Experience the Future of Customer Service Today: Salesforce Introduces New Service Cloud Lightning Console and Service Wave Analytics App

SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 1, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- Salesforce [NYSE: CRM], the Customer Success Platform and world's #1 CRM company, today announced the next generation of Service Cloud, setting a new standard for customer service in today's connected world. With the new Service Cloud Lightning Console, which was developed with the feedback from hundreds of thousands of support agents, and the new Service Wave Analytics App, the world's #1 customer service and support platform just got even better. Now, companies across industries can empower agents to be more productive by giving them new ways to deliver one-to-one support, smarter service and embedded service everywhere.

Today's consumers are more connected than ever before, across mobile phones, wearables and other devices. In fact, by 2020 there will be over 50 billion connected devices^[1]. For companies, it means they need to deliver a seamless experience to these ultra-connected consumers during each and every interaction, across every channel. For service agents to be able to support new channels and make sense of all the data being generated, they need new, smarter solutions that allow them to better respond to customers. However, companies struggle to deliver on these expectations because legacy technologies are disconnected from products and new channels, and agents aren't equipped with the tools they need to deliver answers quickly. If companies want to succeed in today's world, they need to transform their customer service strategy, and enable agents to deliver smart and fast customer service across every channel.

New Service Cloud Lightning Console Sets a New Standard for Agent Productivity 
The new Service Cloud Lightning Console has been reimagined with a modern, efficient and intelligent experience for agents. And because it's built on the Salesforce1 Platform, the Lightning Console is designed to meet the needs of any service department. Lightning Console includes:

• Optimized Lightning Console: The new Lightning Console takes customer service to the next level by giving 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. Now, 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 now, companies can use Salesforce Lightning and Components from the AppExchange to extend Service Cloud with any app they can dream up.

New Service Wave Analytics App: Actionable Insights for Every Service Agent and Leader
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. Earlier this year, the company expanded its Analytics Cloud portfolio with Wave Analytics Apps and, today, Salesforce is announcing its latest Wave Analytics App—Service Wave Analytics—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 arm service leaders with the metrics they need to take the pulse of their team's performance at any moment. And when insights lead to a decision, 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 now be equipped with 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.

Comments on the News

• "The most successful companies meet the elevated expectations of today's customers by making service a core part of their business strategy and putting it at the heart of the customer experience," said Mike Milburn, senior vice president and general manager of Service Cloud, Salesforce. "With the new Service Cloud, companies have everything they need to empower agents to be more productive by giving them new ways to deliver smarter, more personalized support across any channel."
• "Our products support patients, clinicians and senior living residents to provide security and safety and to help improve process efficiency. The nature of our business requires us to deliver an excellent service experience to people, anytime, anywhere," said Martin Guay, President, Stanley Healthcare. "With these new updates to Salesforce Service Cloud we can equip our agents with the insights and productivity tools they need to quickly resolve cases and better support our customers. More importantly, they enable us to tighten our connection with customers by using connected devices and embed proactive service, making service a core part of the customer experience."

New Service Cloud Capabilities Build on Year of Breakthrough Innovations
In the last year, Salesforce has delivered innovations to help companies transform how they connect to their customers with exceptional customer service. Most recently, the company announced Service for Apps, which enables any company to easily embed customer service directly into mobile apps. With Service for Apps, which is currently in private beta, companies can deliver on a connected experience with instant, personalized support and the fastest path to case resolution. Companies can offer multi-channel support within apps including Chat for Apps, Tap-to-Call for Apps, Knowledge for Apps or Cases for Apps. In addition, Salesforce introduced Omni-Channel Intelligent Routing and Salesforce SOS for Apps, which is live video chat with a customer service agent, changing the game for customer service with live video chat that can be embedded anywhere.

Service Cloud, the world's #1 customer service and support platform, enables companies to transform their Service organizations and deliver exceptional customer service experiences. Industry-defining companies are leveraging the Service Cloud to connect with their customers in a whole new way. Companies that have deployed Service Cloud have seen an average of 48 percent faster case resolution, 45 percent decrease in support costs, an average of 47 percent increase in agent productivity and an average of 45 percent increase in customer satisfaction, according to a recent third-party research report sponsored by Salesforce.^[2]

Pricing and Availability

• Service Cloud is now generally available and pricing starts at $135 per user per month.
• The Service Cloud Lightning Console is expected to be generally available by the end of this year and included in the Service Cloud Enterprise Edition or greater. 
• The Service Wave Analytics App is currently in pilot with select customers and expected to be generally available in January 2016. Service Wave Analytics will be available via a per user, per month subscription model. Pricing will be publicly available at the time of general availability.
• Salesforce SOS is generally available and is $150 per user per month with an Enterprise Edition license of Service Cloud.
• Chat for Apps, Tap-to-Call for Apps, Knowledge for Apps and Cases for Apps are planned for private beta in the latter half of 2015 and pricing will be announced at the time of general availability. Salesforce customers interested in joining the Service for Apps private beta program should contact their account executive.

Additional Information

• Learn more about the Service Cloud at http://www.salesforce.com/service-cloud/overview/
• Learn more about Salesforce SOS at http://www.salesforce.com/service-cloud/features/sos/
• Learn more about Service Wave Analytics at http://www.salesforce.com/form/analytics/service-wave-overview.jsp
• Watch a Service Wave Analytics demo at http://www.salesforce.com/form/analytics/service-wave-demo.jsp

Connect with Salesforce

• Follow @Salesforce on Twitter
• Like the Service Cloud on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ServiceCloud

About Salesforce
Salesforce, the Customer Success Platform and world's #1 CRM company, empowers companies to connect with their customers in a whole new way. For more information about Salesforce (NYSE: CRM), visit: http://www.salesforce.com.

Any unreleased services or features referenced in this or other press releases or public statements are not currently available and may not be delivered on time or at all. Customers who purchase Salesforce applications should make their purchase decisions based upon features that are currently available. Salesforce has headquarters in San Francisco, with offices in Europe and Asia, and trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol "CRM." For more information please visit http://salesforce.com, or call 1-800-NO-SOFTWARE.

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^[1] Source: "Seize New IoT Opportunities with the Cisco IoT System," Cisco, http://www.cisco.com/web/solutions/trends/iot/portfolio.html

^[2] Source: Salesforce Customer Relationship Survey conducted March-April 2015, by an independent third-party, Confirmit Inc., on 4,600+ customers randomly selected. Response sizes per question vary.

SOURCE Salesforce

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