For those of you still managing cases in the classic Salesforce view and interested in migrating to the Service Console, or thinking about migrating to the Salesforce Service Console from another case management system altogether, I hope you find this post helpful in prepping your team for the move.

Migrating a group on to a completely new interface, like Service Console, that directly affects how they do their work day to day is challenging for even the most prepared and organized service organizations. Through the many Console implementations we’ve done, we’ve developed the below list of tips and best practices to help our Salesforce clients with the change management process:

To start, what is the Salesforce Service Console?

For those of you reading this that are either new to Salesforce, or are thinking about migrating, the Service Console is a dedicated interface developed by Salesforce to help support agents more effectively manage their case loads. Within a single browser tab, an agent can easily view and take action against all their cases. See screenshot below for example Console view:

What are the best practices and recommendations when moving agents to the Console?

1. Get the entire team involved early – Don’t expect to solution and develop this in a bubble and be successful. Everyone from support managers to agents need to be highly involved throughout the entire process to ensure buy-in and ownership.
2. Force involvement during design – Don’t allow your agents or managers access to their queues during design workshops. Schedule them time away from their case loads to help design the final layout and functionality of the tool. In the end, they’re the ones that are going to have to own the solution.
3. Do more than just iteration reviews – Simply demonstrating the Console throughout the project is not enough. Provide access in a sandbox early and schedule time for end users to play around. That will get them acquainted with the tool and allow for better feedback.
4. Set up a dedicated room for UAT – As you’re getting to close to finishing build, schedule time for your agents and managers to run through real life test cases and ensure the Console not only functions as planned, but is as effective as you designed it to be. You want to ensure that you’re not pushing a tool that makes their jobs more difficult.
5. Build excitement in the team – Run a “Console Campaign” to build excitement and make everyone aware of the key rollout dates and expectations. Maybe provide incentives for individuals who are willing to be most involved.
6. Finally, expect push back – Change management is hard, and you’re not going to please everyone. Especially when moving them on to a completely new interface. Understand early on who the challengers are going to be and ensure they’re involvement throughout the process. That will not only provide you with a better end product, but also hopefully minimize the push back you receive.

Hope that you found this helpful in understanding how best to plan for a Service Cloud Console migration. If you’re interested in learning more about our experience with these migrations or with Service Cloud in general, please get in contact with us.

For those Salesforce Service Cloud users out there who have heard, or maybe even read about this updated Service Cloud feature in the Spring ’16 Release Notes, Omni-Channel, but still have questions – this blog post is for you. I’ll answer some of the frequently asked questions we’ve heard from some of our Salesforce customers around this great feature from Salesforce.

What is Omni-Channel Presence and Routing?

Omni-Channel is Salesforce’s new customer service feature that intelligently routes records to agents in real time based on availability and access to queues. No more cherry picking or manual routing – Omni Presence and Routing takes care of it. Once configured, Omni-Channel will push records to your agents via a footer component in the Service Console.

What objects support Omni-Channel Routing?

Currently you can set up Omni-Routing for Cases, Chats, SOS Calls, Social Posts, Orders, Leads, and Custom Objects.

Do I need to write any code to set it up?

Absolutely not. No code is required to get started with Omni-Channel.

How do I configure Omni-Channel?

There are only a few simple steps to set up Omni-Channel Presence and Routing in Service Cloud. 

1. Enable Omni-Channel in Setup (Setup>Build>Customize>Omni-Channel>Omni-Channel Settings)
2. Create Service Channels for the objects you want Omni-Channel to work in (Cases, Chats, Social, etc…)
3. Create Routing Configurations. This is where you configure how records (Work Items) are routed. You can prioritize based on the queue the record comes from, set certain records to take up more of your agents “Capacity” (covered below), and decide which routing model you want to use, Least Active or Most Available.
4. Associate your above configured Routing Configurations with their respective Queue.
5. Create “Presence Configurations”. These allow you to decide how much “Capacity” your agents should have, as well as whether they should be able to decline incoming requests.
6. Assign “Presence Configurations” to users.
7. Finally you create “Presence Statuses” which allow your agents to set themselves as inactive during off hours or breaks.

What are “Work Items”?

Work Items are the Salesforce term for records that get routed via Omni-Channel, whether its cases, leads, or other. Via configuration, you decide how much capacity each work item should take up. So if you have cases that come in that take more time than others, you can set them to take up more of you agent’s capacity.

How does Salesforce determine “Capacity”?

The way in which Omni-Channel understands if you, as an agent, have capacity is based on the number of primary tabs you have open in the Console. If your Capacity is set to “5”, and each Work Item is worth “1”, then Omni-Channel will continue to pass you records until you have 5 primary tabs open. See screenshot below:

What does Omni-Channel look like for agents?

Omni-Channel is a widget that sits in the bottom footer of the Console and stays inactive until a Work Item is routed. When a Work Item comes in, the Omni-Channel widget automatically pops up alerting the agent of the new record. Depending on your settings they may or may not hear a sound, and may or may not be able to decline the request. See screenshot below:

How does Omni-Channel work with Live Agent?

Salesforce made it extremely easy to integrate Omni-Channel with Live Agent. If you already have Live Agent configured, Salesforce automatically ports those settings into Omni-Channel configurations, so you don’t have to do anything. Once set up, your agents will access Live Agent Work Items in the same place as Cases.

Hopefully this provides you with a good background on Omni-Channel Presence and Routing, and helps aid in the decision on whether to turn this Service Cloud feature on or not.

The Service Cloud Keynote kicked off at 12:30 PST on Thursday with more than 7,000 in attendance, and 70,000 watching online. If you happened to miss it, here a few key highlights and takeaways from the presentation:

Highlights:

• Service Cloud is the number one service application in the world
• Salesforce is focused on delivering a better customer experience in a connected world
• By 2020, there will be 75 billion connected devices, or 58 devices per person in the most connected countries.
• Key customer service trends are around providing a next level customer experience. Any device, at any time, and via any support channel

Metrics around moving to Service Cloud:

• +45% Faster Average Handle Time
• +45% Support Cost Savings
• +47% Agent Productivity
• +48% Faster Case Resolution
• +45% Customer Satisfaction Scores

Three Pillars of Service Cloud:

To discuss the three pillars of Service Cloud, Mike Miburn (SVP & GM Service Cloud) announced three new features that will be added to the Service Cloud line-up. Lightning for Service, Apps for Service, and Wave for Service.

1. Lighting for Service (Faster Service)

Intelligent Routing

• Real-Time Presence
• Seamless Interaction

2. Apps for Service (Smarter Apps)

Knowledge for Apps

• Chat for Apps
• SOS for Apps
• Case for Apps
• Tap-To-Call for Apps

3. Wave for Service (Powerful Insights)

• Analytics for Manager
• Analytics for Agents
• Console Visualization

To provide a real-life example of how the three pillars work in various industries, Mike brought on executives from Stanley Healthcare, Intuit, and San Francisco SPCA to discuss their Service Cloud installations:

Stanley Healthcare

Stanley utilizes omni-channel routing to automatically route the most important cases to their agents, and once they accept the case, they have an immediate 360-degree view of the customer within the Service Console. They can also be proactive when it comes to dealing with their customer issues utilizing Wave to to analyze customer data in real time.

As part of this, Stanley’s customer satisfaction scores have gone way up, and the cost to onboard new agents has reduced significantly.

Intuit

Intuit’s mission, according to Jennifer Hall (Chief Customer Care Office), is to help customers improve their financial life. A major part of this, is ensuring they are providing a higher level of support to their customers. They do this by utilizing Service Cloud’s SOS feature to build a deeper connection with their customers while providing them support on a mobile device. If any customer has an issue while in TurboTax or QuickBooks they can quickly and easily get support whenever, wherever they are.

By taking this approach, Intuit has already seen a 15% increase in their resolution rates, and have an increased customer confidence in their support.

San Francisco SPCA

Dr. Jennifer Scarlett (Co-Found of San Francisco SPCA) talked to the crowd about how they are utilizing Wave Analytics and Service Cloud to reduce the number of abandoned animals in the city. In fact, they have a corporate goal end animal abandonment by 2020. To accomplish this, they’ve set up a contact center powered by Service Cloud to allow them to gather data and proactively manage crises involving animals, then take situations to a resolution where the animal either stays in its home, or is immediately adopted by their no kill shelter.

Within a short period of time, the San Francisco SPCA has already seen a drop in the abandonment rate through empowering their agents with data and analytics.

Key Takeaway

The key message I took away from this presentation is to make sure you maintain a strong focus on your customer’s experience. Ensuring support is provided at the right time, on any device, and via any channel. With the move to a more connected world, as Marc Benioff talked about in his keynote, your customers are going to expect an integrated, intelligent service solution, and if it’s not available they will go looking somewhere else. Service Cloud can be the backbone to provide this next level experience.

To further illustrate the opportunity at-hand for Salesforce customers, I will end with a quote from Mike Milburn: “2/3 of customers will leave you if they feel their experience isn’t being met.”

How do B2C companies like FedEx, Walgreens and Yahoo deliver personalized customer service in a connected and high volume world? Brian Calderwood (Walgreens), Celeste Davis (FedEx TechConnect), and Anar Shah (Yahoo) told us how:

FedEx TechConnect

Quote – “I will make every FedEx experience outstanding.”

FedEx deployed Service Cloud roughly 9 months ago as part of an overarching digital connection strategy. Prior to Service Cloud they had a number of disconnected systems, and no streamlined support tool. Service Cloud has connected their support organization and opened up multiple support channels, including a live chat experience deployed on hundreds of websites in 35 countries and 18 languages.

Challenges Prior to Service Cloud:

• Building customer connections globally
• Behind the curve. Desired to be more predictive around customer needs

Solution Highlights:

• Email-To-Case with complex customized routing that gets cases to the correct agent based on the issue and customers native language
• Live Chat displayed on hundreds of websites in 18 languages also with complex routing to ensure the customer gets the right agent the first time
• Social Customer Service Channel

Lessons Learned:

• Companies need to have a strong vision, and drive to that vision
• For global rollouts, bring in all regions to learn the new tool together. Make sure everyone starts using and understanding from day 1
• Do everything you can to get the customer to the right agent the first time

Yahoo

Quote –  “We strive for customer service that is globally scalable, yet personalized and effective.”

For Yahoo, the customer experience is a journey. They get over 1 billion page views a month, and knew that adding more agents or resources wasn’t a feasible solution for their volume problem. Thus, innovation was their only option. How did they accomplish this while also driving down support costs and improving the overall customer experience? The answer is Service Cloud and adopting industry best practices.

Best Practices:

• Automate repetitive tasks – This applies to both both customers and agents. Make issue resolution an easier/faster experience through automation
• Proactive Messaging – For known product problems, Yahoo provides proactive messaging to their customers, which has been a  great case deflection tool.
• Cross Train Agents – Make it so agents have domain expertise across multiple products
• Optimize Support Channels – Through data analysis, figure out the right channel for the right problem
• Constantly Update Knowledge Bases – Cost to update a knowledge base is a lot cheaper than the cost per case
• Focus on Root Problem –Perform root cause analysis to ensure issues don’t happen again

Yahoo realizes that customer support varies by region and by product, so they work hard to ensure the right support expertise and channel is provided to the customer based their unique circumstance and issue.

Walgreens

Quote – “We’re on a mission to enable seamless transitions from self-service to customer service.”

Walgreens deployed Service Cloud about a year and half ago, and continues to be extremely focused on customer engagement. Historically, Walgreens was very silo’d with every ancillary service managing customer interactions separately. They lacked a single view of the customer across all lines of business. As part of the effort moving to Service Cloud, they were focused on treating their customers as “one customer” no matter which product they were using. This helps provide valuable insights across the entire company, and allows them to present the right information and services to the right customer, at the optimal time.

Solution Highlights:

• Created a single view of their customers by integrating across all lines of business in Service Cloud
• Allowed customers to receive support through any channel they prefer
• Integrated legacy systems with Service Cloud to ensure their agents had all customer information in a single view
• Utilizing skilled-based routing so customers get to the right agent the first time
• Performing a CTI Integration to boost the power of their phone support channel

All this has saved Walgreens a significant amount of money on cross training agents, and increased customer satisfaction dramatically.

The Future of Customer Service

The future of customer service revolves around three key trends in the industry – productivity, personalization and omni-channel experiences. Delivering an exceptional customer support experience has become increasingly important. Brands need to be thinking about their vision for their service business, and how they can approach things like knowledge management, self-service, digital experiences and more with Service Cloud. If you haven’t seen Salesforce’s recent “State of Customer Service” report, I encourage you to go download a copy. There’s a lot of great information in there to get you started on the right path.