The information age has given rise to intelligent and empowered customers who demand excellence not only in the product or service purchased, but also in the after sales care and support. The key to keeping customers happy and making them come back for more is, simply, world class customer service. At the same time, companies need to avoid spending way too much time or resources on customer service. A middle path needs to be adopted that meets the needs of customers, without burdening the support team too much.

Salesforce Service Cloud allows companies to go beyond the realm of traditional customer service by offering support that is fast as well as futuristic, in a medium, channel or platform of the customer’s choice.

What is Salesforce Service Cloud?

Salesforce Service Cloud is a multi-tenant customer service application that helps companies to communicate and collaborate with customers easily as well as effectively. It presents the various facets of Customer Relationship Management in a single dashboard, which can be accessed not just through computers, but also through smart devices. It means you can now actually provide 24/7 customer support. It is intuitive and easy to use, and can equally support both onsite and remote  teams.

How can Salesforce Service Cloud help you close customer service calls quickly?

• 1. Efficient Case Management: Service Cloud contains a service console which helps you prioritize all cases as per the source, product, date and severity. Based on the nature and priority of the case, they can be auto assigned to appropriate resources. This is not only useful in keeping all your cases organized, resulting in faster resolution; it also helps in achieving lesser employee work. The Visual Process Manager tool creates workflows and approval chains which greatly reduce manual effort and avoids delays.
• 2. Integration with social media: Gone is the age when it was the responsibility of the customer to contact customer service, and seek resolution to his/her issues. In this age of intense competition, businesses need to be proactive in addressing customer issues. Apart from running a customer call centre, many companies use social media to redress customer grievances. These social platforms afford the customer an easy way to seek a solution without the hassle of picking up the phone.
  
  Service Cloud provides the facility to view and manage complaints received from prominent social networks like Facebook and Twitter.  Taking customer service online also makes the process faster and less resource intensive. Studies have shown that customer retention of up to 34% can be achieved through quick resolution of queries and issues.
• 3. Customer knowledge at your fingertips: It is important for a customer service rep to have basic information on the customer. This helps in speeding up the call as unnecessary time is not wasted in getting the nitty-gritty details from the customer and, more importantly, it shows the customer that your business values him or her as an individual.
  Service Cloud provides computer telephone integration (CTI) which assists in efficient call handling. It displays basic customer information and details of purchases made on the agent screen. It has click to dial facility, which eliminates delays. Some other features of CTI are automatic call logging which ensures that all calls are documented without any manual intervention, and pop-ups that show opportunities for new business.
• 4. Customers can help themselves:  Service Cloud integrates FAQs, tutorials, documentation on known issues etc., to guide customers through simple fixes. It also integrates with customer forums and discussion boards which provide a platform to customers to collaborate and share their experiences with other users. This creates a vibrant user community, and leads to less tickets in your queue. It also provides links to contact customer support, if the customer still does not have a solution.
• 5. Accurate information: Providing the customer with accurate information, even if you have to hunt around for the right information for some time, is crucial to delivering satisfactory customer service. Inaccurate or misguided information turns the call in a direction different to what the customer expects. The result is wasted time and loss of trust. It might also force the customer to call again and what you may have in your hand is an irate customer who is difficult to deal.
  
  The knowledge tools described above are not just for the customer. They can be used by agents as well, to view documentation on similar issues.  It brings in the power of Google, which enables agents to refer useful materials on the net, and provide a satisfactory solution. These knowledge resources can also be loaded to Chatter which is an enterprise communication tool, making it easy for agents to collaborate and share information with each other.
• 6. Identifying opportunities to improve:  Service Cloud has a dashboard that displays relevant reports and metrics. These include data on the number of cases closed, call resolution time, incidents by category, and customer service satisfaction scores. These help in taking corrective and preventive actions as well as in establishing a continuous improvement process.

Some other features that ensure faster service:

• 7. Easy back-office integration into the console to give agents one screen for the entire service process
• 8. Accessibility via mobile apps
• 9. eMail Integration

Most successful businesses know that 80% of their business comes from 20% of their customers. The cost of adding a new customer is far greater than the cost of keeping an existing customer happy. Failure to provide quality service could well mean handing over your valued customers to your competitors. Rejuvenate your customer service today. Go for Salesforce Service Cloud! And get in touch with us to know exactly how: services@suyati.com

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