Service Cloud®:
What is Service Cloud?
Simply put, Salesforce Service Cloud is your hub for streamlining, simplifying, and improving your customer service experience. But, what exactly does this mean? While Salesforce Service Cloud has an extensive list of features and built-in functionalities, the most common way that businesses use it is to help manage the processes and daily operations of their service teams. It allows service agents to organize information on cases in one place, so they’re able to reduce the handle time for service issues, and improve the overall customer experience. And, since 83% of customers expect to engage with someone immediately when contacting a company, the huge benefit here is that you wind up with happier customers (who are more likely to become repeat purchasers), and more productive and efficient service agents. So let’s get started with the basics…
What exactly does Service Cloud do?
Case Management:
As noted above, Service Cloud becomes your hub for service cases so service teams can manage cases all in one place. Cases can be automatically assigned to agents based on factors such as employee skill set and availability, you can track the progress of your cases, communicate with customers associated with each case, and keep a detailed record of the entire case from open to resolution. Additionally, certain tiers of Service Cloud allow you to manage and organize service contracts and maintenance agreements.
Automation:
Service Cloud allows you to automate throughout the case management process, from escalation of a case, to case assignment, and even automatically generating communications between agents and customers. Through the AppExchange, you can also invest in additional applications that work alongside Service Cloud, like Email to Case Premium, Case Flags, and File Slayer – which add another level of automation to your service processes.
Service Metrics:
For the executives or team leads who are interested in the overall improvement of the customer service experience, Service Cloud allows you to view the real-time metrics of your customer support team performance so you can identify areas in need of improvement. Metrics you’ll have access to through Service Cloud include: response time, resolution time, handle time, agent productivity, Customer satisfaction (CSAT), net promoter score (NPS), and more.
Connectivity:
Service Cloud integrates with Sales Cloud and Marketing Cloud, and with your other CRM and marketing tools. Not only will you avoid having to manually input data from one program to another and risk information getting lost in the transfer, but you can also get a 360-degree view of your customer, and multiple teams working from one place. This is the best way to align service, sales, and marketing.
Digital Engagement:
How you communicate with your customers, especially during the service process, is essential to building brand trust. Service Cloud allows you omnichannel communication, meaning you can build consistent messaging across multiple channels: social media, web, text, email, calls, products, self-service portals and communities – all from Salesforce. You also have the ability to build chatbots to handle the easier and more common service requests that come through your website, or choose to engage live agent webchats and challenge your support agents to try to solve each case in a single chat conversation. With additional apps like Email to Case Premium, your automated communication becomes even easier.
Salesforce Knowledge:
The hardest part of getting your customer support teams all on the same page is making sure that everyone has access to the same information at all times. Service Cloud allows you to build a library of service and support information, so agents can simply cut and paste answers to common questions into their customer correspondence. This is often referred to as knowledge base support, and it can vastly improve your resolution time. Plus, with Salesforce Knowledge, your data stays within Salesforce, so you can rest assured that sensitive company information is safe and secure.
Who can benefit from Service Cloud?
Customer Support
Service Cloud allows you to automate throughout the case management process, from escalation of a case, to case assignment, and even automatically generating communications between agents and customers. Through the AppExchange, you can also invest in additional applications that work alongside Service Cloud, like Email to Case Premium, Case Flags, and File Slayer – which add another level of automation to your service processes.
Management
With the Service Console, you get an easy-to-read dashboard that will include metrics so you can easily measure the performance of your teams. From support to operations, this is a huge time saver and gives you a birds-eye view of the breaks in your customer service chain. Because, how can you fix the problem if you’re not clear on what the problem actually is?
How does your sales team benefit from Service Cloud? Well, for an account executive responsible for renewals or retention, having access to information on service cases is crucial to the management of their major accounts. For new business, sales representatives can increase conversion and include actual metrics in their sales pitches, like average response, resolution, and handle times.
Human Resources
Employee support is another function of Service Cloud that can help your HR team build a better employee experience overall. Give your employees digital self-service tools so your HR representatives aren’t bogged down with answering the same questions repeatedly. Built-in internal communication tools like Chatter and Communities (which come with the purchase of any Salesforce product) are great for improving employee interaction, especially if your employees enjoy mainly remote work.
Marketing
Service Cloud allows you to send surveys to your customers to gather important data about their overall customer experience. This information is gold for your marketing team, who can use the customer feedback to identify who your customers are and what’s important to them. They can then tailor their messaging to the true customer persona. You can also employ the help of AppExchange programs like Simple Survey to build even more robust surveys that will encourage more responses from customers.
How do I implement Service Cloud?
Ok, you’re convinced that Service Cloud would be beneficial for your business, but what now? Trailhead is a great resource for getting started fast, but the best way to really understand how Service Cloud can fit your particular needs is to connect with an expert.
Vicasso has been using and building on Service Cloud since 2004. Connect with us if you have any questions.
However, if you’re still in the information-gathering phase, here’s a quick breakdown of the different pricing tiers of Service Cloud:
Coming in at just $25/month, this is the tier for you if you have a small service team and are simply looking for a way to increase the speed and productivity of your service agents. It’s a good starting point for businesses new to Salesforce who want to dip their toes before diving in. This only gives you access to Case Management and Knowledge Management, so you won’t be able to integrate Service Cloud with any other systems, or manage maintenance/support contracts. But, you’ll be able to route cases to certain agents, automatically create cases from requests that come in via email or your website, and build auto-responses (aka articles) so the messaging from your support agents is pre-approved and consistent.
This tier gives you everything that you get with the Starter tier above, but adds in access to the Service Console (pictured below), which is an easy-to-navigate dashboard that gives you a quick view of metrics, case lists, and more. This dashboard is completely customizable, so you can show the reports that are most important to you. With this tier, you’ll also get integration with some of the most popular telephony systems (think RingCentral or Vonage), and the ability to manage service/maintenance contracts for your bigger clients. This is for mid-sized companies who are struggling with antiquated systems of organizing customer service agents, and looking for ways to better measure the overall success of the service team.
This tier adds in Web Services API, which is just a fancy term that means you can integrate external systems with Salesforce Service Cloud. So, if you currently use Sales Cloud or another Customer Relationship Management (CRM) program, the programs will speak to each other. No more toggling between two programs or manually inputting data from your CRM to your service management program. This tier is for businesses with larger customer service teams with a lot of moving parts, and an external CRM already in place.
The name pretty much speaks for itself – the Unlimited tier gives you access to any and all Service Cloud functionalities including all that were mentioned in the tiers above PLUS a tailored plan created exclusively for your business that will guide you through Service Cloud’s resources and recommend how you can use each piece to increase your overall success. This tier is for you if your business experiences high support volume, you’re about to give your service team a full makeover, and/or if you want more guidance to get the most out of the Salesforce ecosystem.
Who can help?
We can.
