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Salesforce.com launches Service Cloud 2

September 9, 2009

Ok, I seriously dropped the ball on this one as I did a media interview with Salesforce about the luanch of the Service Cloud 2 yesterday with oodles of time to post before the press embargo was lifted – oops!

Better late than never right! Without further ado….

Salesforce launched their new Service Cloud 2 update today and contrary to what some main stream blogs have been saying about it, this update is not all about Twitter.

According to Salesforce, the release of Service Cloud 2 signals a key shift in their entire business focus as the market for customer service cloud applications dwarfs the market for CRM or at least the segment Salesforce is after. In essence this is their next billion dollar opportunity.

There are three main components of the new update:

In a nutshell what does this mean for you?
  • Enables you to tap the wisdom of crowds in a more streamlined way
  • Enables your customers to ask questions and provide answers and rate answers on your website, facebook, and Twitter
  • Allows you to pull all this data back into your customer service center within Salesforce
  • Allows you to implement business processes, workflow rules and so much more.
  • Gives you the ability to migrate your entire customer service offering into the cloud in a seamless way that can be fully integrated with your website and existing business systems.
Phew! And there’s more….trust me…I barely scratched the surface here.

For more in depth information and demos, visit the links above or head over the the Service Cloud 2 section on the main Salesforce website.

Here’s the official release:

Salesforce.com Unveils the Next Chapter in the Customer Service Revolution with Service Cloud 2 – Leading Market Momentum and New Defining Technologies, including the Industry’s First Knowledge-as-a-Service

8,000 companies have already standardized on the Service Cloud including Extra Space Storage, NJ TRANSIT and Plantronics

Product innovations include Salesforce Knowledge, the world’s first Knowledge-as-a-Service; Salesforce Answers, crowd-sourced community knowledge; and the general availability of Salesforce for Twitter

For the first time, companies can amaze their customers with an integrated customer service experience that leverages their own agents as well as real-time conversations happening throughout the cloud

SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 9 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — Salesforce.com (NYSE: CRM), the enterprise cloud computing company, today announced the next chapter in the customer service revolution with Service Cloud 2. The Service Cloud, announced in January of this year, is the next generation solution for customer service – it exponentially increases the quality of service, while lowering the cost, by leveraging the expertise of the community. Since its introduction, the Service Cloud has led market momentum with 8,000 customers and received a number of industry accolades. The Service Cloud will also deliver entirely new product innovations for the customer service industry by introducing the world’s first knowledge base designed for cloud computing – Salesforce Knowledge; an entirely new way to look at customer communities and discussion forums – Salesforce Answers; and Salesforce for Twitter, which allows companies to monitor and join the customer service conversations taking place on Twitter. The customer service application market represents a major opportunity for salesforce.com, which according to IDC will be worth $4.2 billion by 2012(1).

Service Cloud 2 – Customer Success and Market Momentum for the New Customer Service Standard
Eight thousand companies, including Extra Space Storage, NJ TRANSIT and Plantronics, have standardized on the Service Cloud for their customer service operations – representing a 175% growth in business year over year.

Companies using the Service Cloud have seen a 28% increase in customer satisfaction, 25% increase in call deflection, 30% increase in first call resolution, 37% rise in service and support productivity and a 26% increase in customer retention, according to a recent third party survey.

Salesforce.com was placed in the leaders quadrant of Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for CRM Customer Service Support Contacts(2).

Since January of 2009, the Service Cloud has won the 2009 TMCnet CRM Excellence Award, Network Products Guide 2009 Innovation Award, CRM Magazine Service Leader Rising Star Award, and the IP Contact Center Technology Pioneer Award for Best IP Contact Center Service. The Service Cloud was also named to KMWorld’s list of Top 100 Companies in knowledge management.

Salesforce Knowledge – The World’s First Knowledge-as-a-Service

A year after salesforce.com acquired Instranet, salesforce.com will offer the world’s first Knowledge-as-a-Service, the first ever multi-tenant knowledge base designed for cloud computing. The core Service Cloud knowledge base built on Force.com will deliver:

Rapid Deployment: Companies will be able to deploy their knowledge base in a matter of days and extend the technology to mobile devices and public websites. Companies will be able to deploy Salesforce Knowledge without having to install and manage hardware or software.

Immediate Results: Customer service agents will be able to find the right answer, the first time, ensuring that companies amaze and delight their customers with a truly integrated customer service experience.
Google Accessible: Companies will be able to utilize the latest Force.com capabilities, including Force.com Sites, to expose knowledge articles out to the Internet so that customers can find information on the public Internet and through search engines such as Google.

Simple Customizations: Users will be able to quickly and easily deploy changes and customizations to the knowledge base to fit a company’s dynamic and evolving needs.
Automated Upgrades: Product enhancements will be automatically released three times a year. Customers will no longer have to worry whether their applications will continue to work with other hardware and software after an upgrade.

Secure and Trusted: Companies will be able to leverage all the benefits of the proven security, reliability and scalability of salesforce.com’s trusted global infrastructure.
Salesforce Answers – Crowd-Sourced Knowledge

For years, customer service centers have been limited to knowledge articles produced by company employees, and have not benefited from the explosion of consumer wisdom that exists across the Web. Today, online communities and social websites hold a wealth of knowledge and facilitate conversations around uncommon problems, new product use cases, best practices and much more.

Utilizing the Service Cloud, Salesforce Answers will deliver a unique online experience that helps companies leverage the expertise in the cloud to bring the right answer to their customers. Salesforce Answers will enable companies to:
Start the Conversation: Create a complete, customizable website that facilitates question/answer style conversations between customers. Encourage the community to ask, rate and answer questions and issues posted to the site.
Crowd-Sourced Knowledge: Filter the appropriate knowledge created on Salesforce Answers directly into the Service Cloud’s knowledge base, ensuring that customers, agents and partners will all have access to the best knowledge available.
Leverage Facebook: Companies will be able to set up a Salesforce Answers community directly on a Facebook company fan page, allowing the company to harness knowledge from the 250+ million Facebook members.
Create Dynamic Customer Communities: In combination with Service Cloud features like Salesforce Ideas, companies will be able to create dynamic, interactive customer communities.
Salesforce for Twitter – Join Real-Time Conversations on Twitter
Twitter provides a free platform for users to answer the question “What are you doing?” in 140 characters or less and broadcast the answer to a broader community. These “tweets” can cover any topic area, including specific companies, brands and products. In today’s Web-driven world where there is an expectation of real-time interaction, Salesforce for Twitter and the Service Cloud give companies an easy way to join the real-time customer service conversations happening on Twitter by enabling them to:
Search Twitter in Real-time: Search through the millions of tweets happening on Twitter every minute to find the most relevant customer service conversations.
Monitor Service Issues on Twitter: After identifying an appropriate tweet, a company can capture and monitor a service conversation in the Service Cloud and track the conversation.
Join Twitter Conversations: Salesforce for Twitter empowers enterprises to be active participants on Twitter by enabling them to engage in Twitter conversations, right from within the Service Cloud.
Establish a Twitter Support Channel: Customers can tweet their customer service issues and instantly create a case within the Service Cloud. Once the case is created, companies can leverage internal business processes to route cases to the most effective service representatives.
Deliver Real-time Knowledge: Salesforce for Twitter facilitates the delivery of expert knowledge back into the Twitter community by posting tweets directly from the Service Cloud’s knowledge base.
Comments on the News:
“With Service Cloud 2, salesforce.com is doing for customer service what we did for sales: proving that the cloud is a better way. The customer service market is being held back by traditional technology. With two-thirds of customer service interactions moving to the cloud and the popularity of social networks, it is high time for a change. I am excited by the momentum we are seeing in the customer service market and believe it is the next billion-dollar opportunity for salesforce.com,” said Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO of salesforce.com.
“We’ve seen more and more businesses use Twitter to make smart, meaningful and timely connections with their audience. We are excited to work with salesforce.com as they help businesses join the millions of conversations happening every minute on the web,” said Evan Williams, CEO of Twitter.
“The Service Cloud’s knowledge base will give companies access to the best answers for a situation culled from Twitter’s 45 million users and Facebook’s 250 million users. The Service Cloud makes an important advance on social networking by helping enterprises harness the power of real-time conversations and crowd-sourced knowledge to benefit their companies,” said Denis Pombriant, Beagle Research.
“Salesforce Knowledge and the Service Cloud will definitely help our company increase agent productivity and customer satisfaction, an incredible testament to the power of cloud computing,” said Kimberly Jansen, Misys Banking Systems.
“Comcast-Spectacor is now a leader in leveraging cloud computing to enhance our relationships with the Flyers and 76ers season ticket holders because of salesforce.com. The Service Cloud and Salesforce for Twitter have enabled us to connect directly with our customers on Twitter and integrate these real-time conversations with our customer service strategy,” said Mark DiMaurizio, Comcast-Spectacor.

Pricing and Availability
Salesforce Knowledge will be priced at $50 per agent, per month for salesforce.com customers and is currently scheduled to be available in the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2010.
Salesforce Answers is currently in pilot and is currently scheduled to be available in the first quarter of fiscal year 2011.
Salesforce for Twitter is available today at no additional charge on the Force.com AppExchange for Professional, Enterprise and Unlimited Edition customers.

Supporting Resources
For more information, please visit http://www.salesforce.com/servicecloud2
Follow salesforce.com on Twitter @salesforcenews

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