a new mail form is available in the Knowledge Management view with the IC_MANAGER role. SAP CRM provides a list criteria to search for a mail form, such as mail form ID, description, created by/on, changed by/on, usage etc. If the mail forms have been used for campaigns, they can also be searched by campaign description or ID.
When creating a mail form (see figure 1 below), besides mail form ID and description, you will also select the original language and usage. Like a common email editor, mail form editor allows you to create an html format email by inserting pictures, setting text font and color, and paragraph formatting etc.
Figure 1: Mail Form Editor
Furthermore you can use Attributes and Conditions to make your mail form a "smart" one. Attributes are inserted as variables, such as customer last name or campaign ID, and the system will then automatically replace the attribute with an appropriate attribute value to the target. Attributes are grouped as attribute categories, to make it easier to find the required attribute. And the attribute context determines which attribute categories are available in the current mail form. So make sure to select the correct attribute context. For example, if you want to insert some agent specific attributes when creating a signature template, you will need to select Attribute Context as ERMS (This is available since CRM 2006s/CRM 2007), then you can find the necessary attributes under attribute category Additional Fields .
Besides attributes, you can even make the mail form more flexible by Conditions, which can control which text element or attachment will be sent to which business partners in the specified target group (See figure 2). By clicking the Edit Structure button, you can define the conditions for each text element or attachment. In the screenshot below, the attachment is set only to send to the business partners whose address equals Chengdu city.
Figure 2: Condition Setting for an Attachment
When you finish the form, you can translate from the original language to the target language as necessary. And before you put it in use, you can run a test - "send and preview."
After the created mail form is assigned to the Interaction Center agent group, the agents could access it from the E-email Editor from the Std Response field of the Email Editor (Figure 3) or Knowledge Base from the Chat view.
Figure 3: Access Mail Forms in E-mail Editor
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