A customized Salesforce Service Cloud can go a long way in helping you deliver exceptional customer experiences. But what is it is that you can and should customize?

Here is a list of eight suggestions to get you started

  1. Integrate Service Cloud with communityDemolish the communication barriers between your customers and agents. Integrate your Service Cloud instance with your community.

    A brand community integrated with Salesforce Service Cloud allows companies to:

    • Crowdsource some assistance (customers can help one another)
    • Support agents to participate in discussions (provide help when community assistance proves inadequate)

    Integration is a proven technique to reduce the average case resolution time.

  2. Integrate Service Cloud with product management toolsThe cases stored inside Service Cloud are a gold mine of ideas for product development teams. In there is the Voice-of-the-Customer (VoC).

    If you integrate your Salesforce Service Cloud instance with a product management tool, such as Jira, your:

    • Product managers will have firsthand access to the information they need to prioritize features and come up with products that customers want
    • Support reps will be able to consult the SMEs in your product development team quickly, allowing you to become more customer-centric
  3. Start analyzing support analyticsUnearth the crucial information that can make or break your revenue forecast with an analytics solution.

    When insights into your support team’s key performance metrics are readily available, you will be able to:

    • Monitor key data, such as customer satisfaction rate, agent productivity and efficiency, risky accounts, and new customer demands
    • Devise strategies that will transform your support team into a revenue center
  4. Implement an account health monitoring system (AHMS)You can take proactive measures to reduce churn and increase CSAT if you have real-time data on how satisfied a customer is at a given time.

    Where can you get that data from?

    Install an account health monitoring system that can analyze your customer lifecycle, provide real-time data on an account’s health, predict customer behavior and needs, and identify at-risk accounts before they churn.

  5. Migrate to Lightning ExperienceLightning Experience is not just the future but it is also the present. It goes way beyond look and feel. Multiple Service Cloud tools are Lightning-only. You would not want to miss out on using them.

    The entire migration process does not take a lot of time and effort. Data loss is close to zero if you are with the right partner. We helped a client move from Salesforce Classic to Lightning Experience in under 200 hours.

  6. Power Service console with advanced searchIf you store information on multiple places—knowledge base, help manuals, and brand community, to name a few—you must already be aware of the challenges of searching across disparate sources.

    Install an advanced search solution, such as SearchUnify, to retrieve information from multiple sources. It will save you and your customers much time.

  7. Allow customers to escalate cases quicklyEmpower your community users to escalate cases quickly if they cannot find solutions in your community. One-click escalation can go a long way in boosting CSAT.

    A second way to gauge customer satisfaction is to integrate case escalation with the customer surveys your support team regularly conducts. A few months ago, Grazitti implemented a system for a client whereby a negative customer response in a survey would automatically be escalated to a case. The system captured signs of dissatisfaction at early stages and reduced churn.

  8. Automate support team performance monitoringFaster case resolution doesn’t mean that your customers are satisfied with your service. As a support manager, it is crucial for you to continually review how your support staff is handling cases and if there is a need for a training.

    Automate the process of reviewing your agents’ performance and implement algorithms that will help you stay on top of key performance metrics, such as the number of cases created and solved, and average resolution time.