Customer Service Management Fundamentals
The core record and the boundary with ITSM
CSM exists to serve external parties - customers, consumers, partners - while ITSM serves internal employees. The central record is the Case (sn_customerservice_case), which extends the Task table, so it inherits number, state, priority, assignment group, work notes, and SLA (task_sla) behavior. If a question describes an employee reporting a broken laptop, the answer is Incident; if it describes a customer reporting a broken product they bought, the answer is Case. That single distinction drives many distractors.
Roles and lifecycle
Know the agent role (sn_customerservice_agent), the manager role (sn_customerservice_manager), and the portal-facing customer/consumer roles that let a requester log in and see only their own cases. Case states go beyond the ITSM set: New, Open, Awaiting Info, Awaiting Problem, Awaiting Vendor, Resolved, and Closed. Awaiting Info means the agent is waiting on the customer - a favorite trap, since candidates confuse it with Open or with a pending-change state.
Case types, channels, and supporting modules
Cases carry a case type and optional subtype (for example product issue, complaint, inquiry, feature request). Type can drive required fields, playbooks, and routing, so questions about "which field determines the questions the agent is asked" point at type/subtype rather than category. Cases arrive via the customer portal, inbound email actions, chat/Virtual Agent, or an agent creating one by phone. Around the case sit accounts and contacts, entitlements and SLAs, knowledge, Advanced Work Assignment, and the Configurable Workspace.
Worked rule of thumb: if the scenario names an external buyer, a purchased product, or an entitlement, answer Case; if it names an employee, an internal CI, or an IT service desk, answer Incident.