A Crash Course in ...

Service Cloud

Service Cloud in Salesforce is all about customer service and support. Gone are the days of standing in endless lines or being bounced around a phone menu. With Service Cloud, customer service is taken to a whole new level by offering multiple channels of communication including email, phone, social media, online communities, or real-time web chat. Regardless of where you are or what device you are using, rest assured that you can get your questions answered quickly.

You may be wondering how all these channels are managed? Service Cloud integrates multiple channels into an easy-to-use help desk called the console. Within the console, support agents can choose when customers receive responses, when support tickets should escalate, and when support agents should be assigned specific tasks or customers. The console also allows support agents to access all of their expertise and knowledge right from the dashboard via a dynamic knowledge base so that customers can receive service faster or even solve their own problem.

Case Management

Customers have complaints, problems, comments, and questions that need addressed. How an organization responds can significantly impact its brand and reputation. The best way to keep customers happy and maintain positive relationships is to track their issues and resolve them quickly. Cases allow support agents to do just that. Cases are powerful records in Salesforce that not only track customer issues, but also show a 360-view of the customer. All relevant information is stored on a case – account, contact, history, previous cases, etc. Whether it was a phone call, email exchange, or live chat, all interactions are saved on the case so that any support agent can jump in to help at any time.

As we strive to provide more holistic service across the entire lifecycle of a constituent, cases will often need input from multiple groups within the institution. That’s why cases were developed with collaboration in mind. First, there’s case feed. Case feed allows for easy collaboration so that cases can be closed quickly by displaying every action taken for a complete view of a customer’s issue and its history. Second, there are case teams. Case teams allow you to predefine groups of people and their roles on closing a case together. A case team could include a support agent, advisor, professor, or anyone else that has a stake in helping with the case.