CRM FYI

Momentum keeps growing in the Service and Support realm at Salesforce.com.  What started as humble beginnings back in 2005 as relatively simple case management is now expanding to be the most comprehensive Service and Support offering yet; the Salesforce Service Cloud 2.  With 8,000 companies already using the “current” Service Cloud platform, Salesforce has cemented their commitment to continued innovation, putting time, money, and developers behind building the best service offering available on any platform and for any business.

Service Cloud 2 consists of three parts, Knowledge, Answers, and Salesforce for Twitter

A core piece of the Service Cloud 2 is Salesforce Knowledge.  Just a year ago, Salesforce saw ahead of the curve and made a strategic acquisition of Instranet, a comprehensive knowledge management company that had some great technology, but still relied on single tenancy and complex software and hardware management.  Service Cloud 2 is the fully “in the cloud” version of that acquisition.  Re-tooling a technology and entirely integrating it to existing products usually takes years, but just one year later, Service Cloud 2 is able to fully utilize Visualforce, Apex code, and all the other benefit already available on the Force.com platform.  When asked if former Instranet customers were interested in switching over to the cloud, Alex Dayon, Senior Vice President of Product Management at Salesforce said, “They’ve been pushing us the hardest ”

Companies work hard to try and share knowledge across their organization and to their customers, but most of the technology to do so is complicated to design, deploy, and maintain.  Whether your business process is simple or deeply complex,  Salesforce Knowledge allows for rapid deployment, easy sharing of information to as few or as many people as you need, extremely simple customization, consistent innovation and upgrades, as well as being on a trusted, secure infrastructure that has been proven reliable.

Salesforce Knowledge is priced at $50 per user, per month and is slated for general availability in the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2010. (a few months away)

Salesforce Answers takes the knowledge of the masses and allows you to build on it and reuse it.  Most of us look to a search engine to solve a problem much sooner than pick up the phone.  The answers they find though might be dated and it’s often hard to know which answers are right.  Salesforce Answers helps you build knowledge through the people who talk about your products.  In turn, when your customers find the answer to their questions, they can be published to your knowledge base immediately and you gain millions of content writers.

One of the most interesting features of Salesforce Answers is it’s built-in integration to Facebook.  Now your company’s Facebook fan page can utilize Salesforce Answers right out of the box and millions of people have another way to join in the conversation and contribute.

Salesforce Answers is currently in pilot and should be generally available in the first half of fiscal year 2011.

The third piece of the new Service Cloud 2 is Salesforce for Twitter, a free integration between Salesforce and Twitter to monitor your brand, and join in the conversation that’s already happening.  Whether you realize it or not, people are probably talking about your products, your industry, and even your competitors.  How will you be prepared to respond to what’s being said?  Salesforce has a way.

Salesforce for Twitter features

• Search Twitter in real time – Don’t waste your time looking for service issues, let Salesforce find them for you.
• Monitor service issues on Twitter - Once you find something that needs attention, capture the conversation, see what others say, respond to it yourself, and join the conversation.
• Establish an Enterprise presence on Twitter – Show your interest in the people who are interested in you.  Resolve service issues before they escalate and engage your customers before your competitors do.
• Give your customers a direct channel to support through Twitter – Setup your own channel for customers to directly “Tweet to Case.”  Customer issues are immediately turned into cases to resolve and build a reputation of listening and response.
• Integrated push of “Tweets to Knowledge” – Don’t miss capturing a solution. Once resolved, publish the solution to Salesforce Knowledge.

Salesforce for Twitter Is available now from the Salesforce AppExchange.  If you’re interested in more information on Salesforce for Twitter or the Service Cloud 2, follow Salesforce on Twitter @salesforcenews.

Salesforce is proving that they “get” Service and Support.  With the Service Cloud 2, they are building an arsenal of tools to engage customers, track those relationships, resolve their issues, share information, increase brand loyalty, and improve customer satisfaction.

If you’re put back by the thought of how much it costs to use these tools, you probably ought to look at what the things you’re doing today are costing you in software licenses, hardware maintenance, unhappy customers, and frustrated employees.  I guarantee you thousands of companies are going to adopt this technology, pay the price, get the ROI, see repeat customers and grow their business.  Will it be you or your competitors?