Salesforce.com s Service Cloud

Transcription

1 Salesforce.com s Service Cloud Learn to: Embrace the cloud for next-generation customer support Integrate with all your channels Customize case management Make the world your contact center Liz Kao Matt Kaufman Tom Wong

2 About salesforce.com Salesforce.com is the enterprise cloud computing company. The company s portfolio of Salesforce CRM applications, available at has helped companies collaborate and communicate with their customers across sales, marketing, and service. The company s Force.com platform ( helps customers, partners, and developers to quickly build powerful business applications to run every part of the enterprise in the cloud. Based on salesforce.com s real-time, multitenant architecture, Salesforce CRM and Force.com offer a fast path to customer success with cloud computing.

3 Salesforce.com s Service Cloud FOR DUMmIES These materials are the copyright of Wiley Publishing, Inc. and any

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5 Salesforce.com s Service Cloud FOR DUMmIES by Liz Kao, Matt Kaufman, and Tom Wong

6 Salesforce.com s Service Cloud For Dummies Published by Wiley Publishing, Inc. 111 River Street Hoboken, NJ Copyright 2010 by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana Published by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise, except as permitted under Sections 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without the prior written permission of the Publisher. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, (201) , fax (201) , or online at Trademarks: Wiley, the Wiley Publishing logo, For Dummies, the Dummies Man logo, A Reference for the Rest of Us!, The Dummies Way, Dummies.com, Making Everything Easier, and related trade dress are trademarks or registered trademarks of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the United States and other countries, and may not be used without written permission. Salesforce and the no software logo are registered trademarks of salesforce.com, inc., and salesforce.com owns other registered and unregistered trademarks. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Wiley Publishing, Inc., is not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book. LIMIT OF LIABILITY/DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTY: THE PUBLISHER AND THE AUTHOR MAKE NO REPRESENTATIONS OR WARRANTIES WITH RESPECT TO THE ACCURACY OR COMPLETE- NESS OF THE CONTENTS OF THIS WORK AND SPECIFICALLY DISCLAIM ALL WARRANTIES, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION WARRANTIES OF FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. NO WARRANTY MAY BE CREATED OR EXTENDED BY SALES OR PROMOTIONAL MATERIALS. THE ADVICE AND STRATEGIES CONTAINED HEREIN MAY NOT BE SUITABLE FOR EVERY SITU- ATION. THIS WORK IS SOLD WITH THE UNDERSTANDING THAT THE PUBLISHER IS NOT ENGAGED IN RENDERING LEGAL, ACCOUNTING, OR OTHER PROFESSIONAL SERVICES. IF PRO- FESSIONAL ASSISTANCE IS REQUIRED, THE SERVICES OF A COMPETENT PROFESSIONAL PERSON SHOULD BE SOUGHT. NEITHER THE PUBLISHER NOR THE AUTHOR SHALL BE LIABLE FOR DAMAGES ARISING HEREFROM. THE FACT THAT AN ORGANIZATION OR WEBSITE IS REFERRED TO IN THIS WORK AS A CITATION AND/OR A POTENTIAL SOURCE OF FURTHER INFORMATION DOES NOT MEAN THAT THE AUTHOR OR THE PUBLISHER ENDORSES THE INFORMATION THE ORGANIZATION OR WEBSITE MAY PROVIDE OR RECOMMENDATIONS IT MAY MAKE. FURTHER, READERS SHOULD BE AWARE THAT INTERNET WEBSITES LISTED IN THIS WORK MAY HAVE CHANGED OR DISAPPEARED BETWEEN WHEN THIS WORK WAS WRIT- TEN AND WHEN IT IS READ. For general information on our other products and services, please contact our Customer Care Department within the U.S. at , outside the U.S. at , or fax ISBN: Manufactured in the United States of America

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8 Publisher s Acknowledgments We re proud of this book; please send us your comments through our Dummies online registration form located at For other comments, please contact our Customer Care Department within the U.S. at , outside the U.S. at , or fax For details on how to create a custom For Dummies book for your business or organization, contact bizdev@wiley.com. For information about licensing the For Dummies brand for products or services, contact BrandedRights&Licenses@Wiley.com. Some of the people who helped bring this book to market include the following: Acquisitions, Editorial, and Media Development Project Editor: Jennifer Bingham Editorial Manager: Rev Mengle Business Development Representative: Karen Hattan Custom Publishing Project Specialist: Michael Sullivan Cartoons: Rich Tennant ( Composition Services Project Coordinator: Kristie Rees Layout and Graphics: Samantha K. Cherolis Proofreaders: Melissa Cossell, Betty Kish Indexer: Broccoli Information Mgt. Salesforce.com contributors: Dean Atchison, Gavin Austin, Pierpaolo Bergamo, Marco Casalaina, Chet Chauhan, Phil Choi, Kyle Christensen, Etienne Giraudy, Barbara Jurin, Andrea Leszek, Olivier Pin, Michael Ramsey, Elizabeth Rice, Joshua Schneyer, Sarah Suwanjindar, Rachel Thornton, Thomas Tobin, Nori Yoshida Publishing and Editorial for Technology Dummies Richard Swadley, Vice President and Executive Group Publisher Andy Cummings, Vice President and Publisher Mary Bednarek, Executive Director, Acquisitions Mary C. Corder, Editorial Director Publishing and Editorial for Consumer Dummies Diane Graves Steele, Vice President and Publisher, Consumer Dummies Composition Services Debbie Stailey, Director of Composition Services

9 Table of Contents Introduction... 1 Who Should Read This Guide... 2 How This Book Is Organized... 2 How to Use This Book... 3 Assumptions Made in This Book... 3 Icons Used in This Book... 4 Part I: Introducing the Service Cloud from Salesforce.com... 5 Chapter 1: Understanding Salesforce.com s Service Cloud Seeing the Big Picture... 8 Seeing the Universe of Possibilities Centralizing contacts under one roof Working as a team Collaborating with your customers Making it easy for your customers to reach you Increasing team productivity Preparing Your Service Cloud Strategy Improving customer service As a service and support agent As a service and support manager As a salesforce.com administrator Measuring results Deciding Which Edition Is Best for You Looking at the five versions Choosing between Professional and Enterprise Edition Chapter 2: Understanding Basic Salesforce.com Navigation Getting Familiar with Basic Terms Accessing Salesforce.com Setting up a password Logging in... 24

10 viii Salesforce.com s Service Cloud For Dummies Navigating the Home Page Tracking your tasks Using dashboard snapshots from the home page Accessing Information with the Sidebar Finding Out about the Tabs Looking more closely at the tabs Discovering a tab overview page Using the Create New Drop-Down List Creating records Resurrecting from the Recycle Bin Detailing the Record Using links and buttons on the detail page Modifying records with inline editing Capitalizing on related lists Looking things up with lookup hovers Getting Help and Setting Up Part II: Building Your Strategy Chapter 3: Managing Your Customer Service Solution Walking through a Day in the Life of a Service Agent Understanding the Basics Getting familiar with the case record Understanding standard fields Customizing case fields Modifying case fields Organizing Your Cases Using case views and queues Creating custom case views Taking and reassigning case ownership Changing case statuses Collaborating with Case Teams Focusing on Ease of Use Customizing page layouts Creating support processes Adding case record types Automating Case Management Adding case queues Using assignment rules Automating case escalation Creating templates Using workflow to automate processes... 60

11 Table of Contents ix Chapter 4: Preparing Your Multichannel Strategy Capturing and Associating Cases Made Simple Automating Web-to-Case Managing on-demand -to-Case Connect for Outlook Part III: Expanding the Reach Chapter 5: Harvesting Knowledge from Everywhere...75 Helping Customers Help Themselves Collecting solutions to increase service agent efficiency Sharing your knowledge Organizing public solutions with solution categories Introducing Salesforce Knowledge Working with articles Managing articles Chapter 6: Providing Customer Service from Anywhere Making the World Your Contact Center Integrating a Contact Center Using Chat for Real-Time Customer Engagement Serving Customers with Salesforce CRM s Mobile Client Chapter 7: Increasing Agent Efficiency Unveiling the Agent Console Setting Up the Agent Console Enabling the Agent Console Selecting related objects Customizing mini-views Chapter 8: Creating a Community Launching a Customer Portal Enabling the customer portal Customizing your customer portal Making your knowledge base publicly available Sharing Ideas with the Community Posting ideas Collecting and sharing answers Asking questions Viewing replies Replying to a question

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13 Introduction This book is for users interested in salesforce.com s Service Cloud, including those users who have Salesforce CRM Unlimited, Enterprise, Professional, Group, or Contact Manager Edition. It s for salesforce.com users who want to quickly know how to benefit from this browser-based cloud application (also known in some parts as software-as-a-service [SaaS] or cloud computing). Don t just read this book to find out how the Service Cloud works, use this book to understand how salesforce.com can help you better manage your customer experience and your service team. If you re a customer service agent, we show you how to manage customer issues, from creation to resolution. If you re a support manager, find out how to use the Service Cloud to track agent activities and improve team productivity and customer self-sufficiency. If you re a partner, we show how the Service Cloud can help bring your product and service expertise into the conversation by minimizing the hops it takes to provide a solution to the customer. If you sit on the executive team, you ll get a thorough overview and understanding of the Service Cloud and its potential to improve customer relations while reducing support costs. If you re a salesforce.com administrator or involved in your company s support automation initiative, this book gives you practical knowledge for understanding how to successfully implement your solution.

14 2 Salesforce.com s Service Cloud For Dummies Who Should Read This Guide This guide is primarily for customer service and support executives and managers. Salesforce.com system administrators and partners will also find this a useful primer on the various elements comprising the Service Cloud. If you re not a support executive or system administrator, you can breeze through this book, dog-ear some of the pages, and send the book over to your support pal with a Post-it reading, We need this! How This Book Is Organized This book reflects salesforce.com s latest product and feature offerings as of the Winter 10 release. Salesforce.com is an Internet-based service where new releases occur simultaneously for all customers, without your having to lift a finger (okay, except to log in). Because of this model, salesforce.com can release several versions of its product at a faster pace than many traditional software vendors! We ve done our best to update this book to the current version of the product, but please bear in mind that new versions of salesforce.com are always in the works. Here s a bare outline of the parts of this book: Part I: Introducing and Building Salesforce.com s Service Cloud Basics: Part I lays the foundation of basic salesforce.com terms and concepts. Part II: Building Your Basic Service Cloud Strategy: Part II delves deeper into your customer contact center, reviewing concepts and providing some specific setup advice. Part III: Expanding the Reach of Your Service Cloud: Part III provides an in-depth view of the more advanced features, to really take your contact center to the next level. Part IV: Measuring Your Results: Part IV shows every agent, manager, and senior executive how to use salesforce. com to measure and analyze the success of their efforts.

15 How to Use This Book Introduction 3 This book is divided into parts and then chapters based on how much you want to know about salesforce.com and the Service Cloud. We start with a general overview of the Service Cloud, then get into some more detail about each of the various pieces that let you join the customer conversation, no matter where that may come from. Finally, we end by explaining the real point of all the various nifty aspects of the Service Cloud: It s all measurable. Salesforce.com has built out its Service Cloud so you can always gain quantifiable insights into your service business and track tangible improvements over time. You can choose to read this book from front to back (although there s no surprise ending in the last chapter). Or, more typically, you can use this book as a reference, similar to other For Dummies books. You can go to any topic in this book and know what to do with minimal leafing to other sections. You get the most out of this book if you re using it while you re logged in to salesforce.com. The best way to know what to do, in our experience, is by doing it, and for that you need the salesforce.com Web site open, revved, and raring to go. Assumptions Made in This Book Please forgive us, but we make one or two foolish assumptions about you, the reader. We assume these things: You have access to an Internet connection and you ve used a Web browser before. You have a salesforce.com account and some interest in knowing how to use it beyond the mere allure of the company and its dedicated employees. (If you don t have an account yet, you can sign up for a free trial at www. salesforce.com/servicecloud.) You have some focus on customer service at least enough to understand how you can benefit from doing it better than you are now. You have at least a vague idea of what a database is, including basic concepts such as fields, records, files, and folders.

16 4 Salesforce.com s Service Cloud For Dummies Icons Used in This Book Sprinkled throughout this book are icons like the ones listed here. They help guide you to the special text you may want to read: This icon points you to tips and tricks for using the Service Cloud. These tips can help you build your applications faster. This icon guides you to important facts you may want to remember. When you come across this icon, take a quick read to see whether it applies to you. When we re forced to describe something geeky, a Technical Stuff icon appears in the margin. You don t have to read what s beside this icon if you don t want to, although some readers might find the technical detail helpful.

17 Part I Introducing the Service Cloud from Salesforce.com

18 In this part... If you need some basic information about salesforce. com s Service Cloud, this is the part for you. In this part, we help you understand the Service Cloud. We show some of the many ways that you can use the Service Cloud. We also cover exactly how to navigate salesforce.com.

19 Chapter 1 Understanding Salesforce.com s Service Cloud In This Chapter Introducing accounts and contacts Understanding the power behind the Service Cloud Seeing all your possibilities Preparing your strategy The Service Cloud from salesforce.com is more than just a simple customer support application to track and resolve cases. With the Service Cloud, you have all the tools at your fingertips to ensure proactive participation in the conversations happening around the Web about your products and services. In days and weeks, versus months and years, you can start and manage a fully integrated customer service strategy that supports the multiple channels that customers use to communicate with you. In this chapter, we help you understand the Service Cloud and the easy-to-use but powerful platform Force.com that powers it. You get a glimpse of the many ways that you can use the Service Cloud for more than the basic call center. Finally, we offer you some simple but critical planning tips.

20 8 Part I: Introducing the Service Cloud from Salesforce.com Seeing the Big Picture At its core, service and support is all about interacting with a community of individuals. It could be a community of your customers, prospects, partners, or even employees. The secret of salesforce.com s Service Cloud is its integrated relationship with your company s entire Web presence. Customers no longer rely on just call centers for help; more and more they are turning to the cloud to get their questions answered. The Service Cloud serves as your central hub to manage any question about your product or service and it all starts with the account, contact, and case records. In the Service Cloud, an account is a company that you do business with. Accounts can include all types of companies customers, prospects, partners, and even competitors. Among the top reasons why companies implement any customer relationship management (CRM) tool is that they need a centralized place where they can store account data, to avoid searching all over the place for critical customer information. With the Service Cloud, you can keep all your important account information in one place so that you and your team can apply that knowledge to sell more, market more, and service more, all in an effort to keep customers happy. For example, if you work for a pharmaceutical company, you can use the accounts area to manage your roster of hospitals, clinics, and top offices and capture everything from call reports to business plans to support upgrades. The account record lets you collect all the critical information about the companies you interact with. That account record is supported by other records (contacts, cases, products, activities, and so on) that collectively give you a complete view of your customer. From this vantage point, you can quickly take in the view from the top, and if you need to, you can easily drill into the details. The account record is the collection of fields that make up the information on a company that you re tracking. The record has only two modes an Edit mode, in which you can modify fields, and a Saved mode, in which you can view the fields and the account s related lists (which are located below the record fields).

21 Chapter 1: Understanding Salesforce.com s Service Cloud 9 An account record comes preconfigured with a set of fields commonly used for account management. Most of the standard fields are self-explanatory, but in the following list, we highlight certain terms that warrant greater definition: Account Owner: The person in your organization who owns the account. An account record has only one owner, but many users can still collaborate on an account. Account Name: This required field represents the name of the company you want to track. Account Site: The Account Site field goes hand in hand with the Account Name field when you re distinguishing different physical locations or divisions of a company. Type: One of the fields on an account record that classifies the relationship of an account to your company. The Type field consists of a drop-down list of values, and it s critical if you want to differentiate types of companies. For example, you can use this field to distinguish a customer from a partner to ensure their Cases are assigned to the appropriate support team for better response times. Fields on an account record are useful for storing important data specific to a company. But where do you go to capture all the critical interactions and relationships when you re servicing an account? To keep track of these details, use the related lists located on the Account detail page. Many of the actions on account related lists are common to other modules. For example, major modules, such as Accounts, Contacts, and Cases all have related lists for Open Activities, Activity History, and Notes & Attachments. Account health is much more than measuring the growth of sales for a customer. When a customer contacts you for support it s important to see their history of customer service issues so that you can continue to keep your customers satisfied, resolve issues early, and receive warnings about potential landmines. Use the Cases related list to view all the open and closed customer service cases that relate to an account. (We talk more about the cases record shortly.)

22 10 Part I: Introducing the Service Cloud from Salesforce.com The Service Cloud enables you to plan, manage, and capture all the important interactions that you normally have with your customers. Just imagine the value that keeping this shared information in one place can have for you and your teams. By using the Contacts section in the Service Cloud, you can effectively keep all your most important contacts together in one place, easily link them with the accounts they work for, gain insight into the relationships between contacts, and capture the critical personal drivers of each contact, which are so key to your customer relationship success. The contact record is the collection of fields that consists of the information on a person you do business with. Unlike a business card in your Rolodex, however, a contact is linked to an account. Like other records, the contact record has only two modes: an Edit mode, in which you can modify fields, and a Saved mode, in which you can view the fields and the contact s related lists (which are located below the fields). A contact record comes preconfigured with a standard set of fields commonly used for contact management. The exact number isn t important because your company will probably add or subtract fields based on the way you want to track your contacts. Most of the standard fields are self-explanatory, but in the following list, we highlight a few fields that are less obvious: Contact Owner: The person in your organization who owns the contact. A contact has only one owner, although many users can still collaborate on a contact. Reports To: This lookup field on the contact record allows you to organize your contacts hierarchically. Opt Out: This check box reminds you whether a contact should receive mass s for maintenance alerts and other support announcements. Fax Opt Out: Similar to Opt Out, this check box reminds you whether a contact should receive faxes for maintenance alerts and other support announcements. A case is a record of a customer service inquiry (you may call them tickets). Just like other common records, such as accounts and contacts, your users can track all interactions

23 Chapter 1: Understanding Salesforce.com s Service Cloud 11 on a case from a single detail page. And to manage all your cases, the Service Cloud comes out of the box with all the tools that you need for routing, queuing, and escalating cases. In simple terms, an object is the equivalent of a table in a database that stores records of information. Accounts, cases, and contacts are examples of standard objects. A solution record is an answer to a commonly asked question. As you resolve cases, your users can both apply existing public solutions and easily create new solutions that your teams can use in the future. Integrating service records with your other customer data is the key to building and managing a successful service and support application. But you may need more than the basic functionality because you support customers across multiple channels and your strategy may require information beyond the standard. So with Force.com and the AppExchange, you can use easy point-and-click tools to extend salesforce.com s Service Cloud to address your unique requirements. Seeing the Universe of Possibilities Product managers at salesforce.com may have originally built the application to support customer service inquiries, but salesforce.com customers have applied it in unique ways to fit their specific business models. Here s a short list that may inspire you: Product Support: A global financial services software company inherited a number of companies, each with different customer support processes. With the Service Cloud, the company provides customer support teams with a single view of the customer across multiple channels. Combined with the salesforce.com customer portal, this company dramatically improved assisted product support to its customers while providing self-service options that reduced the time it took to resolve cases. (See the example in Figure 1-1.)

24 12 Part I: Introducing the Service Cloud from Salesforce.com Figure 1-1: Managing product support. Help Desk: With offices spread across the world, a leading software company needed an anywhere, anytime solution to support its employees. It already used the Service Cloud for customer service. By leveraging the case management capability combined with custom objects and tabs, the company provides a 24/7 global help desk. Telemarketing: A leading provider of commercial cleaning services needed a systematic way to follow up on leads. Taking advantage of built-in tools for routing, queuing, and integration with call center solutions, this company used the Service Cloud to construct a virtual call center that increased outbound call volume by 50 percent while dramatically reducing overall costs. Order Desk: A leading retail company needed a comprehensive way to manage its customer database and conduct order entry and tracking as well as track sales performance analyses. The Service Cloud provided a perfect way to handle all phases of tracking orders and inquiries, managing product demand, cross- and upselling, and simplifying the entire order entry and sales tracking process. Field Service: A global manufacturer of monitoring products had no easy way of tracking what types of repairs occurred and how often those repairs occurred. With the

25 Chapter 1: Understanding Salesforce.com s Service Cloud 13 Service Cloud and its field service partners, the company can track and manage its entire field service operation, giving that company better insight into service-level contracts and end-user satisfaction. Figure 1-2 shows you an example of how salesforce.com helps you track field operations. Figure 1-2: Tracking field operations on service contracts. Post-Sales Delivery: A major telecommunications company needed a fulfillment solution after sales were closed the company didn t see any cold hard cash until both internal employees and outside partners completed a bunch of checklist items. With the Service Cloud, the company relies on case management to track every step in the post-sales delivery process to make sure that customers are up and running (and the company gets its paycheck) in the shortest amount of time. Return Authorizations: A leading manufacturer of networking hardware needed to track potential return authorizations (RMAs) from partners and end customers. Because RMAs cost so much, support teams need to document product problems before doing anything else. With the Service Cloud, the company uses cases for first-line support to try to fix the problem, followed by warranty verification and then RMA approvals. Figure 1-3 shows you how the Service Cloud can address return authorizations.

26 14 Part I: Introducing the Service Cloud from Salesforce.com Figure 1-3: Handling return authorizations. Centralizing contacts under one roof How much time have you wasted tracking down a customer contact or an address that you know exists within the walls of your company? With the Service Cloud, you can quickly centralize and organize your accounts and contacts so that you can capitalize on that information when you need to. Working as a team How many times have you thought that your own co-workers got in the way of helping a customer? How often do you toss an issue over the departmental fence never to hear about it again? Nine out of ten times, the challenge isn t people, but standardizing processes and clarifying roles and responsibilities. With salesforce.com, you can define teams and processes for customer service, so the left hand knows what the right hand is doing. Although salesforce.com doesn t solve corporate alignment issues, you now have the tool that can drive and manage better team collaboration.

27 Chapter 1: Understanding Salesforce.com s Service Cloud 15 Collaborating with your customers Whether you know it or not, your customers are constantly communicating with each other. The cloud is full of forums, discussion groups, and services like Twitter where your customers are talking about your company. They share their experiences, work-arounds, and ideas about your products and services. The Service Cloud enables you to turn your customers into your best support agents. If an experienced customer responds to a question on a forum, you can leverage that public solution. If a prospect posts a popular idea on your Web site, you can steer your development roadmap to include it. Making it easy for your customers to reach you Waiting on the phone to speak to a support rep is the last resort of an impatient customer. Customers want instant gratification like only the Internet can provide. The Service Cloud enables your company to provide a variety of self-service options for your customers. These options make it easier for them to submit questions and find answers, and reduce your call center costs and customer frustration. Increasing team productivity Reduce, reuse, recycle isn t just a prescription for saving the planet, it also applies to running an efficient customer service center. The Service Cloud reduces the amount of data entry your support agents must make, allows them to easily reuse answers and templates, and lets your company recycle information across multiple mediums. End-users, managers, and administrators of the Service Cloud all benefit from the underpinnings of the Service Cloud s customizable platform. Administrators can now quickly roll out features that benefit end-users in less time, and for a fraction of the cost of a traditional software implementation. New requests from end-users can be incorporated into the Service