Planning for Entitlement Management

Choose What Determines Support Eligibility

You can set up entitlement management so customers are eligible for support based on one or several of the following types of records:

• Accounts: Any contact on the account is eligible for support.
• Contacts: Specific contacts are eligible for support.
• Assets: Specific assets (purchased products) are eligible for support.
• Service contracts: Customers are eligible for support based on a specific service contract.
• Contract line items: Specific products covered by a service contract are eligible for support.

Your approach depends on how detailed you want your support process to be. If you prefer to keep it simple, just have your support reps determine support eligibility based on accounts. Here’s what this approach looks like:

Choose a Setup Model

There are three general ways to set up entitlement management. Once you’ve decided what should determine support eligibility, review the three models and select the one that best meets your business needs. You can always change which model you’re using.

Entitlement model	What determines support eligibility	Use this model if
Entitlements only (simplest option)	Support reps determine whether a customer is eligible for support at the account, contact, or asset level.	There's no need to manage your customers' entitlements as part of a service contract Your entitlements don't have a renewal process Entitlements aren't purchased by your customers; they're bundled with products (warranties) Your customers' entitlements are short term and managed independently of each other
Entitlements + service contracts	Support reps determine whether a customer is eligible for support based on their service contract.	Entitlements are purchased and managed separately from the products they cover and are part of a service contract Your customers' entitlements are renewed at a contract level You use Salesforce for customer support but not necessarily for service contract management
Entitlements + service contracts + contract line items (most complex option)	Support reps determine whether a customer is eligible for support based on the products covered in their service contract.	You use Salesforce for customer support and to manage your customers' service contracts Your support team manages service contract transactions, such as transfers, mergers, and renewals Warranties, subscriptions, or other support products appear as line items on your sales orders and map to one or more entitlements Entitlements are created and updated through an integration with your order management system

Regardless of the setup model you choose, you can enhance your support process with other entitlement management features. For example, you can:

• Create entitlement processes to enforce required, time-dependent steps in your support process
• Use entitlement versioning to create and maintain multiple versions of entitlement processes
• Add entitlements to experiences
• Report on entitlements

After you select a setup model, head to the invaluable Entitlement Management Setup Checklist.