Today’s customer demands service on their terms, uses an average of 10 different channels to connect with companies — including messaging, chat, social, email and phone — and expects a personalized and consistent experience across all of them, every single time. Yet, disconnected customer service experiences are still far too common. Almost everyone has had to repeat basic information during routine service interactions with a call center agent, or found themselves unable to get answers to fairly simple questions on their preferred channel. Only 16% of consumers say companies excel at delivering connected experiences — the fact is, it’s hard.

We enable companies to deliver on these expectations with a complete customer service platform that powers connected customer experiences across any channel, from one central console. And today I’m excited to announce new innovations in Service Cloud that make it easy for consumers to discover and access the service channels they prefer, and enable companies to deploy bots on more channels so they can scale to meet growing consumer demands. Now every digital customer service interaction can be seamless, regardless of whether it occurs on the web, messaging apps, chat or otherwise.

Introducing the new channel menu

Say goodbye to the static “Contact Us” page. Our new channel menu gives customers an easy way to start conversations with companies on their preferred messaging and chat channels like SMS, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp or web chat, as well as traditional channels like voice. It can be embedded anywhere in a website including high traffic areas like checkout or home page, making it easily discoverable and accessible. And the channel menu can be set up with as little as four clicks, letting companies avoid expensive and time-consuming development work so they can get up and running right away.

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And, with our newly added support for WhatsApp and WeChat as well as existing channels like Facebook Messenger, SMS and more, companies can reach more customers through messaging than ever before.

Automate service with Einstein Bots in more places

Einstein Bots can now be deployed on multiple new messaging channels including SMS, Facebook Messenger, WeChat and WhatsApp. Einstein Bots empower companies to scale their self-service capabilities by responding to customers immediately, automating routine service requests, gathering basic information and seamlessly handing off the conversation to human agents when necessary. And because Einstein Bots are connected to CRM data and processes, and powered by machine learning and natural language processing, they learn your business and get smarter over time.

With Einstein Bots, service leaders and admins don’t have to be data scientists to take advantage of cutting edge AI capabilities. We’ve made the setup process easier than ever, with a new map view that gives admins a visual guide to help design conversations, ensuring customers won’t get stuck in a dead-end during a service interaction. The new exact match capability lets admins quickly create intent models that train Einstein Bots to quickly recognize what customers are asking for and help them instantly. And dynamic routing directs customers to a specific queue based on their conversation, ensuring customers are on the best path to quick resolution with the right agents.

These new capabilities are making the service experience completely seamless. For example, a customer looking to replace a credit card can go to their bank’s website and easily access the channel menu. From there, they select the messaging app they prefer, and once in that app, an Einstein Bot can quickly walk the customer through the card replacement process, handing off the interaction to a human agent at any point if necessary.

Customer feedback

“With Service Cloud we can connect all of our customer information channels to deliver seamless service, which gives our sales teams the real-time data they need to provide the most personalized customer experience,” said Sreelakshmi Kolli, Align Technology, Senior Vice President, Global Information Technology. “We believe that adding Einstein Bots as well as new channels will help us streamline appointment scheduling and service requests on-the-go, to drastically reduce time to resolution.”

“With Salesforce, Shopee is able to connect marketing and service channels to solve issues effectively, and elevate our customer experience at every step of the shopper journey,” said Lim Teck Yong, Head of Regional Operations and People Team, Shopee. “We are excited about the new capabilities Salesforce is bringing to the market. It provides us more options to connect more closely with our customers, ultimately improving their experience with our brand.”

“AirAsia uses Salesforce to handle 20 million service cases every year, and to gain a complete view of our guests across channels,” said Adam Geneave, Chief Customer Happiness Officer, AirAsia. “The addition of new channels like WhatsApp and enhanced AI capabilities will let us deliver even faster, more personalized service to our customers wherever they may be.”

This is just the latest in a series of recent customer service AI innovations. In March we announced new AI-powered recommendation and routing capabilities that make the service agent console more intelligent and the agent’s job easier. And in April we announced an integration with Google’s DialogFlow that extends the power of Einstein Bots.

Check this out at Salesforce Connections 2019

These and other new innovations will be on display this week at Salesforce Connections 2019, the digital marketing, commerce and customer service event of the year. Mark your calendar for the Service Cloud keynote, taking place Wednesday, June 19, at 10 am Central.

• For more information about how Service Cloud can help you reach customers across digital channels, go to www.salesforce.com/digital-channels
• Learn about Trailblazers for the Future, our training program that gives contact center managers and agents the soft skills to keep the human side of service alive in the digital era: https://www.salesforce.com/events/trailblazers-for-the-future/

Availability:

The channel menu will be in pilot by Winter 2019. Messaging support for WeChat and WhatsApp, and Einstein Bots for SMS, Facebook Messenger, WeChat and WhatsApp are all now in pilot. All other features listed are generally available.