Item: Salesforce Service Cloud
Rating: 9
Author: Jessie Mead

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Service Cloud is being used by multiple divisions within our umbrella of 12 companies at the national financial firm. We use it as the central help desk for the entire enterprise (~1,000 nationwide employees). Having the ability for a single email to disperse employee requests to the correct regional IT department is extremely helpful in addressing issues quickly. We also use it for other departments (such as compliance, facilities, retail) in a similar aspect, in which there is a single email for the enterprise to submit forms or emails to the correct queue. Great for timeliness and audit tracking!

Pros and Cons

Splitting service processes into the respective channels as needed (helpdesk vs. facilities; Midwest vs. Central regions). It's nice knowing that the issue can be addressed by the correct channel on first try.
Communications are extremely effective - the ability to email back and forth and have it tracked on the correct ticket is great for auditing and training.
The Console view is great as it helps agents see their work in a single screen, and also having Knowledge and chat integrated adds an extra flare to the quality of service.

It would be nice to have inline coloring in list views to know who is changing or taking ownership of specific tickets as they are happening.
When posting comments, it would be great to be able to select whether or not to notify the case owner or contact upon save.
The emailing from an org-wide address gets a little tricky when people are trying to cc the full case owner. (example: facilities isn't the owner of the ticket, but is the queue - they would like to be notified as a queue any time communication happens to be aware of the current status).

Return on Investment

Positive: We are able to track the time it takes to close tickets and identify agents who are slower than others for additional training.
Positive: We are able to report on tickets submitted based on type and department - it's nice seeing that 80% of the tickets coming in from the Iowa region are focused around teller issues; while 80% of the Dallas based region are more around printer issues.
Negative: We have to adjust our reports to remove any spam-type or bounced-type emails from our reporting, as EVERY email that comes in creates that new ticket. (But also good for us to see what kind of emails are coming into an "internal" email address).

Alternatives Considered

Zendesk

Zendesk is great, but it doesn't allow for multiple ticketing channels to be linked to real time clients. Utilizing Service Cloud WITH Salesforce let's us see the full order/asset/tracking history that's occurred historically with buyers and sellers. The workflows are also extremely easy to set up and monitor. Also, the console makes it easy on the agents in keeping track of work, open tickets, times, reports, etc.

Other Software Used

Salesforce Community Cloud, Salesforce CPQ (formerly SteelBrick), Salesforce Marketing Cloud Email Studio

Likelihood to Recommend

Service Cloud is great for ticketing systems. If you have a form you want to make available to customers or employees, or if you want a general email (support, for example) to be accessed for help and direction - Service Cloud is perfect. You can send an email and know that the routing is what it needs to be, and build out the following process based on any of the criteria thereafter. If you are using Communities or some kind of website, you can set up forms to require certain fields be filled in (type, issue, etc.) - another great way for the ticket to make it exactly where it needs to go (and can even go through approvals if needed before making it to the new owner).

Salesforce Service Clears the Clouds!

Software Version

Overall Satisfaction with Salesforce Service Cloud