Explore Service Cloud and Implement the Bare Essentials - Case Management

Your customers do not just know you for your products, but also for the kind of customer service that you offer, how well your representatives treat them, and how you help them resolve the issues that matter most to them.?

First-call resolution is becoming key to getting that elusive 5-star feedback for your service.?

When your focus is to grow lifelong customers, the only thing that will help you is delivering great and connected customer service.?

That’s where you’ll look for Salesforce Service Cloud that could help bolster customer service operations and loyalty through AI-powered workflows and personalized service across every touchpoint.

In this feature, I’ll navigate you through the Service Cloud to show you a typical service workflow that can be set up in the Service Cloud for noticeable improvements.

What is Salesforce Service Cloud?

“Service Cloud” relates to the “service” (as in “customer service”) module in salesforce.com.?

Salesforce Service Cloud is a CRM that helps the customer support team of a business. It enables effective communication between the company and customers via live chat, email support, or phone, enabling the customer agent to find and process a resolution to the customer’s issue quickly.

Think of it this way.?

The last time you got in touch with a business using live chat or conversing on an email thread– it’s very likely that the company was using Service Cloud to manage your case.

It encompasses multiple features like:

• Public Knowledge Base
• Web-to-case
• Call Center
• Self-Service Portal
• Customer service automation (e.g. escalation rules, assignment rules).?

Service Cloud allows service agents to support past, current, and future clients’ requests for assistance with a product, service, billing, and more. It streamlines and automates service processes and helps agents find key help articles quickly while assisting a customer.

The purpose of Service Cloud is to foster one-to-one relationships with every customer across multiple channels and on any device. Service Cloud can help service agents listen and respond to customers across a variety of social platforms, ensuring that cases are automatically routed to the suitable agent.

Business Use-Case of Salesforce Service Cloud

Service Cloud helps agents personally connect with customers as soon as they need assistance, making it the world's number one intelligent customer service platform.

It supports an advanced AI-powered platform that better empowers managers and agents and easily connects with customers anytime, anywhere, and through any device.?

Service Cloud unlocks legacy customer data that aligns service, sales, and marketing with a 360-degree view of customers, keeping everyone in the loop.?

You get a consistent and convenient omnichannel experience, bringing together social, web, text, email, calls, products, service-service portals, and communities.?

It helps to connect your entire mobile workforce so field agents are always in the loop, even when they are traveling to the job location.

Case Management with Service Cloud

How your service team manages cases is a huge deciding factor for customer satisfaction level and retention.

Case Management in Service Cloud allows users to record, track, and solve customer issues related to sales orders or services.?

Capturing Cases

You can create cases either from an email (using email-to-case), from a web form (using web-to-case), or even from service users logged into Salesforce who enter service requests manually.?

Cases can be managed in queues and assignments. Service heads may also define the escalation rules for the cases. The functionality helps deliver the best experience to both service agents and customers.?

The service team can access data in a centralized location for their case handling, connected directly to client accounts via related lists and lookup fields by going to the Case tab.

Any company can choose how they want their cases to be created. They can create cases internally on an ad hoc basis, by agents (like in call centers) when customers call in.

The following are options to capture and create cases in Salesforce.

1. Email-to-Case
2. Web-to-Case
3. Manual
4. Automated
5. Answer site – Escalate unanswered questions to the case
6. Turn Emails and Social Media Posts into Cases
7. Convert Customer Interactions (Phone, Chat, Messaging)

Organizations can accept emails by having their customers send their support requests to an email address of your company dedicated to service by using the Email-To-Case feature.

Enable the functionality by clicking Enable Email-to-Case. Once enabled, Email-to-Case can’t be disabled, but on-demand Email-To-Case can be.

You can also receive cases from your organization’s website via Web-to-Case by using a simple form on your website.?

Additionally, organizations can automate much of their case-handling processes by utilizing built-in functionalities like escalation rules, assignment rules, auto-response emails, support settings, and support processes (to name a few).

Set Up Service-Level Agreements?

A service-level agreement (SLA) acts as a commitment between you and your customer. Service Cloud allows you to manage service-level agreements with entitlements, service contracts, assets, and milestones.

• Set Up and Manage Entitlements and Milestones Managing Entitlement allows you to define, enforce, and track customer service at different levels as part of your support management process so you can offer customers the support you’ve promised.

• Set Up and Manage AssetsManaging assets allows you to keep tabs on the products that your customers buy. Assets represent installed or purchased products.?These assets can be linked to entitlements, maintenance plans, and work orders, allowing your support team to quickly assess the historical data related to the customer purchase.

Auto-Response Rule

Case Auto-response rules automatically send an email response to the user who submitted a case from the Web or Email,? Self-Service Portal, or Customer Portal.?

You can create as many auto-response rules as needed, but only one rule would be active at a particular time.?

The auto-response rule entry specifies the following aspects:

• Entry criteria to identify that the response will be sent through which rule entry.
• “Sort Order” will determine the order to be followed for the evaluation of rule entries.
• “From” will include the address and name that will be mentioned in the response.
• Email template to be used for sending the response.
• Reply-to address where the user replies to the response.
• The “Send response to all recipients” checkbox will allow you to send the response to all the users mentioned in the To or CC of the original message.

Assignment Rules

These rules automatically assign case records to a particular user on the basis of different conditions mentioned. A case assignment rule consists of many rule entries that would help to identify the assignee of a particular case.

Rule entries would consist of conditions a case must meet in order to be assigned to a particular user.?

You can create as many assignment rules as you need, but only one can be active at a time.

Case Escalation Rules

Case escalation rules help the support team reassign and optionally notify individuals when a case is not closed within the time period it should have.

Salesforce Case Escalation rules allow the team to:

• Ensure that any case does not go unresolved,
• Ensure that the support team is meeting the mentioned customer service-level agreement, or
• Speed up case resolution of high-priority customers.

Winding Up

Salesforce Service Cloud can be the missing piece of the puzzle for your customer service teams, providing them the ease to manage cases faster and more efficiently.?

It can be your way to deliver personalized customer service at scale. Bring all of your support needs onto one platform leveraging Salesforce Service Cloud so you can decrease costs while increasing efficiency.