Transferring requests when a customer changes their name

[Adrian Simpkins]

Hi All

I wanted to see how other people are handling change in customers names / historic requests.

As with most organisations we have a regular process to change our customers names (normally a surname due to marriage / divorce etc). As an example I have one customer who has recently married and changed surname - we have both accounts loaded into Hornbill, but the old named account has around 50 requests raised to it. For completeness I am exploring options to transfer these requests onto the new name as of course this history is not accessible for the customer following the name change in the system.

I wanted to see does anyone else follow such a process and is moving historic requests across when a change in name is completed. And I also wanted to see if there is an easy way to transfer these requests without drilling into each and every request and changing the customer (too time consuming). The multi select request option only offers a cancel or assign team option on these closed requests so I wanted to double check I have not missed a trick for easy transfer from old account to new account

 

Many thanks as always 

[Steve Giller]

You could script this using the available API (off the top of my head changeCustomer should achieve this, but do check first) if you have the skills in-house, or if necessary you could involve Expert Services for this.

The underlying issue here is that you are creating a new account for a name (Handle) change - the way to avoid this would be by not tying the Customer's ID to their name/email; then the firstname, lastname, email etc. can all be changed without requiring a transfer.

[CraigP]

We've had success using the API to call smGetRequests for the current account's requests, then calling changeCustomer on each one.

[Adrian Simpkins]

Thanks both - I will take a look. Steve - we will also look to change our configuration on our account imports so we can avoid this issue going forward.

Many thanks as always

[Berto2002]

We have a very detailed workflow for Name Change we put in just before Christmas. We warn our users after logging that request to ensure that their existing support tickets are either resolved or they take note of them; since we seem to have implemented the CustomerID as the email address too.

Applications were the biggest consideration so we send requests to all the apps teams to alter the name (and several suppliers). 

Assets was a big issue because we found assets remained on the old user. Now, our BPM attaches all assets to the name change Request and then updates the Used by of those Assets at the end of the flow to be the Customer ID; and then sets the customer of the Name Change request also to be the new ID so that ticket remains visible to them.

[Adrian Simpkins]

Thanks Berto - I will take a look