Tightly Integrated Solutions Management System for Increased Sales & Account Management Awareness
July 08, 2014
Tightly Integrated Solutions Management System for Increased Sales & Account Management Awareness
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Software Version
Professional
Overall Satisfaction with Salesforce Service Cloud
The Salesforce Service Cloud is being used to monitor and respond to cases/tickets that are submitted by customers. Our tickets range from feature/enhancement requests to bug issues, or requests for troubleshooting assistance. Therefore, the Sales portion of the product is only leveraged by our Business Development Managers (BDMs) and the Service Cloud portion is leveraged by the company's Field Application Engineers (FAEs, who are essentially our specialized technicians). The purpose of using the Service Cloud was to consolidate our activities, monitor any trends in requests/issues, and provide more accessibility and transparency between our FAEs and BDMs.
- Easy to use and implement. The system is fairly intuitive for users, as well as System Administrators who will monitor and setup the system. It's easy to create the ticket records, generate assignment rules, create escalation methods, establish communication, etc.
- I like the variety of options you have for submitting a case and communicating automatically back with the customer. (Such as creating automated web-to-case or email-to-case tickets, and sending automated response emails upon the creation or escalation of a ticket.)
- I like that the cases are tied with the Account. This allows the BDMs to be aware of what is going on with the account before touching base with the client. For example, it's helpful to know that someone is in the middle of troubleshooting a ticket before you give them a sales call. All email communications for the case can be tracked within the ticket, so the BDM can read up on the current status and all the details surrounding the issue.
- The email-to-case system and method for tracking emails is not seamless. Occasionally, emails get lost.
- The method for creating HTML for the web-to-case form is very easy, however there are very few ways to edit the code for the beginner HTML code user.
- I do not think escalation should require a 30 minute minimum. With specific criteria, there should be a way to escalate a case immediately.
- Better customer service. We are able to track progress and assign cases to experts.
- Reporting. We are better able to report on how long tickets remain open, what the main issues/topics are, who is submitting them, etc.
This is the only case management system I have used. We selected the Salesforce Service Cloud because Salesforce is the platform used for our CRM and pipeline management, so the reporting and tracking of all components are easily integrated.
Using Salesforce Service Cloud
20 - We have 1 marketing user, 2 administrative assistants, 6 field application engineers (technicians), 2 engineers, 1 sales manager, and 8 business development managers.
1 - Our System Administrator completed the ADM-201 training class with Salesforce. This enables her to make the necessary changes on the backend without engaging a full consulting company. She also attended Dreamforce and actively uses the forums/help sites for ideas and best practices.
- Tracking the types of issues our customers are experiencing, and hopefully using that information to improve and change the products.
- Improving our response efficiency by tracking solutions and answers, and then reusing them when applicable.
- Managing our response time by escalating cases that have been open for 48+ hours and assigning them to experts according to the relevant topics.
- Improve customer relations by expanding the knowledge of our BDMs.
- Improve communication when accounts are handed off from one user to another, since all communication and historical cases are tracked and logged.
- Increase transparency of the sales organization to the executive management team through reporting tools.