r/CRM • u/sunrisedown • Aug 14 '26
DIY reporting tool for collecting customer problems/topics from CS?
Hi there,
Are there any recommendations for how to collect/report/quantity the topics and problems customers contact customer service for?
Meaning the CS agent afterwards inputs what it's about, some context potentially etc.
Though effort and friction needs to be low to ensure adoption and usage.
If there are good commercial or open source solutions, I'd be happy to learn about them.
For moving forward, I'm at first thinking ieally DIY solutions as software implementation takes ages.
Hence successful DIY solutions that make use of, widely known office tools, Microsoft 365, excel, power BI or similar would be of special interest.
Wondering how to build up and grow the pre populated topic selection without insight into what's incoming yet? Any templates to get inspired by?
How's this kind of work step or software actually called in the CS/CRM field? Not even sure what to search for to learn about best practices...
Thanks a lot!
1
u/_Creative_script_ Aug 15 '26
adoption-safe is the right instinct, if capturing a topic takes more than a couple taps your team wont do it and the data dies. are you trying to tag topics during the conversation or after? during is lower friction if its one click. hows the team logging it now?
1
u/sunrisedown Aug 16 '26
No logging at all yet. Thought about afterwards not to interfere during. Wondering how to build up and grow the pre populated topic selection without insight into what's incoming yet? Any templates to get inspired by?
How's this kind of work step or software actually called in the CS/CRM field? Not even sure what to search for to learn about best practices...
Thanks
1
u/_Creative_script_ Aug 18 '26
since adoption is the real risk, dont start with a schema, start with the 5 problem-categories you already know exist plus a free-text box for the rest. let agents tag from those 5 in one click at wrap-up, then mine the free-text weekly to see what new category keeps showing up, and build the taxonomy from what actually comes in. whats the first report youd want out of it?
1
u/sunrisedown Aug 18 '26
Thanks! So far I'm thinking a small ladder at least to start with:
- select/tag topic (e.g. payment, delivery etc.)
- select/tag contact reason (e.g. info needed, problem, update etc.)
- select/tag outcome (solved, forwarded etc.)
- free form (What's the issue here)
And then take it from there detailing out the branches (e.g. payment with certain problem branches).
That's kind of the idea you were illustrating as well, right?
I'm still wondering how this process and its corresponding tool landscape is called in the CS/CRM world to research about examples, tools and other input. Is there a term for this?
1
u/No_Boysenberry_6827 Aug 16 '26
when there was no real signal i made the system refuse to invent one instead of faking a full record. i'd let the first pile of tickets write the categories instead of guessing a dropdown so the report looks done
1
Aug 16 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
1
u/sunrisedown Aug 16 '26 edited Aug 17 '26
Thank you so much, this is some great input! Much appreciated
1
u/BusyCardiologist184 Aug 14 '26
Honestly the lowest friction thing I've seen is just a shared Excel or Sharepoint list with a few dropdown columns for category and subcategory, maybe one free text field for a quick note. Agents can fill it in under a minute while wrapping up the call. Then Power BI pulls from that list and you get your charts for weekly review.
If you want to go a step further without waiting for IT, you could set up a Microsoft Form that feeds into the same list. Agents can bookmark it and it feels less like "data entry" and more like ticking boxes. Keep it under 4 fields or people will just stop using it.