Salesforce.com Extends the Leadership of Service Cloud with New Chatter Communities for Service

Chatter Communities for Service will revolutionize legacy portals by enabling customers to tap into a private social community of industry peers and company experts

The Service Cloud is the first ever customer service solution to seamlessly tie social communities together with a complete social contact center, all based on a common knowledge base

Now more than 34,000 customers, including Activision, Design Within Reach and Yamaha Corporation of America have deployed the market-leading Service Cloud to deliver customer service for the social era

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salesforce.com

Sep 19, 2012, 07:55 ET

SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 19, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- DREAMFORCE 2012 -- Salesforce.com [NYSE: CRM], the enterprise cloud computing company, today announced Chatter Communities for Service, extending the leadership of Salesforce Service Cloud. New Chatter Communities for Service will revolutionize legacy portals by enabling customers to tap into a private social community of industry peers and company experts. With service communities, the Service Cloud will be the first ever customer service solution to seamlessly tie social communities together with a complete social contact center, all based on a common knowledge base. Today, 34,000 customers, including Activision, Design Within Reach and Yamaha Corporation of America have deployed the market-leading Service Cloud to deliver customer service for the social era.

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Comments on the News

  • "Delivering transformational customer service is crucial to every company's success in the social era," said John Wookey, executive vice president of social applications, salesforce.com. "Chatter Communities for Service will extend the leadership of the Service Cloud and help companies connect with their customers in entirely new ways."
  • "We have 50 million gamers as our customers, so naturally as a company we are very social and our games are very social," said Robert Schmid, CIO, Activision. "The Service Cloud has helped us transform our entire customer service experience for social. Now both our marketing and customer service organizations can interact socially, collaborate, work faster and engage directly with our gamers. We can now interact with our customers in the ways that work best for them, no matter the channel."

According to a recent study, conversations on the major social media networks now number more than 150 million per day.1 Yet most companies are not listening to their customers. Recent surveys have demonstrated that 95 percent of brand posts on Facebook and 71 percent of complaints on Twitter remain unanswered. The potential business impact of this lack of attention is monumental, as 88 percent of people surveyed indicated they were unlikely to buy from brands that ignore their complaints online.2

Chatter Communities for Service Revolutionizes the Portal

In the past, self-service and peer to peer customer service on the Web were separate experiences, and company experts were completely disconnected from both. Legacy portals forced customers to go to one destination for self service, another to connect with each other and yet another channel to connect with company experts. Furthermore, all of the different Web properties across an organization, whether for sales, service, or marketing, were disparate and hard to manage, with no common profiles, customer identities or reputations.

Chatter Communities for Service will revolutionize legacy portals by enabling customers to tap into a private social community of industry peers and company experts, all based on a common knowledge base. Customers will now have a single place to go for answers regardless of where their inquiry originates, and support organizations will have a common community platform across the extended enterprise.

Chatter Communities for Service will offer:

  • Customizable, Branded Experience: Chatter Communities for Service will leverage the Chatter Communities platform to give companies a customizable, branded location where their customers can ask questions, find answers, and receive help from both other community members and from the company directly.
  • Single Place for Customer Support: Customers will no longer waste time searching through dozens of potential online help destinations to find the answers they need. With Chatter Communities for Service, customers will have a single destination to get answers quickly.
  • Seamless Experience Across Channels: Customers expect to be able to start an interaction in one channel and finish it in any other channel with zero hiccups. With a common customer social profile at the heart of the Service Cloud, Chatter Communities for Service will deliver a unified customer service experience that lets companies deliver seamless support across channels, even if the case begins in social media and is resolved in a service community.
  • Conversations and Knowledge: Chatter Communities for Service will leverage a single underlying knowledge base to help customers find the right answer, the first time, every time.

Salesforce Service Cloud: Delivering Customer Success for Companies of Any Size

The Service Cloud is the first ever customer service solution to seamlessly tie social communities together with a complete social contact center, all based on a common knowledge base. Now more than 34,000 customers, including Activision, Design Within Reach and Yamaha Corporation of America have deployed the Service Cloud to deliver customer service for the social era. According to a recent salesforce.com-sponsored third party survey, companies who have deployed the Service Cloud have seen an average 37 percent decrease in first call resolution time, an average 36 percent decrease in support costs, an average 36 percent increase in agent productivity, and an average 34 percent increase in customer satisfaction.

The Service Cloud led the industry in the shift to social customer service and has been recognized with four CRM magazine Service Awards, including two Service Leader Awards and two Service Elite awards for Service Cloud customers Corel Software and KLM Royal Dutch Airlines.

And with Desk.com, the Service Cloud for small business, now even the smallest companies can deliver customer service for the social era. Desk.com provides a social, mobile, and simple customer support app that lets small businesses get up and running in a matter of hours.

Pricing and Availability

  • Chatter Communities for Service is currently scheduled to be available in limited pilot in fall 2012, and is scheduled to be generally available the second half of 2013.
  • Pricing of Chatter Communities for Service will be announced at general availability.
  • Desk.com is generally available today. Pricing starts at $49, per full-time agent, per month, for unlimited usage. Flex pricing is also available for $1 per part-time agent, per hour.

Additional Resources

About Dreamforce

Dreamforce 2012 is the world's largest vendor technology conference, welcoming more than 90,000 registered attendees to experience the power of the social revolution. With more than 750 sessions and 350 cloud companies in the expo, attendees can participate in interactive sessions, hands-on training with cutting-edge technology, thousands of live demos and unparalleled networking. In addition, Dreamforce welcomes special guests Sir Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Group, Jeff Immelt, CEO of General Electric, Gen. Colin Powell, U.S.A.—ret., Tony Robbins, entrepreneur, author and peak performance strategist and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Dreamforce 2012 offers attendees everything they need to connect with customers, partners and employees in entirely new ways.

About salesforce.com

Founded in 1999, salesforce.com is the enterprise cloud computing leader. Using salesforce.com's social and mobile cloud technologies, companies can connect with customers, partners and employees in entirely new ways. Based on salesforce.com's real-time, multitenant architecture, the company's platform and apps give customers the tools to create a social front office and revolutionize the way they sell, service, market, collaborate, work, and innovate.

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.com applications should make their purchase decisions based upon features that are currently available. Salesforce.com 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.

Copyright © 2012 salesforce.com, inc.  All rights reserved.  Salesforce, Chatter, Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud, Work.com, AppExchange, Salesforce Platform, and others are trademarks of salesforce.com, inc.  Other names used herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.

1 Sources: Penn State College IST Social Study, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Visible Technologies

2 Sources: SocialBakers "Companies Respond to Just 5% of Questions on Facebook"; Sysomos "Replies and Retweets on Twitter"

SOURCE salesforce.com

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