Frequently asked questions (FAQ)
These are the questions we hear a lot, and you'll find the answers below. But if you have others, please don't hesitate to contact us — we're here to help.
Getting Started
Service Cloud is built on the Salesforce Customer Success Platform, giving you a 360-degree view of your customers and enabling you to deliver smarter, faster, and more personalised service.
In addition to being a pioneer in cloud-based sales force automation, Salesforce is the recognised leader for CRM customer engagement. With Service Cloud, you can automate service processes, streamline workflows, and surface key articles, topics, and experts to transform the agent experience. Connecting one-to-one with every customer, across multiple channels and on any device, was never easier.
When your customers have questions, your customer service team needs to be equipped to answer them quickly and easily. When your customer service is frictionless, customers are more likely to return to your product or service. Service Cloud gives agents the tools to deliver an outstanding customer experience, enabling them to work faster and more productively, which improves customer satisfaction and reduces costs. And with Service Cloud and Customer Communities, you can create a self-service community that allows customers to tap into the best information about your product, connect with peers, or contact a support agent when needed.
The Salesforce Lightning Console was designed with agent productivity in mind. With features such as email to case, skills-based routing, macros, and milestone tracking, Service Cloud gives agents the tools to quickly and efficiently respond to customers on any channel. Agents enjoy a streamlined, intuitive experience that gives them a 360-degree view of your customers, a comprehensive knowledge base, and access to company experts. It’s not just about your agents; your entire organisation can glean insights from a case history or help provide technical expertise that answers a common service question.
Treat social channels just like email and phone. Listen and respond to customers across a variety of social platforms and automatically route social cases to the right agent at the right time. Because social customer service is an integrated, seamless part of the Salesforce Customer Success Platform, your social care team gains a comprehensive picture of the customer before responding. This 360-degree view of the customer empowers agents with the ability to engage customers on the social channels where they are talking.
A self-service community is a customer portal that allows you to help customers help themselves. Delivering self-service means showcasing your knowledge base and offering case management to customers, so they can get answers to their questions anytime, on any device, from community content or peers. This allows your agents to focus on solving the most complex issues. And you can even create an internal self-service community for your employees to collaborate around content and business processes.
With Service Cloud and Community Cloud, you can deliver a self-service community or customer portal that is an extension of your brand, while enabling agents to jump on the case when needed, so no question goes unanswered. Extend your support via a fully branded experience where customers — and employees — can tap into articles and discussions, and ask questions of other community members or agents with Service Cloud and Community Cloud.
And with the Salesforce mobile app, customer support managers can access the data and insight they need right from their mobile device to make informed, real-time adjustments.
Companies of all sizes, across all industries, are using Service Cloud to transform customer service. With Service Cloud, companies have been able to deliver faster, smarter, and more personalised service to their increasingly connected customers across multiple channels. Companies are empowering their agents with the tools they need to increase customer engagement and are seeing significant improvements in customer satisfaction as a result. Visit our Customer Stories page to see how companies are reimagining customer service with Service Cloud.
With Salesforce’s customisable reports and dashboards, you can monitor your service metrics and track key performance indicators that are important to your business, whether it’s the customer satisfaction score or average handle time. Dashboards provide high-level visibility at a glance, and customisable reports let you drill down for detailed information on the performance of your customer engagement center, call center, or help desk. Creating your own reports and dashboards is a snap; there’s no need to wait for overloaded IT resources.
Customers are increasingly engaging with your product or service via mobile apps. But are they able to access support within your app? You can take customer service even further with Community Cloud. Our self-service communities are responsive on any device, meaning you can create a single branded community where your customers can enjoy the same seamless experience to quickly find the answers they need from a mobile phone or tablet.
Service Cloud offers Snap-ins, which let you embed customer support directly into your apps, from case management to SOS. In fact, SOS is changing the way companies provide in-app mobile support, with live agent video chat, screen sharing, and on-screen guided assistance. Create a connected knowledge base, enable Live Agent chat, and manage case interactions all in the simplicity and control of your mobile app.
And with the Salesforce mobile app, customer support managers can access the data and insights they need right from their mobile device to make informed, real-time adjustments.
Pricing and Editions
Salesforce has a customer service solution for any company, regardless of size or industry. Desk.com is our solution for small businesses that need an app for customer service that they can get up and running right out of the box. But if you’re a business of any size that needs a solution that can be customised and is flexible to adapt to your changing business needs, then you need Service Cloud. As a platform for customer service, Service Cloud adapts to the unique requirements of your business, integrating all your information, processes, and systems in one place. Service Cloud provides your entire organisation with a complete, 360-degree view of your customer, increases the efficiency of your operations, and provides analytics to drive the decisions important to your business.
Absolutely. With Desk Connect, all the data you store in Desk.com is instantly synced with Salesforce. That means that when it’s time to make the move, the data migration piece is already taken care of. Your case, customer, and account information can live in both systems, synced instantly on both ends.
There are a variety of ways to customise Service Cloud, and we work with you to build a complete CRM customer service solution that addresses your business needs, is scalable, and allows you to innovate. Service Cloud Enterprise Edition is a comprehensive solution that delivers the Lightning Console a multichannel view of cases, CTI integration, call scripting, knowledge management, developer tools, and more. With Unlimited Edition, you’ll receive access to unlimited online training, 24/7 toll-free support, and over 100 admin services. You can maximise performance across service and sales with Performance Edition — a fully integrated sales and service solution built on the Salesforce platform.
Service Cloud can be directly integrated into your business’ apps and websites with the introduction of Snap-ins. Snap-ins give your business the power to utilise our SDKs to create faster, smarter, personalised, and connected customer experiences. Snap-ins allow for integrated Knowledge, Case Management, Chat, and SOS. With Snap-ins, your business can leverage all the functionality of Service Cloud Lightning right on your app or website.
In addition to the core features, Service Cloud also offers a range of customisable add-ons that can be tailored to optimise your business processes.
With Community Cloud, connect your customers by building deeper relationships with direct interaction. Enable your customers to give feedback and share their enthusiasm for your brand and product with others.
With Knowledge Base, give the right answers to your agents and customers faster by streamlining the knowledge management process.
With Field Service Lightning, extend the customer experience into the field. Effectively plan and manage your entire mobile workforce from any device.
With Live Agent, engage your customers and prospects online in real time. Increase agent productivity and customer satisfaction with instant live chats.
With Snap-ins, your business can fully harness the power of Service Cloud in the comfort of your app or website. Customers no longer have to leave the customer experience to get support.
While every organisation needs one Service Cloud license at a minimum, all field technicians and dispatchers need a Field Service Lightning license.
Implementing Service Cloud
In addition to the Salesforce Success Services team, Salesforce collaborates with a network of partners to help you configure Service Cloud to meet your unique industry, call center, help desk, and overall business needs. Explore our partners and learn more about their specialised capabilities for your Service Cloud implementation via Salesforce AppExchange or by contacting a Salesforce representative.
We have a team of certified experts and innovative offers that, when combined with our market-leading cloud solutions, accelerate the business value our customers are able to realise. We leverage our experiences working with Service Cloud customers across multiple industries, building and extending our platform to help you get the most out of your implementation. And with AppExchange — the world’s largest marketplace of business applications — you can further customise and extend the power of Service Cloud and Salesforce.
Join the Service Cloud group in the very active Salesforce Success Community.
