How To Use Salesforce For Customer Service

Everyone has a story or two well-nigh outrageous client service. If your visitor doesn't want to become the source of such customer support horrors, yous may want an idea for comeback. And this improvement means making your customer service the commuter of your company'southward progress, rather than an obstacle to it.

To get you going, we propose an arroyo based on two seemingly simple stages:

Inspecting and redesigning your customer service procedure.
Choosing and introducing customer service direction software to support the new process.

Equally you lot could accept guessed, we consider Salesforce the platform for customer support purposes. And it's neither a promo nor a guess: yous will encounter it for yourself below.

Highlights:

The bones client service procedure
How general Salesforce functionality supports it
What enhanced Salesforce features complement it

The basic client service procedure

Offset thing's get-go. Before examining Salesforce, let's see what the basic customer service process looks like.

Doesn't look too difficult, does it?

There are 5 main phases of the customer service process:

Reaching out . For your customers to hands attain out to your support, it needs to exist actively present across multiple channels: phone, spider web, e-mail, social media, SMS. Just bear in mind: the more than channels, the more than direction difficulties.
Starting a example . Equally soon every bit a case is created , it needs to be assigned to an agent or an agent grouping. Assignment mechanisms have to be in identify not to elevate this stage out.
Searching for a solution . Rather than asking tech people for aid, it would be dainty to have a knowledge base of operations where noesis articles would exist evaluated for effectiveness.
Escalating a case . If a instance hasn't been airtight within the period fix by your fourth dimension-based rules, it needs to be escalated or reassigned (sometimes, to a college tier agent). The difficulty hither is managing various types of customer service levels without mixing them upward.
Endmost a instance . Endeavour to make certain your agents don't shut cases before really solving the problem.

You are right to notice that we haven't mentioned the mysterious Stage (0) chosen ' proactive support .' To cutting to the chase, things don't finish at merely working cases. To win customer loyalty, your company should work 'alee.' You need to see what customers may experience what problems before they contact your support. You may reach information technology by keeping in bear upon with your customers and contributing to it plenty of your agents' fourth dimension.

How Salesforce complements the basic customer service process

Salesforce Service Deject supports this customer service process (every bit well as other possible versions of information technology) with, let's say, two kinds of functionality: the general ane that embodies the process itself and the specific ane that delivers extra capabilities.

General functionality

i. Omni-Channel – Phase (ane)

To handle the horrors of using multiple advice channels in parallel, Salesforce offers a feature called Omni-Channel . Information technology allows delivering client service across telephone, email, web forms, web and in-app mobile chats, social media (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Google+, and Sino Weibo), community sites, and video chats . And the beauty about it is that all channels are 'funneled' into Salesforce and agents simply work from at that place. At that place'due south fifty-fifty a possibility to create a Salesforce Einstein Bot for your customs or another website, where customers can asking passwords resets, see gild status, and ask other simple questions. It volition take some load off your agents and give them more time to work on difficult cases.

However, if the above listing of advice channels doesn't suffice and you want, say, LinkedIn and Reddit, you'll need Salesforce customization.

2. Case Direction – Phases (two), (4), and (5)

Service Cloud is basically, but non exclusively, built around Case Management . It enables the whole case lifecycle: creation, assignment, escalation, reassignment, and closure.

When a case is created, Salesforce uses its info as well equally pre-defined assignment rules to road the example to the available amanuensis qualified to solve the case. If there'due south no one available, it'll expect for a window to open (all within time limits, of grade).

If assignment rules don't direct the case to a specific agent just address information technology to an amanuensis group, you can set up case queues . Each amanuensis tied to the queue will be notified when a new case comes in.

Likewise, when a new customer inquiry comes into the system (let'south say, through email), Service Deject tin send a personalized auto-response to the customer. It will clinch them their problem is best-selling and will be soon solved.

Also, Service Cloud enables managing various service levels for different types of customers (in Salesforce's terms, it'south called entitlement direction ). And so, if Jon buys simply phone support, while Jack pays for first-form support across all channels, the ways they will exist 'customer-served' won't get mixed. Jack will go a prompt answer regardless of the contact means, while Jon tin go a polite request to contact support over the telephone if he emails instead. And besides setting articulate service level boundaries, Service Cloud can use unlike escalation rules based on different entitlements.

Every bit a bonus, Service Cloud tin notify service agents nearly diverse events, for instance, that a instance is about to escalate or that first-response time on a certain case volition soon exceed its limits. As well, Salesforce allows managers to gear up case capacity levels (for agents not to get overloaded).

3. Service Console – Phases (0) and (3)

Service Panel is a 'infinite' where agents work. It supports all the phases of the customer service process but specifically helps the ones numbered 0 and 3.

Stage (3). Service Console is a help desk for agents, which gives them a more comprehensive view of both case records and account/contact details . And that'due south not all: using it, agents can also run into relevant noesis base articles correct in the instance tape. It makes case resolution much faster if compared to looking for knowledge manufactures and customer details elsewhere, say, in another tab or even in some other system.

However, that's not all information agents may demand. You may want Service Console to brandish a 'news board' where your product/operations/sales reps or anyone else yous need could identify news. Such a slice of news could read "feature XYZ is out on Dominicus, Sep 30. Installation and configuration problems are possible" and also have some relevant noesis article attached to information technology. This way, you continue your agents informed and prepared for upcoming cases. Even so, information technology's not an out-of-the-box feature, which is why y'all may need to turn to Salesforce consulting to get information technology.

Phase (0). Customer information needed to provide proactive support is available in Service Console, every bit well as in Sales Cloud if your visitor uses it. An example of how such a proactive service could go: a service amanuensis sees that a certain customer may face up the same issue once again in 3 months. They set a notification in Salesforce to get back to the client around 3-month fourth dimension and check if the customer needs whatsoever help. This way, agents can also identify new selling opportunities. However, if you want a more extended tool to manage proactive client service, y'all'll need customizations.

iv. Salesforce Service Analytics + Einstein Discovery – Phases (0) through (v)

To kickoff with, Salesforce provides reports and dashboards available to every user. Then, both managers and agents can runway department performance and individual agent performance.

To dig deeper, there's Service Analytics . With it, managers can see service excess, live chat wait times, noesis articles usage, channels usage, and and so on. All this info can prove useful to tune your customer service.

To go even deeper, at that place's Einstein Discovery that gives even more insights. For example, yous tin can see how a certain case influences a major deal. Or check predictions on client satisfaction (CSAT) scores after the case closes as well as run into recommendations on how to ameliorate CSAT.

However, if your task is to mensurate the value of customer service in your company, it may exist challenging. You volition need to have customer retention and brand epitome analytics set up in Marketing or Sales Cloud since Service Cloud doesn't take all the needed information to provide these reports.

Note: if you want to see how Salesforce Service Cloud looks in action, visit our demo on case resolution with Service Cloud.

Enhanced capabilities

ane. Field Service and more – Phase (iii)

Cases don't always go solved in a few clicks. Sometimes, you demand serious measures, similar cooperating with other departments.

Salesforce offers an opportunity for service agents to work tightly with maintenance workers using the Field Service app. Example: a hotel guest says the eolith box in his room was locked by the previous guests, and so he tin can't use it. The service agent (= the receptionist) creates a case in Service Cloud, just that's non enough. Using Field Service, the receptionist also creates a work order right in the instance record for the hotel's maintenance workers to fix the deposit box. However, merely using Field Service for seeing and managing work orders would be also trivial a benefit for the hotel. Besides that, the feature allows optimizing workers' schedules and resource consumption and increasing showtime-time set rates thus ensuring a better and more price-effective service.

Nevertheless, Salesforce doesn't encourage such cooperation with other departments whose participation may likewise be required. For instance, to solve cases connected with commitment or payment issues, service availability or provisioning failures and so on. Without established cooperation supported by a customer service management tool, how does an airlines' service agent search for lost luggage? Or restores the downed website for customers to be able to use it again? They can't do it on their own. And it's rather inefficient but to call people. This problem can be solved in different ways, for instance:

If some of your departments use specific solutions (say, It service management systems like Jira or ServiceNow® platform) and want to settle cases in them, you need to get ready for possible integrations of such systems with your Service Cloud.
For some companies, it can make sense to develop their ain Salesforce apps for departments with whom service agents demand to work on cases most oft. For instance, a Delivery Service app.
Another scenario is possible if other deparments' employees are also Service Cloud users. This fashion, service agents tin can cooperate with them past using Salesforce tasks directed to the employees responsible for cases connected with their section. Here, time-to-resolution limits and 'sanctions' for their breaches demand to be in place, equally well as example escalation mechanisms. Otherwise, cases can be left hanging.

two. Agent routine automation – Phases (ii), (3), and (five)

Service Console provides all the info agents need and Einstein Bots take some load off agents, but Salesforce tin can offering some more possibilities to optimize agents' work. For example, cocky-service customer portals and communities created using Lightning Community Builder. These self-service websites, in some manner, 'disburden' agents, because customers can either find solutions on their own or enquire young man customers.

The Macros feature is designed to salvage 'unneeded clicks.' Information technology ways that instead of doing repetitive tasks by themselves (like logging calls or endmost a example), agents can run a macro that will perform the task automatically. And then, instead of 10 clicks, they do 3. On a unmarried repetitive action. Imagine how much time it saves a month.

Besides, whenever an amanuensis communicates with a customer, Salesforce allows choosing a pre-written text with the help of either Email Templates or Quick Text . In addition to saving time, information technology helps to standardize all customer communications in the company.

Things to retrieve

If your company'southward customer service is experiencing some dark ages, the first step to improvement will exist the reorganization of your client service process. Information technology should consist of 5 main phases (reaching out, starting a case, searching for a solution, escalating a case and closing a case) and one recurrent procedure (proactive support).

The next step will be to find, evaluate, customize, and introduce the right customer service software. And given all of Salesforce'south capabilities (especially Service Console, Omni-Channel, Field Service, and Example Management), its offering does deserve the title "have-my-money expert."

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