Salesforce.com Unveils the Next Chapter in the Customer
Service Revolution with Service Cloud 2 - Leading Market
Momentum and New Defining Technologies, including the Industry’s
First Knowledge-as-a-Service
8,000 companies have already standardized on the Service Cloud
including Extra Space Storage, NJ TRANSIT and Plantronics
Product innovations include Salesforce Knowledge, the world’s
first Knowledge-as-a-Service; Salesforce Answers, crowd-sourced
community knowledge; and the general availability of Salesforce
for Twitter
For the first time, companies can amaze their customers with an
integrated customer service experience that leverages their own
agents as well as real-time conversations happening throughout
the cloud
SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 9 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — Salesforce.com
(NYSE: CRM), the enterprise cloud computing company, today
announced the next chapter in the customer service revolution
with Service Cloud 2. The Service Cloud, announced in January of
this year, is the next generation solution for customer service
- it exponentially increases the quality of service, while
lowering the cost, by leveraging the expertise of the community.
Since its introduction, the Service Cloud has led market
momentum with 8,000 customers and received a number of industry
accolades. The Service Cloud will also deliver entirely new
product innovations for the customer service industry by
introducing the world’s first knowledge base designed for cloud
computing - Salesforce Knowledge; an entirely new way to look at
customer communities and discussion forums - Salesforce Answers;
and Salesforce for Twitter, which allows companies to monitor
and join the customer service conversations taking place on
Twitter. The customer service application market represents a
major opportunity for salesforce.com, which according to IDC
will be worth $4.2 billion by 2012(1).
Service Cloud 2 - Customer Success and Market Momentum for the
New Customer Service Standard
Eight thousand companies, including Extra Space Storage, NJ
TRANSIT and Plantronics, have standardized on the Service Cloud
for their customer service operations - representing a 175%
growth in business year over year.
Companies using the Service Cloud have seen a 28% increase in
customer satisfaction, 25% increase in call deflection, 30%
increase in first call resolution, 37% rise in service and
support productivity and a 26% increase in customer retention,
according to a recent third party survey.
Salesforce.com was placed in the leaders quadrant of Gartner’s
Magic Quadrant for CRM Customer Service Support Contacts(2).
Since January of 2009, the Service Cloud has won the 2009 TMCnet
CRM Excellence Award, Network Products Guide 2009 Innovation
Award, CRM Magazine Service Leader Rising Star Award, and the IP
Contact Center Technology Pioneer Award for Best IP Contact
Center Service. The Service Cloud was also named to KMWorld’s
list of Top 100 Companies in knowledge management.
Salesforce Knowledge - The World’s First Knowledge-as-a-Service
A year after salesforce.com acquired Instranet, salesforce.com
will offer the world’s first Knowledge-as-a-Service, the first
ever multi-tenant knowledge base designed for cloud computing.
The core Service Cloud knowledge base built on Force.com will
deliver:
Rapid Deployment: Companies will be able to deploy their
knowledge base in a matter of days and extend the technology to
mobile devices and public websites. Companies will be able to
deploy Salesforce Knowledge without having to install and manage
hardware or software.
Immediate Results: Customer service agents will be able to find
the right answer, the first time, ensuring that companies amaze
and delight their customers with a truly integrated customer
service experience.
Google Accessible: Companies will be able to utilize the latest
Force.com capabilities, including Force.com Sites, to expose
knowledge articles out to the Internet so that customers can
find information on the public Internet and through search
engines such as Google.
Simple Customizations: Users will be able to quickly and easily
deploy changes and customizations to the knowledge base to fit a
company’s dynamic and evolving needs.
Automated Upgrades: Product enhancements will be automatically
released three times a year. Customers will no longer have to
worry whether their applications will continue to work with
other hardware and software after an upgrade.
Secure and Trusted: Companies will be able to leverage all the
benefits of the proven security, reliability and scalability of
salesforce.com’s trusted global infrastructure.
Salesforce Answers - Crowd-Sourced Knowledge
For years, customer service centers have been limited to
knowledge articles produced by company employees, and have not
benefited from the explosion of consumer wisdom that exists
across the Web. Today, online communities and social websites
hold a wealth of knowledge and facilitate conversations around
uncommon problems, new product use cases, best practices and
much more.
Utilizing the Service Cloud, Salesforce Answers will deliver a
unique online experience that helps companies leverage the
expertise in the cloud to bring the right answer to their
customers. Salesforce Answers will enable companies to:
Start the Conversation: Create a complete, customizable website
that facilitates question/answer style conversations between
customers. Encourage the community to ask, rate and answer
questions and issues posted to the site.
Crowd-Sourced Knowledge: Filter the appropriate knowledge
created on Salesforce Answers directly into the Service Cloud’s
knowledge base, ensuring that customers, agents and partners
will all have access to the best knowledge available.
Leverage Facebook: Companies will be able to set up a Salesforce
Answers community directly on a Facebook company fan page,
allowing the company to harness knowledge from the 250+ million
Facebook members.
Create Dynamic Customer Communities: In combination with Service
Cloud features like Salesforce Ideas, companies will be able to
create dynamic, interactive customer communities.
Salesforce for Twitter - Join Real-Time Conversations on Twitter
Twitter provides a free platform for users to answer the
question “What are you doing?” in 140 characters or less and
broadcast the answer to a broader community. These “tweets” can
cover any topic area, including specific companies, brands and
products. In today’s Web-driven world where there is an
expectation of real-time interaction, Salesforce for Twitter and
the
Service Cloud give companies an easy way to join the real-time
customer service conversations happening on Twitter by enabling
them to:
-Search Twitter in Real-time: Search through the millions of
tweets happening on Twitter every minute to find the most
relevant customer service conversations.
-Monitor Service Issues on Twitter: After identifying an
appropriate tweet, a company can capture and monitor a service
conversation in the Service Cloud and track the conversation.
-Join Twitter Conversations: Salesforce for Twitter empowers
enterprises to be active participants on Twitter by enabling
them to engage in Twitter conversations, right from within the
Service Cloud.
-Establish a Twitter Support Channel: Customers can tweet their
customer service issues and instantly create a case within the
Service Cloud. Once the case is created, companies can leverage
internal business processes to route cases to the most effective
service representatives.
-Deliver Real-time Knowledge: Salesforce for Twitter facilitates
the delivery of expert knowledge back into the Twitter community
by posting tweets directly from the Service Cloud’s knowledge
base.
Comments on the News:
“With Service Cloud 2, salesforce.com is doing for customer
service what we did for sales: proving that the cloud is a
better way. The customer service market is being held back by
traditional technology. With two-thirds of customer service
interactions moving to the cloud and the popularity of social
networks, it is high time for a change. I am excited by the
momentum we are seeing in the customer service market and
believe it is the next billion-dollar opportunity for
salesforce.com,” said Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO of
salesforce.com.
“We’ve seen more and more businesses use Twitter to make smart,
meaningful and timely connections with their audience. We are
excited to work with salesforce.com as they help businesses join
the millions of conversations happening every minute on the
web,” said Evan Williams, CEO of Twitter.
“The Service Cloud’s knowledge base will give companies access
to the best answers for a situation culled from Twitter’s 45
million users and Facebook’s 250 million users. The Service
Cloud makes an important advance on social networking by helping
enterprises harness the power of real-time conversations and
crowd-sourced knowledge to benefit their companies,” said Denis
Pombriant, Beagle Research.
“Salesforce Knowledge and the Service Cloud will definitely help
our company increase agent productivity and customer
satisfaction, an incredible testament to the power of cloud
computing,” said Kimberly Jansen, Misys Banking Systems.
“Comcast-Spectacor is now a leader in leveraging cloud computing
to enhance our relationships with the Flyers and 76ers season
ticket holders because of salesforce.com. The Service Cloud and
Salesforce for Twitter have enabled us to connect directly with
our customers on Twitter and integrate these real-time
conversations with our customer service strategy,” said Mark
DiMaurizio, Comcast-Spectacor.
Source: SalesForce Times
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