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How Salesforce Service Cloud Improves Customer Service

By: Dan Ruley

For some companies, customer service has always been #1. For others, not so much. Anyone who has ever been at the losing end of bad customer service knows the importance of tools and staff that are all aligned. 

 

Take this example of bad customer service:

Imagine that you order a set of t-shirts for your company’s next big team-building event. When they arrive, every shirt is blazing hot pink instead of the dark red you ordered. You call the company and the representative quickly promises to overnight the correct order at no charge. 

Three days later, the shirts arrive but so does a charge on your company card. After spending an hour on the phone, it seems that no one can find evidence of your dispute. In fact, it even took several “holds” to find the second order.

Is that what you want your customers to experience? Would you ever deal with this company again? 

No. 

However, if, in the same scenario, the customer service representative quickly found all of the details of the order and the refund and then was able to make good on the promises, you may be inclined to order again. After all, mistakes can happen, and it's good to know that the company stands behind both their word and their product.

When awesome customer service is delivered, your customer service team becomes an extension of your sales team. The right tools and tight integration of those tools across your organization increases sales enablement.

 

Service Cloud can be the missing link for your customer service

Service cloud is like Salesforce’s Sales Cloud but for your customer service team. It’s been described by Salesforce as a “time-saving, joy-boosting, relationship-building machine”. 

If your company has both service and sales it may make sense to have both. Service Cloud is a part of Salesforce’s Customer 360 Platform, so it will connect to your other Salesforce products through a smooth integration. 

For Salesforce users, Service Cloud gives your customer service representatives the power to resolve issues quickly, while allowing your company to see the full journey the client has taken. It also:

  • integrates tightly with your website to provide live agent chat and web to case forms. 

  • can also house knowledge base articles and FAQs to provide customers with answers to common questions. 

As soon as the customer calls, all of their contact record and sales details, Chatter communications, and all interactions with the organization are automatically loaded onto the customer service representative’s screen.

 

How Service Cloud works for B2B and Nonprofits

Service Cloud is not only useful for B2C businesses but also B2B and nonprofits. This could include providing access to knowledge base resources so business customers or nonprofit constituents can avoid creating cases and providing seamless, integrated support.

 

How Field Service Lightning can take Service Cloud to the next level for businesses and nonprofits

Field Service Lightning is an add-on to Service Cloud and can really take things to another level of productivity. Here’s a use case of how this could look for a company focused on service operations:

A work lead is created in Sales Cloud. It goes into CPQ to create invoicing. When the deal closes, your rep goes into Service Cloud to organize service operations. Field Service Lightning is used to create work orders and assign jobs from any device.

It’s equally great for nonprofit organizations that do field work, such as humanitarian healthcare. Let’s say your staff is out in the field delivering or picking up donations. They have a mobile tablet and can easily fill out a field intake form where the donations will be shared back into Salesforce in real-time.

 

See a demo of Field Service Lightning

Field Service Lightning delivers real-time collaboration with access to job schedules, inventory, knowledge articles, and more — with or without the internet.

See a demo of how this looks in action here.

 

Ready to plan your next Salesforce project?

Our latest whitepaper, Be Prepared Not Scared, is a comprehensive guide on what your team will need to do to plan for your Salesforce project. Get your free copy below.

 

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