By 2020 it is estimated that there will be over 50 billion connected devices. And that means that consumers will be more connected than ever before, across mobile phones, wearables and other devices and the field of IOT will continue to expand. So if consumers are more connected, what does this mean for companies? If customers expect to be able to interact, engage, purchase and get service through any channel, companies need to step up to this challenge.

What Companies Need To Consider With the Expansion of IOT:  While we have been talking about a seamless customer experience for years, companies that want to keep their business and gain market share will have to really examine their ability to deliver a seamless experience to these ultra-connected consumers during each and every interaction, across every channel. That’s the case for customers interacting with the company. But what about when customer wants to get help from an customer service agent?

customer service wave analytics salesforceIOT and Customer Service Agents: For customer service agents to be able to support all the new channels as well as make sense of all the data being generated from all these channels, they need new, smarter solutions that allow them to better respond to customers. Customer Service agents need to know the history of the customer’s visits to various channels, purchases, customer service requests, etc.. However, often time agents don’t have access to any of that historical data or consumer behavior data to predict the next best actions.

Why Are Companies Struggling with The Seamless Customer Experience? Companies struggle to deliver on these expectations because their company and contact centers are filled with technology from 20 years ago. These legacy technologies are not connected to the products they sell or the channels their customers are now interacting win.

Bottom-line, many companies are well not equipped with the tools they need to deliver answers quickly. So when companies come to me and ask, “How do I succeed in this world where the seamless customer experience can no longer be ignored?” My simple answer (which is really a complex answer when you look under the hood) is that companies need to transform their customer service strategy, and enable agents to deliver smart and fast customer service across every channel. And we all know it is easier said than done. The great thing is the technology can deliver on these promises, but it takes people to lead and integrate the strategy and technology into their organization.

Agent Productivity Gains: New Service Cloud Lightning Console Sets a New Standard for Agent Productivity  As part of helping to solve the issues companies are facing, Salesforce’s Service Cloud is bringing to market the new Service Cloud Lightning Console. It has been reimagined with a modern, efficient and intelligent experience for agents. And the the Lightning Console is built on the Salesforce1 Platform. Lightning Console includes:

  • Optimized Lightning Console: The new Lightning Console gives agents a highly-productive experience that provides everything they need at their fingertips. Agents can dramatically speed up common actions like creating new contacts, registering products and processing returns—all without losing the context of the interaction or needing to switch screens.

  • Smart Productivity Tools: The new Lightning Console also enables agents to be more productive by allowing them to apply more intelligence to every case to resolve them quickly. Recommended Tools use algorithms to help agents by suggesting relevant knowledge articles, macros and recommended actions from similar cases, and are presented proactively right in the console.

  • Intelligent Routing and Presence: The Lightning Console includes omni-channel routing and presence so the right work is dynamically routed to the right agent at the right time, resolving customer issues faster. Managers have transparency into what work has been assigned to which agents, each agent’s capacity and can push specific work to the most appropriate agents.

  • Service Lightning Components and the Lightning Design System: With Salesforce Lightning, service teams have a platform for innovation that enables agents to connect with customers in entirely new ways. Salesforce Lightning combines Lightning Experience, Design System, Components and App Builder, extending the Salesforce1 Platform to empower anyone to easily create modern, service-specific apps. And companies can use Salesforce Lightning and Components from the AppExchange to extend Service Cloud with any app.

If you remember, (I know it’s difficult to keep up with all the new software!) last year, Salesforce launched Analytics Cloud, powered by the Wave Platform, to reimagine the entire analytics process end-to-end, and empower business users to explore any data and uncover new insights on any device. And earlier this year, Salesforce expanded its Analytics Cloud portfolio with Wave Analytics Apps. So what’s new?

Today, Salesforce is announcing its latest Wave Analytics App—Service Wave Analytics: It is the first analytics app built for Service Cloud. It arms service teams with deeper, more actionable insights that help service agents and leaders instantly optimize channels, improve agent efficiency and spot or address emerging trends. Service Wave Analytics will deliver:

  • Analytics for Service Leaders: Key performance indicators—including average handling time, customer satisfaction and first call resolution—can be instantly explored through pre-configured templates developed to give service leaders with the metrics they need to take the pulse of their team’s performance. The insights can lead to a decisions so service leaders will be able to act instantly. Service Wave seamlessly connects to Service Cloud workflows and records, so managers can instantly assign a task, escalate a case, update a ticket or share best practices—right within the Service Wave App. For example, a service team leader can conduct a real-time review of each agent’s performance metrics across channels or against service cases across products to instantly improve case management, agent efficiency and channel optimization—from anywhere, on any device.

  • Analytics for Service Agents: Analytics dashboards from Service Wave can be embedded directly into the Lightning Console, giving every service agent an instant 360 degree view of the customer right where they work, taking agent productivity to new heights. For example, an agent who is talking to a customer and reviewing their service case in the Lightning Console will have both traditional customer and case history data alongside Wave insights on similar cases right at their fingertips, enabling them to deliver smarter service faster than ever. In addition, each agent can have a personal scorecard to track their performance in comparison to their peers, as well as identify top performing colleagues who can share best practices.

  • Native to Service Cloud: Service Wave’s native integration with Salesforce enables every service professional to be up and running in minutes to instantly explore Service Cloud data. In addition, operational data from other customer service systems​ such as call logs, chat history, CTI data and web clicks can be surfaced. Now, teams can create custom dashboards and lenses to explore this data alongside traditional performance metrics to quickly diagnose problems, alleviate bottlenecks or proactively re-allocate service resources. For example, a service leader no longer has to wait for an analyst to deliver insights on operational data, or spend time cross-referencing static spreadsheets to determine the correlation between an outdated knowledge article and lengthy case resolution times for a specific product.

To learn more about this announcement, you can find more information here:

Your Next Steps: Every individual has to take a hard look at whether they and their organization is prepared for a seamless, customer experience, especially in Customer Service. It’s even more important now than ever, because, Customer Service IS THE NEW MARKETING.

Brands can’t sell to customers that are mad. Customer Service issues have to be dealt with and studies show that a customer with a problem that got solved is more loyal than a customer who never had an issue with a company.

Why is this the case? Because the customer knows the brand has their back. And that’s pretty much all customers want. They don’t want brands to be perfect, they want them to be human, responsive, relevant, helpful, concerned and fix their issues. That’s what creates loyalty.

You have to ask yourself, if your company’s Customer Service capabilities are up to speed or will your brand be left behind? And if it’s not up to spend, what can you do to change that paradigm?

@Drnatalie, VP and Principal Analyst, Constellation Research

Business Research Themes

Next-Generation Customer Experience

Roles

Chief Customer Officer