Salesforce today announced Manufacturing Cloud for Service, a new, industry-specific platform built on Service Cloud. 

Why it’s relevant: With Manufacturing Cloud for Service, manufacturers can take advantage of Service Cloud’s ability to deliver smarter, faster, and more personalized service across any channel or device to grow customer loyalty and satisfaction, replacing the various legacy customer service tools that make it difficult for service teams to quickly access data.

Built with manufacturers’ needs in mind, the platform also comes with manufacturing-specific innovations. It quickly connects to a company’s Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) platform and contains prebuilt processes and a data model to allow customer service, field technicians, and product teams to effectively manage customer service cases.

Driving the news: Manufacturers are increasingly managing customers who expect 24/7, omnichannel digital service experiences. What’s more, Salesforce’s recent Trends in Manufacturing Report found that 56% of surveyed manufacturers consider pandemic-induced changes to their customer service capabilities to be permanent. 

These manufacturers are looking for ways to strengthen customer loyalty while also automating customer service and turning it from a cost enter into a revenue generator. 

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Details: Manufacturing Cloud for Service builds upon Salesforce’s early commitment to the manufacturing space with a complete platform that can handle all of a company’s customer-centric operations – from sales to service — helping drive revenue. Key features include: 

• Automated service processes drive efficiency: Customers can create automated workflows across the manufacturing ecosystem with Digital Process Automation, powered by OmniStudio, to resolve cases fast and power process automation with contextual information from disparate sources. This allows a manufacturing customer to initiate an application or claim from a customer portal and receive automated, guided engagement as they fill out a form. On the operations side, customer service representatives and other support teams can then pick up the case and evaluate it alongside data from an ERP platform or other sources to quickly close the claim out. 
• Service parts forecasting tool improves predictions: The new tool offers a forecasting framework to capture a holistic view of predicted volumes and demand, including installed base and service consumption. Customer service data – from work orders to warranty claims – are analyzed to inform part plans. 
• Voice of the customer, elevated: Using native Salesforce surveys, manufacturers can now capture feedback directly from customers at every stage of the relationship and leverage the insights to refine customer experiences and product strategies.

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The Salesforce perspective: “As the manufacturing industry contends with supply chain delays, there are increased expectations from customers for personalized service and asset uptime,” said Achyut Jajoo, SVP and GM of Manufacturing and Automotive, Salesforce. “With Manufacturing Cloud for Service, manufacturers can pull in customer, order, product, and asset performance data and insights to deliver differentiated customer experiences, boost brand loyalty, and enhance customer relationships.”

The industry perspective: “With the help of Manufacturing Cloud for Service, we will be able to deliver services much faster to our customers, and we can make sure that asset downtime is as minimal as it can be,” said Thomas Göcke Head of Digital Business Transformation for Koenig & Bauer. “That, in turn, helps our customers be more productive and more successful in the marketplace.”

More information:

• Go here to learn more about Manufacturing Cloud for Service and Manufacturing Cloud for Sales. 
• Watch the “Introducing Manufacturing Cloud for Service” on-demand webinar here.
• Check out Salesforce’s partners leading on Manufacturing Cloud — Deloitte Digital, DIA and Traction on Demand.