Item: Salesforce Service Cloud
Rating: 8
Author: Jonathan Tanis

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Service Cloud for incoming client support. Every employee in our company has a license to either Service Cloud, Sales Cloud or both. Primarily, clients email a shared email address and this creates cases that we assign and track to make sure our responses are quick. We're a small team, so the focus is really on speed of replies and organizing open cases. Secondarily, we use it to keep client data relevant and updated. We've also intended to use Knowledge Base and Community to engage clients and produce more articles and how-to's, but the users find this overly complicated and tend to not use this as often as I wish we did.

Pros and Cons

Flexibility of data tracked, displayed, reported on, and customized.
Single source of truth for support, implementations, sales and management.
Ability to integrate through built-in app exchange and easy API.
Reporting and emailed reports with direct links to drill down into data.
Do virtually whatever you "need" to do.

Email case management requires a lot of customization or third-party solutions to get right. i.e. Email to Case Premium.
Not a lot works out of the box around dashboards, reports, metric tracking, etc.
Price is hard to justify, especially with all the little upgrades and features that aren't included. (CPQ, Lightning Dialer, Einstein, Pardot, Engage, Partner, Community, Inbox, Quip, etc).
While it can do anything, it requires someone do it. For example, we integrated Zoom Phones, but call logs show up as tasks, not in the "Call Logs" section.
Keeping members cc'd on issues and updates is a bit complicated and not clean. This is hard to describe. They have a Case Team function, but its a bit complicated to get working the way I'd like.
Premier Support seemed like a good idea initially, but I've had limited success with the accelerators and it's really only good for troubleshooting something not working, rather than helping build something better.
Community licenses are too expensive for us to justify at this time.

Return on Investment

Probably negative due to the cost of Salesforce. We haven't seen a return on the sales side yet to really justify the costs.
On the positive side, it's nice to manage opportunities from cases and cases from opportunities.
Our data has never been more organized and in better shape, though it's a constant battle!

Alternatives Considered

Zendesk, Zendesk Chat (formerly Zopim), Zendesk Explore, Zendesk Guide, Zendesk Talk, HubSpot, HubSpot CRM, HubSpot Sales, GoldMine, Nimble, Streak, Zoho CRM, Basecamp, Sugar Sell (SugarCRM), Highrise, Norada Solve360, Zendesk Sell (formerly Base) and Apptivo

Salesforce had the most flexibility, features and integrations. They were also so tightly integrated in with opportunity management and case management. I love having the ability to create custom objects to solve any kind of business problem. There is also a lot of flexibility around views, permissions, and even partner access to the system to share cases/opportunities with 3rd parties. The integrations with Zoom and DocuSign worked out of the box and well. It checks the most boxes. My only regret is the price!

Support Rating

Every time I've used their support, they have been exceptional. I admit I don't use it as often as I should with the Premier Support we paid for.

Key Insights

Do you think Salesforce Service Cloud delivers good value for the price?

Not sure

Are you happy with Salesforce Service Cloud's feature set?

Yes

Did Salesforce Service Cloud live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Salesforce Service Cloud go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Salesforce Service Cloud again?

Yes

Other Software Used

DocuSign, Zoom Phone, G Suite

Likelihood to Recommend

I would argue Salesforce is the best CRM option for most companies. However, I'm not sure it's always worth it. I believe you really need a managed partner available, or at least one full-time staff member that knows what they are doing. You can get it working on a shoestring, but not easily, and perhaps not as effectively. Coming from Zendesk, which mostly "just worked" and was about 30% of the cost, it can be a really good option.

We purchased Salesforce to get our data in better shape and have sales, marketing and service in one system, and our data is in far better shape than we ever saw with Zendesk or HubSpot.

It's hard to beat the level of customization available with Salesforce. If I want to do something, you can do it if you have the time or want to pay for something on the App Exchange. I think the larger the organization, the more likely I recommend Salesforce. The smaller, I might recommend HubSpot or Zendesk (which I've used in the past).

Salesforce is worth it if you can afford it and afford to support it

Software Version

Overall Satisfaction with Salesforce Service Cloud