New Automation and AI Innovations from Service Cloud Transform the Contact Center to a Digital HQ for Service Teams

Incident management, swarming in Slack, omni-channel routing in Flow, and extended contact center capabilities help service teams provide fast, proactive, trusted customer service experiences

New AI-powered automation helps make companies more agile as 84% of service professionals say the pandemic has changed their workflows and processes

 Sonos taps AI-powered automation to quickly route issues and provide agent expertise where it matters most

Salesforce today announced new AI-powered workflows and contact center innovations in Service Cloud to power effortless experiences for service agents and their customers. New workflows built into the Customer 360 platform enable customer service teams to predict, route, and solve customer needs — sometimes before the customer is even aware a problem exists. Additionally, new digital contact center innovations for video, chat, voice and workforce engagement offer more effortless experiences for both customers and service teams.  

As customer requests surge and businesses face shortages in available agents, 78% of consumers have needed to contact companies multiple times over a single concern, a situation that erodes trust in a brand. To prevent this, agents need a platform that automates repetitive and low value tasks so they can focus on the human side of service —  resolving complex problems faster and building deeper, trusted relationships.

“The businesses that have thrived over the last 18 months are those that embraced digital tools to deliver excellent customer and employee service experiences with trust and transparency,” said Clara Shih, CEO of Service Cloud, Salesforce. “With new AI and process automation for Service Cloud, as well as Slack to provide a digital hub to quickly resolve issues across teams and departments, we’re giving agents more time to focus on providing human-centric service and giving customers fast, proactive service to build trust and loyalty.” 

AI-powered workflows for trusted service at scale

With customer expectations higher than ever, service teams need to respond fast in the moments that matter. In fact, 90% of customers say how a company acts during a crisis reveals its trustworthiness. AI-powered workflows and automation empower service teams to quickly respond to major incidents, automate how cases are routed throughout the organization, and eliminate repetitive tasks that bog agents down. New workflow capabilities include: 

• Customer Service Incident Management accelerates resolution for major incidents fast, by helping companies detect, diagnose, and respond to service disruptions. This empowers service teams to proactively notify customers of a problem and triage increases in cases, as well as provide transparency for customers and the operations teams working to resolve the root problem. Swarming automatically brings together your designated internal and external experts, from devops and finance teams, to external partners, in Slack to collaborate and solve major incidents and escalations. Integrations with partners such as PagerDuty for AIOps and real-time service status, Datadog for event monitoring, Jira for project management, and Cadalys for configuration management database (CMDB) and service management workflows provide a comprehensive incident management solution. 
• Omni-Channel Flow built on Salesforce’s workflow platform makes it easier for service teams to create complex rules based on CRM data for routing cases, calls, messages, and chats across the service team and other departments. With Omni-Channel, Einstein Case Classification, and Einstein Article Recommendation in Flow, Service Cloud can now analyze incoming cases and automate routing to the best queue, agent, or process — including processes that interact with external systems — and auto-respond to customers with relevant articles to drive efficiency and reduce support costs. 
• Robotic process automation capabilities (RPA) for Service Cloud from the recent Servicetrace acquisition enable service teams to automate repetitive tasks such as look-ups and write-ins across legacy systems that lack APIs. For example, companies can scale customer service by automating embedded processes in chatbots to guide customers step-by-step to solve an issue, while call center agents can achieve significant gains in productivity by automating repetitive tasks like opening and closing support tickets.

Effortless experiences with a Digital Service HQ 

Contact centers have always been rows of desks where an agent can tap their neighbor on the shoulder for help. Working in a hybrid and distributed world, agents now need a digital HQ that brings together their workspace, voice capabilities, workforce engagement, and Slack to connect employees, partners, customers, and apps on one screen. New digital contact center capabilities include: 

• Einstein Conversation Mining helps to continuously improve and optimize self-service channels and knowledge bases by using Natural Language Processing (NLP) to identify the most common types of interactions with customers. For example, Einstein Conversation Mining can determine which use cases to prioritize for a service bot rollout or prompt the creation of a new knowledge article to address a frequent customer concern.
• Messaging for In-app & Web now enables customers to start a persistent messaging experience, like SMS and WhatsApp, directly in a mobile application or on a website and pick the conversation up where it left off. No more dropped chats or repeating information, even if the window is closed, or customers toggle between app and browser — the conversation with the agent persists, with no need to repeat contact information or restate the problem.
• Visual Remote Assistant now enables two-way video and audio for face-to-face conversations between agents or field technicians and customers, creating stronger relationships and personalized experiences. This level of experience can improve consultations with everyone from financial advisors and doctors, to mechanics, who can troubleshoot car problems remotely. 
• Workforce Engagement Intraday Management enables companies to close the gap between forecasted work and actual staffing needs. Companies can improve customer experience and agent morale by adjusting employee schedules when things don’t go as planned, like if there is a severe weather incident and call volumes spike. 
• Service Cloud Voice brings together phone, digital channels, and CRM data in one central workspace for service agents. Service Cloud Voice now integrates with 10 partners on the AppExchange. 

Salesforce customers deliver effortless experiences with Service Cloud 360

Throughout the pandemic, companies have tapped Service Cloud 360 to engage and embrace customer needs through digital platforms.

• Sonos: “Almost overnight, we had to learn to be more connected, more productive, and more innovative to best reach and serve customers — no matter where they are,” said Patrick Spence, CEO of Sonos. “Automation enabled us to speed up responses and resolve inquiries faster, so that when we were faced with an influx of new customers, we were able to provide great experiences that turned them into loyal listeners.”
• Palo Alto Networks: “Security has become a top-level priority for every business, and we want to continue to offer stellar experiences as our company grows. With AI and automation in Service Cloud, we’re able to continue providing world-class digital-first experiences to our customers at scale and ensure our customers get the support experiences they expect from their trusted security partner,” said Steve Young, VP, Global Customer Services at Palo Alto Networks.”

Product Availability

• Visual Remote Assistant Two-Way Video and partners for Service Cloud Voice are generally available today. 
• Customer Service Incident Management and Omni-Channel Flow will be generally available Winter ‘22. Einstein Case Classification and Einstein Article Recommendations in Flow, as well as Einstein Conversation Mining and Messaging for Web will be in Pilot Winter ‘22. 
• Swarming and Messaging for In-App will be generally available Spring ‘22. 
• Workforce Engagement Intraday Management will be generally available Summer ‘22.
• RPA for Service Cloud will be generally available in 2022.

Join us for a deep dive on these new innovations on Salesforce+, at the Dreamforce ‘21 Service Cloud 360 keynote on September 22 at 2:30pm PT.