Valuable Customer Experience with Salesforce Service Cloud
Until a few years ago, customer service was seen as a secondary division of the company, but today it plays a key role. This article will explore the benefits of an efficient customer service and will present Salesforce Service Cloud: the solution for optimising and improving your customer relations.
Customer service
Customer service represents the direct link between customers and the company. More and more firms are recognising its real value, unlike a few years ago when it was considered simply a cost centre, which was necessary but not profitable.
A customer service that can provide adequate and rapid responses contributes to customer loyalty, helping to cultivate a loyal following that, in turn, can refer new customers, provide case studies and offer testimonials and reviews. Indeed, positive testimonials from loyal customers can be more effective and cost-efficient than marketing campaigns when it comes to convincing prospects to interact with the brand.
4 essential customer service characteristics
An effective customer service today has to be:
- fast;
- personalised;
- proactive;
- part of a connected, omnichannel experience.
Fast service
In an era of constant connectivity, customers consider real-time messaging a key feature of efficient customer service. Because of this, instant live chats with specialised operators and chatbots to answer Frequently Asked Questions are very popular.
Personalised service
Knowing the customer’s complaint or transaction history is of paramount importance for customer care. It is frustrating for consumers to have to repeat the same issue to each operator. Collecting customer data in a CRM system linked to customer service solves this problem.
Proactive service
Customers today have high expectations: they demand that companies not only understand their needs, but pre-empt them by offering useful suggestions in a predictive manner. For example, many consumers appreciate being informed in advance about possible shipment delays, before they themselves check the status.
Using AI for customer service opens up several future prospects that, if implemented properly, can lead to increasingly automated contacts and transactions, helping chatbots and voicebots to replicate more and more “human” behaviour. This means designing customer service from a responsive to a predictive perspective.
Connected, omnichannel experience
Companies are making more and more channels available to contact their customer service. In addition to traditional calls or e-mails, customers can now also make use of video calls, live chats and messages on social media such as WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook.
To ensure an effective customer experience, companies must not only provide as many channels as possible, but also optimise the performance each channel can offer.
The “State of Service” report by Salesforce, now in its fifth edition, highlights three different trends. It shows how continuity, digitisation and a focus on employees are key to building successful customer care. The report highlights organisations’ awareness of the pressing need to modernise and improve the quality of customer service processes in order to guarantee connected, multi-channel assistance for their customers. Furthermore, mass resignations lead companies to question what kind of experience and professional development opportunities they can offer their employees.
Customer service with Salesforce Service Cloud
Service Cloud is a cloud application for customer service, based on the Salesforce Platform. This application enables customer service agents to provide immediate and personalised service and support for their company’s customers.
Service Cloud enables customers to communicate using all customer care channels, including smartphones, e-mail, web chat and social media.
When a customer requests support, his or her message is turned into a case, commonly referred to as a problem, customer request or support ticket. These cases are then transferred to the service agents, that is, the company employees who respond to customer requests and solve their problems. The case is then viewed by one of the agents in the Service Console. When this agent finds a solution, he or she responds to the customer’s request via the customer’s chosen channel.
Service Cloud supports the service agent at every stage of these activities, providing an integrated and streamlined process to handle all service needs.
In addition, Salesforce offers all the necessary information on one screen: purchases made, previous interactions (calls, emails, text messages, etc.) and general customer master data. This feature makes customer service smoother, reducing case resolution times and providing the service team with a quick overview of all responses.
As a partner on the way to digital maturity, Amplize strives to boost its business expansion through the long-term Salesforce adoption and thanks to the support of Salesforce Ventures, the global investment arm of Salesforce focused on partnering with the most ambitious enterprise technology companies at every stage in their journey.