Salesforce today officially took the wraps off Service Cloud Intelligence Engine. This new offering leverages the CRM giant’s expertise in managing customer information to provide companies’ customer-facing staff members with a seamless, omnichannel view of customers across all touch points.
In a briefing with ContactCenterSolutions, Sarah Patterson, vice president of marketing for Salesforce Service Cloud, talked about how when computers first came out they were essentially systems of record. Now they’re moving to be systems of engagement and intelligence, which is fueled by data science. And that, she noted, can help businesses – whose customers are now leveraging an array of channels to communicate with them – to better understand the needs and value of customers, and how and where best to respond to them. Service Cloud Intelligence Engine delivers the intelligent business processes and omnichannel customer views, as well as intelligent workload management, to do that, she said.
Typically, a customer care agent at a company will sit down at his or her desk and pick whatever case he or she feels like addressing, said Patterson. But Service Cloud Intelligence Engine takes an intelligent approach to business processes, triaging all cases and sending them automatically to agents who have either worked with that specific customer in the past or have the right skill sets to meet the particular customer’s needs, she explained.
The intelligent workload management feature of Service Cloud Intelligence Engine automatically distributes and manages the workload across all agents, but does so in a way that considers important factors, Patterson explained. For example, if an agent is in a video chat with a high-value customer, the system recognizes that and will automatically look for another agent with which to interface a new customer.
Service Cloud Intelligence Engine’s seamless omnichannel customer view, meanwhile, preserves customer context and conversation across every channel. For example, if a customer tweets that he or she needs to get onto a new flight, but then wants to send the airline or travel agency more information via email, the Service Cloud Intelligence Engine can automatically see he or she is the same person who sent the tweet. And the system enables agents to easily move from one aspect of the customer journey to the next via macros that automate regular tasks.
All this is important, added Patterson, because companies that deliver smart services reap the rewards. According to Salesforce, companies that do this see a 91 percent increase year over year in customer retention over companies that don’t deliver smart services.
Service Cloud Intelligence Engine is now in betas and is slated to be generally available later this year. Salesforce has not yet announced the pricing.