Service Model Foundation responsibilities

Release version: Yokohama

Updated January 30, 2025

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Summary of Service Model Foundation responsibilities

Service Model Foundation responsibilities define roles or functions that support customers by establishing relationships between agents and customers or between consumers. Assigning a responsibility to a relationship grants access to relevant customer cases and information, enabling effective customer service management.

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Key Responsibilities Included

The Service Model Foundation plugin provides predefined responsibility definitions stored in the Responsibility Definition [sncustomerserviceresponsibilitydef] table. These include:

Account Manager: Links an agent to an account, allowing the agent to create/manage cases, view account details and related entities, and manage contacts and addresses.
Relationship Manager: Links an agent to a consumer or household, enabling case management, viewing household information, and managing household members.
Authorized Representative: Creates relationships between two consumers (within or outside the same household), allowing one consumer to manage cases and view information for another consumer, including install base items.

Customizing Responsibility Definitions

Customers can modify existing responsibility definitions or create new ones to suit their business needs. When doing so, they may need to update Access Control Lists (ACLs) accordingly. Existing account manager definitions should be reviewed to ensure compatibility with Service Model Foundation functionalities.

Creating and Managing Responsibility Definitions

System administrators can create responsibility definitions via Customer Service > Administration > Responsibility Definitions.
The Type field determines the relationship context (e.g., User type for account, consumer, or household team members; None for consumer-to-consumer or household member relationships).
Responsibilities can be marked as unique, meaning they can only be assigned to one user per account, consumer, or household, but a user may manage multiple such entities.

Unique Responsibilities and Behavior

Unique responsibility enforcement applies to relationships involving accounts, consumers, and households, ensuring only one assigned user per entity with a specific responsibility (e.g., only one Account Manager per account). However, this uniqueness is not enforced for consumer-to-consumer or household member relationships.

A responsibility, or responsibility definition, describes a role or a function that supports a customer. Use responsibility definitions to create relationships between an agent and a customer or between two consumers.

When you create a relationship, you select the users involved in the relationship and the responsibility that one user performs on behalf of another. The responsibility that is assigned to a relationship provides access to customer cases and information.

Service Model Foundation includes responsibility definitions that you can use to create relationships:

Between agents and accounts, households, or consumers.
Between two consumers.

The following responsibilities are provided with the Service Model Foundation plugins.

Note:

Responsibilities are stored in the Responsibility Definition [sn_customerservice_responsibility_def] table.

Table 1. Responsibilities included with Service Model Foundation plugin
Responsibility	Used in relationship	Description
Account Manager	Account Team Member	Use the Account Manager responsibility to create a relationship between an agent and an account. With this relationship, the agent can: Create and manage cases for their accounts. View account information, including the related entities for an account. Create and manage contacts and additional addresses for their accounts.
Relationship Manager	Consumer Team Member Household Team Member	Use the Relationship Manager responsibility to create a relationship between: An agent and a consumer. An agent and a household. With this relationship, the agent can do the following: For a consumer: Create and manage cases for the consumer. View household information, including the related entities for that consumer. For a household: Create and manage cases for the household. View household information, including the related entities for that household. Create and manage household members.
Authorized Representative	Consumer to Consumer Relationship Household Member Relationship	Use the Authorized Representative responsibility to create a relationship between two consumers, regardless of household, or between two consumers within the same household. With this relationship, a consumer can: Create and manage cases for another consumer. View the information of another consumer. View the install base information of another consumer and create cases for: Sold products Install base items

Customizing responsibility definitions

You can use the responsibility definitions provided with Service Model Foundation plugins. You can also modify these definitions or create your own definitions to meet your business requirements.

Note:

If you modify the existing definitions or create new definitions, you may also need to update ACLs to reflect the changes.

If you have an existing account manager responsibility definition, you may need to evaluate the functionality of the account manager responsibility definition provided with the Service Model Foundation plugins.

Note:

Creating and using responsibility definitions is a feature available in releases prior to Paris. Customers can create responsibility definitions using the Responsibility Definition (sn_customerservice_responsibility_def) table and use those definitions to create account teams using the Account Team Member (sn_customerservice_team_member) table. For more information, see Create account teams.

Create a responsibility definition

Users with the system administrator role can create responsibility definitions.

Navigate to Customer Service > Administration > Responsibility Definitions.
Select New and fill in the fields on the Responsibility Definition form.
In the Type field, select User if this responsibility is to be used in the following relationships:
- Account Team Member
- Consumer Team Member
- Household Team Member
If this responsibility is to be used in the following consumer relationships, set the Type field to None.
- Consumer to Consumer
- Household Member

For more information, see Create a responsibility definition.

Create a unique responsibility definition

A responsibility definition can be unique, meaning that the responsibility can only be assigned to one user. To make a responsibility definition unique:

Navigate to Customer Service > Administration > Responsibility Definitions.
Select a responsibility definition.
Enable the Unique check box on the Responsibility Definition form.
Select Update.

When creating or updating records in the following tables, the system checks for and enforces unique responsibilities.

Household Team Member [sn_customer_rel_household_to_user]
Consumer Team Member [sn_customer_rel_consumer_to_user]
Account Team Member [sn_customerservice_team_member]

For example, the following table describes the table type, an associated responsibility and the applied unique behavior.

Table 2. Unique responsibility definition
Table	Responsibility Example	Unique behavior
Account Team Member	Account Manager	An account can have only one account manager but a user with the Account Manager responsibility can manage multiple accounts.
Consumer Team Member	Relationship Manager	A consumer can have only one Relationship Manager but a user with the Relationship Manager responsibility can manage multiple consumers.
Household Team Member	Relationship Manager	A household can have only one Relationship Manager but a user with the Relationship Manager responsibility can manage multiple households.

Note:

The unique behavior of a responsibility definition is not enforced when the responsibility is used for relationships between consumers or household members.