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How to implement Salesforce Service Cloud
06.10.2021
fansfactory
What is the biggest challenge about customer service nowadays? The expectations of the customers are often not in line with the goals and requirements of the company. Why?
The companies tend to lower the service costs by doing predefined repetitive tasks which don’t meet customers’ requirements any longer. The truth is when you provide personalized service its cost is increasing and your margin and profitability are getting down.
Today the customer expects a personalized approach, in other words when he talks to the service agent he expects him to know everything - his purchasing history and habits, open cases, etc.
To help customer service managers lower these costs and to support personalized customer service you need a very sufficient and highly effective tool. Further on we’ll talk about one of them which is provided by Salesforce and it’s called Service Cloud.
What is Service Cloud?
Service Cloud is the customer relationship management tool that is focused on supporting customer service. It enables your customers to be in touch with the company through different communication channels. Most companies today are using either phone or e-mail, some prefer web forms as the most frequently used communication channels. And here comes the mismatch - people tend to use more means of communication (like social media for ex.) to place service requirements than the companies can offer.
Salesforce Service Cloud benefits and challenges
At the same time, customers love using phone calls because it’s the easiest way to get the answer quickly and make sure the company knows about your requirements. Yet, it’s the most expensive way to assist the customer because the service agent can serve one requirement only at the same point of time. That’s why chat starts to be very popular as an extra communication channel because it gives immediate answers and unlike phone calls, the service agent is able to handle more chat communications simultaneously.
Artificial intelligence comes into play here as well. Chatbots are able to handle about 30% of customers’ questions directed by artificial intelligence. Based on the customers’ questions the chatbot looks into the knowledge base with already predefined answers. So the service agent doesn’t have to care about it cause it’s already managed by the chatbot.
E-mail is another communication channel that customers still use but don’t really like cause they need to wait too long for the answer. With the web form the situation is pretty much the same but comparing to email it’s more convenient cause filling in the form is easier and faster than writing a new email message.
To feel absolute freedom in choosing the utmost convenient media Salesforce Service Cloud provides its customers with integration into the social networks as the communication channels. So no matter if it’s Facebook or Instagram or any other social media - it’s integrated into the Salesforce platform.
It’s worth mentioning that Salesforce provides support with the help of the Community Cloud where about 30% of the issues could be solved by the customer himself having the access to the Self-service portal. For example instead of making the call and asking “what’s the warranty period for my product” the customer can find this info in the cloud together with his previous questions and answers to it as well as the questions and answers of the other customers.
The big advantage of it is that it could serve as an extra tool for Service Cloud expert to provide the customer with additional sales opportunities by knowing already his interests.
SMS and WhatsApp are the other widely used channels but probably the most accelerated one is IoT (internet of things). The reason is very obvious: the customers love when the service provider is informed about some malfunction sooner than something is really broken. It starts to be very well adopted in B2B, slower in B2C. For example, you have a coffee machine with a sensor that monitors its work. If some malfunction is detected it sends the information to the coffee machine service provider via a mobile data network. If you have your Salesforce connected to this coffee machine using IoT, the customer doesn’t even know that it could be broken unlike the service provider, which means they can do some actions about it.
To sum up:
Companies that use different tools for different communication channels, like email agents or the web-form tool for requirements processing face disconnected data. They need to switch from different applications, remembering all the passwords which are truly inconvenient.
Salesforce enables communication with your customers through different channels like phone, e-mail, web-form, chat, social networks, SMS, WhatsApp, community portal, and IoT.
The most important thing about Service Cloud is that it combines all existing communication channels on one platform. Being a service agent, you may receive the customer’s inquiry from Facebook, and send the answer using email, SMS, or Facebook as well. No matter what channel the customer will choose to answer you back, you have everything in one place. You have a case in Salesforce where you can see the whole intercommunication regardless of the channel together with access to previous cases of this customer, purchasing history, invoicing, etc.
Who needs Service Cloud?
Here the answer will be very generic no matter how hard we’ve tried to give you some figures. The truth is that any company that works with customers and provides service for them needs Service Cloud. Of course, if you receive one service requirement per day, you don’t need such a system. Most frequently Service Cloud is used in B2C but it gets more popularity in B2B as well.
How can Service Cloud help my business increase loyalty, retention, and satisfaction?
You need to be open as much as possible. For example, when we, as a Service Cloud consulting company, receive some demand from our customer we create a case or a task on our Salesforce platform. The customer has access to it and he can check if we work on it, how much time was spent, who is responsible for it, and when we expect it to be completed. The same procedure customers expect today, as they need to have very easy access to the state of their inquiry, like: Does the company know about my requirements, on which stage the requirement is, does someone work on it, when it’s expected to be completed, and so on.
Customers get bored of picking the phone constantly asking when their order will be ready. People prefer to know everything about their case right at the moment of thinking about it. Easy access to the information (like with a Self-service portal) at the most convenient time and way, general openness, and absolute transparency help to get customers’ loyalty, retention, and satisfaction. It’s even more important than the price cause business people are willing to pay a bit more when they don’t need to spend precious time making calls to get the information, waiting for the answer, and receiving it a day later.
Step by step guide on how to implement Service Cloud
- Analysis of the Service Cloud functionality. It’s the most important part. How it will be implemented and how it will work afterward. Every department that will be working with Service Cloud in the company should be included in the analysis to make sure we’ve discussed all the functionalities.
- Setting up the system and its customization to satisfy your functionality requirements.
- Integrate the system with different channels. The communication channels we’ve already discussed.
- CTI - computer telephony integration. Basically, it’s the integration of Salesforce with the business telephone system. The major telephone system manufacturers produce their telephone systems with already built-in tools integrated with Salesforce which facilitates fast implementation.
- Salesforce Service Cloud integration into back-office systems of the company. For example: if you provide your customers with a service, and when you successfully complete the case, your back office system needs to know that the invoice should be generated.
- Testing, debugging, launching into the production, training of the sales agents, and going live.
How do I enable Service Cloud in Salesforce?
You need to purchase proper licenses from Salesforce. When we’ve agreed about the cooperation with the customer, we introduce him to the contact person we already know from Salesforce. After that together with Salesforce, we take further steps to help the customer purchasing the license. Salesforce prepares the license proposal and then we fulfill the Service Cloud implementation.
How does Service Cloud integrate with other parts of the Salesforce Platform?
It doesn't need to be integrated at all because all information from different Salesforce applications works in the same environment. If there’s a company that is already using Sales Cloud and makes a decision to implement Service Cloud, the integration is done automatically due to the core functionality of the Salesforce platform. People from the sales department have access to service department cases automatically and vice versa (see the print-screen below).
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