For most companies, running Oracle B2C Service software is a significant investment. The numbers start to add up quickly when considering things like salaries for administrators and agents, certificates, hardware, not to mention the cost of the license itself. When weighing this investment against the substantial financial impact of poor service delivery, there’s no doubt organizations have a vested interest in running well-maintained sites. One of the most obvious, cost-effective, yet often over-looked ways of protecting this investment is to have a well-trained and knowledgeable team.

Properly trained teams understand when and where to look for answers on their own. This is imperative, because our support team is a break/fix organization that is here to support you with the identification and resolution of product defects only. We are not set up to address the “how-to” problems that a well-trained user should be able to resolve through self-service. Another notable point to keep in mind is that a knowledgeable team understand exactly what information is required for investigation. By providing the necessary information in the initial service request, the time it takes to resolve an issue will be greatly reduced.

Where could training be a benefit to us?

Let me describe a scenario commonly encountered by our team that demonstrates where training would have resulted in time and cost savings. Let’s say you’re having an issue with code you wrote for a customization and it’s not performing the way it was intended. You look through the Knowledge Base, but are unable to locate an answer that helps you resolve the problem. You submit a Severity Level 3 Service Request (SR) to our support team asking for assistance in getting your code to work. Because your agent chose the wrong product type, the SR is assigned to an incorrect queue. Once the SR reaches the top of the queue, our engineer discovers it was not categorized correctly and routes it to the correct one. Eventually, it gets to the top of the correct queue and the engineer begins to work only to discover that this is a “how-to” question, for which they are unable to provide support. A response is sent to your contact letting them know that if they require assistance with this type of problem, a consulting engagement with Oracle Consulting Services or a Certified Oracle Partner would be necessary. At this point, you’ve wasted considerable time and are now going to retain consulting services for several times the cost of having consumed the appropriate training.

What types of training options are offered for Service Cloud?

Training for Oracle B2C Service comes in two forms: the kind you pay for and the kind you don’t. The paid training covers what are considered core building block competencies, and are intensive classes that range in length from two to ten days. These courses are consumed as training on demand, in classroom or virtual classroom, and cover topics such as Site Administration, Analytics, Integrations and Customizations and Implementations. Free options tend to be a bit more ad hoc and include an extensive number of tutorials offered on the Support Site, the Support Experience Blog and a series of Ask the Experts webinars. This instruction is not intended as a substitute for the core paid classes, but instead should be employed by the experienced user as a deep-dives into product specifics.

One of the easiest ways to ensure that you have a healthy Oracle B2C Service site and to save long-term costs is to lay a solid foundation through proper training and continuing education regimen. A site that’s been implemented, has customizations written and is administered by a team that has taken the building block payed Oracle trainings augmented by remaining current through the various tutorials and webinars available, provides the best likelihood for success.

References and Descriptions:

Oracle B2C Service Applications Training - Through Oracle B2C Service Training, learn how this solution can modernize your customer experience, while improving efficiency and maximizing revenue. These core competency courses are intended of provide a variety of building blocks fundamental to the operation of a healthy site.

Free Tutorials - The videos found on the support site are self-pace, interactive deep dives into specific areas of the product sessions that have been put together by the product development team.

Support Experience Blog – This blog will addresses best practices for leveraging Oracle B2C Service Technical Support and commonly misunderstood topics as well as your questions and feedback on your experience with Technical Support.

Ask the Experts - The Oracle B2C Service Ask the Expert webinars are held monthly with the topics geared toward the system administrators and developers using Oracle B2C Service. The format is simple: our experts spend the first part of the hour-long webinar presenting and demoing on the specific topic. Then, the second half of the session is all yours to ask questions.