Salesforce Service Cloud Reviews

• Contact tracking
• Knowledge Base
• Analytics

Through the use of the Knowledge Base, which we translated into 13 languages, we where able to increase our support reach to our customers. This included an increased support level not only for those customers whom we served directly via other channels (phone, email, and chat), but this also extended our reach to those customers whom we could not support directly (those who spoke Japanese, Korean and Russian, for example).

The treatment of email processing in the Service Cloud is still reminiscent of email processes appropriate to sales. There is a lack of flexibility to process an email (not web-to-case contacts) as a contact. This might take an entire rewrite of the approach or a purchase and integration of one of the competing email processing apps (which will go un-named, but you know who I mean).

Having said that, Salesforce is always improving, I am constantly amazed at the way they listen to their customers and (eventually) move innovations suggested by the field into their products.

I've been using it since 2006.

We had no problems with any of these phases of the project. Design and deployment took six months.

I can’t remember a time we were down unexpectedly.

We scaled up from five contact centers to 14, and added support features like chat and more translations of the Knowledge Base with ease.

I would rate the support received from Salesforce of the highest caliber. They are very responsive and helpful. They even sent a Product Director on-site to work with us on a particularly difficult issue.

The CRM product we used was not integrated across sales, marketing or support departments, nor was it integrated across borders (Europe and the US used separate instances). Just before the transition to Salesforce, that previous company reduced support to pay only and that was the final straw for us.

With the help of Salesforce Professional Services, our design, development, training and deployment took six months from the decision to implement to a final training day across nine cities worldwide. Salesforce has a very effective methodology for this process and is willing to help as much or as little as needed.

We used a Salesforce Professional Services team and had both an internal and a contract Project Manager. One huge advantage is that we had an overall business process owner who acted as a go-between, communicating with all of the teams Salesforce, sales, marketing, support, IT, finance and corporate management.

Our ROI figures are proprietary. What I can say is that the biggest ROI value comes from the intangible benefits (which the financial people have to figure in the spreadsheet). One factor was the ability to reach customers whom we could not directly support (see the discussion of the Knowledge Base above). Another was having a single source of truth for Customer Data, used by all departments, sales, support and marketing. The ability to identify product problems early and quickly by analyzing our contact data meant that we solved any product problems rapidly before those problems affected sales volume. Agent productivity and satisfaction also increased. The agents had direct input to the design and any enhancements to the system. We used a process of continuous improvement with regular updates. They “owned” the system and were happier and more productive as a result.

Appoint a business process owner who will “own” the implementation. This person needs to be totally invested in the success of the application, not only in their own department, but across all departments that will be using, or be affected by, the system. This includes IT and finance. Involve the users of the system in the initial design. They are the ones that will have to use the tool, and they know best what is easy and what is hard to do. When you incorporate their design suggestions, give them public credit, “Ed, this is the feature you suggested”. That gives them pride of ownership and may turn detractors into advocates for the system. Become very friendly with your IT Director. As a team you will be able to figure out the best upgrade and expansion strategy, cost saving strategy, and bug fix/feature enhancement process. You will also have an ally with whom you can present your cost justifications and enhancement requests to management.

The OOTB skills functionality is the most valuable feature for us.

It has streamlined workforce management, scheduling, etc. for the company's current business case. More specifically, I can only speak for my clients, but their call centers have dramatically improved from their legacy system to the new Service Cloud console. I know in the past year, we've seen substantial ROI in major healthcare companies.

The workforce management could use improvement as my client wasn't happy with the scheduling engine. The workforce management, particularly a third-party vendor, we didn't have much success with. They had never done an integration with Salesforce and we we're working specifically with another third party just to implement their field services organization.

I've used it on my current project for three months.

Deployment was not an issue. The product wasn't the issue, it was more so the implementation as a whole.

There were no issues with the stability.

There has been no issues with the scalability.

The issues, as with every implementation, is the change in the nature of the beast. We have clients that have been on a legacy system for 10-15 years and they are not ready for change. They also think their system is the most efficient "machine" on the market. So the change in culture has to be the most substantial bottleneck. Then you are in the growing pains stage, where your client absorbs this system, but they decide to take automation to a whole new level, like automatically fax from a computer with WiFi. The asks are endless, which is understandable because at this point, they appreciate the system, but they don't understand the limits. 

• Sales Automation
• Service Console

It gives a 360 degree view without any gaps, while serving the customers, which in turn, increases customer satisification.

Already, Salesforce is on the correct path by moving things towards Android, and iPhones. It also needs a faster and smoother UI.

I've used it for four years.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

10/10

10/10

I've not used any other solution.

It's straightforward, with supporting documents, customer care, and tech support available if you meet any issues.

We did it in-house. I would advise you that before starting the implementation, you go through the implementation guides.

ROI is satisfactory.

Pricing and licensing is done per number of users.

From a startup, marketing/sales/service can implement this product to increase productivity and customer satisfaction.

We use Salesforce Service Cloud for CRM.

The most valuable feature of Salesforce Service Cloud is its ease of use.

Salesforce Service Cloud's report functionality could be improved.

I have been using Salesforce Service Cloud for ten years.

I rate Salesforce Service Cloud a seven out of ten for stability.

About 2,000 users, including salespeople, operations, and executives, are using Salesforce Service Cloud in our organization daily.

I rate Salesforce Service Cloud ten out of ten for scalability.

I previously used Oracle Sales Cloud.

I rate Salesforce Service Cloud an eight out of ten for the ease of its initial setup.

We implemented Salesforce Service Cloud through an in-house team.

I am using the latest version of Salesforce Service Cloud.

Salesforce Service Cloud is deployed on-cloud in our organization. I would recommend Salesforce Service Cloud to other users.

Overall, I rate Salesforce Service Cloud an eight out of ten.

The built-in, ready-to-go package of case management, email management and social media management with a knowledge base helps to speed up the implementation time. I can have a new service center operational within a few days if needed, although more complex implementations still may take much longer.

The most important feature though is the platform’s upgrade approach. There is never a need to install an upgrade. The upgrades are applied automatically three times a year, and every customer is always operating on the latest version of the software.

As a consultant, I have seen the implementation of Service Cloud reduce contact center handle times by minutes per call, which can translate to millions of dollars in savings for large operations. The cloud infrastructure helps to speed up implementation time and accelerates how quickly you can release new features to users.

For most contact centers, it will improve overall uptime performance, but it is important to ensure a good quality internet connection for all users. There is no way to access Service Cloud if you lose your public internet access.

My clients have raised concerns with the knowledge search algorithm. Sometimes it seems the most relevant knowledge articles are not the ones that are returned in the search results. Salesforce has made substantial strides to improve on this over the past few releases.

Salesforce is rolling out a new user interface called “Lightning Experience” which is not yet available for Service Cloud. I would like to see it fully rolled out to Service Cloud, which they do plan to do.

Seven years as an implementation consultant.

There are elements of Service Cloud which cannot be smoothly migrated from sandbox environments to production, leading to manual steps in a deployment.

For example, translations have to be manually applied in production, and on-demand email-to-case must be set up directly in production.

I have had mixed experiences with standard technical support over the years, so I would highly recommend considering buying premium technical support to enable skipping of the first line of tech support.

I have worked almost exclusively with Salesforce for the past several years because Service Cloud is the solution all of my clients have been buying. I previously worked with RightNow, which is now Oracle Service Cloud. But I found the upgrade process with RightNow to be problematic, leading to customers getting stuck on out-of-date versions of the product.

Companies already using Salesforce for other CRM functions will find Service Cloud implementation to be straightforward. If a company is migrating to Service Cloud from an on-premise solution like Siebel or SAPCRM, the biggest change is getting adjusted to life with a cloud platform.

The support model needed is different with Service Cloud. There are no servers to maintain or patch, but there must be a plan in place to evaluate and prepare for the three yearly upgrades and to prepare users to take advantage of new features as they are released.

I am an implementation consultant, so my advice would be to consider using an implementation consultant for your first release, but have a plan in place to transition in house over time. Make sure your implementation consultant partner is certified and follow up on their references. Use them to educate your in-house team during that first implementation.

Anyone can learn Salesforce if they have prior CRM experience, so make sure your in house team gets involved in the implementation and takes ownership. At some point the consultant will leave, and then you must be able to take over.

The best time to negotiate the price is at the very beginning. Since this is a subscription model, you will be paying for it indefinitely, and it’s easier to negotiate the rate down from the beginning.

Also, have an exit strategy in place to transition off of the platform should you not be happy with license negotiation during future renewals. It will give you more leverage during those negotiations.

Anyone can sign up for a free “developer org” to play around with the product. Get hands on with it and get comfortable before making a purchasing decision. The Salesforce Trailhead program provides free online tutorials to learn about all the features of Service Cloud.

Also, consider attending the annual Dreamforce conference to learn how other companies are using Service Cloud and to get advice from them.

We basically use this software for Customer relationship management.

It’s feasible to configure the platform according to the specific processes utilised. Customization of the platform could be carried out based on the techniques we employ.

The integrations with other solutions can be improved. 

I have experience with Salesforce Service Cloud for almost 1 year. 

The solution is extremely stable. 

Scalability is easy for this solution. 

The initial setup was difficult and it took almost three months. Subsequently, after the implementation, we had all the processes in place. The standardization of the processes took around six months due to data standardization efforts. From the initiation of process customization, it took us approximately nine months to complete.

There were two individuals involved in the implementation process. One person was responsible for technical implementation, while the other two individuals focused on working within the processes.

It is a centralised CRM solution and I would rate it 10 out of 10.

The standard case management features such as case teams, case queues, and approval processes are useful for various use cases, such as service organizations, call centers, support teams, etc.

Service Cloud provides a best-of-breed cloud-based case management and call center solution. It's cost-effective, easily configureable and maintainable, and simple to learn and support.

I'd like to see a better UI/UX. It also needs more competitive pricing on the Service Cloud feature licenses.

I've used it for three years.

There should be no issues with deployment so long as best practices for Salesforce deployment are followed. I haven't seen any major issues with deployment.

Deployments become more complex when they involve heavy custom development, but for a configuration-based solution, it is very simple.

Stability is never an issue with the Salesforce platform.

Scalability is never an issue with the Salesforce platform.

Salesforce's customer service is great.

It's great, but I recommend Premier+ support for quick turnaround on issues.

As a SaaS product, Service Cloud is very easy to set up by someone with Salesforce administration skills. There are some features and functionality that are unique to Service Cloud, so it's best to have a certified ServiceCloud Consultant

Whether using a vendor or having your internal team set up the system, make sure that a certified Service Cloud consultant is involved in the analysis and solution-ing of the product, even if you are only using the basic Case functionality through a Sales Cloud license as opposed to a full-fledged Service Cloud feature license.

Great ROI on this product, especially if you keep implementation and maintenance costs low through configuration and declarative functionality as opposed to custom code. Basic Case features are available through the standard Salesforce Sales Cloud licensing, and more advanced features such as the Service Console and CTI integration capabilities are available through a Service Cloud feature license.

Try to align your business processes to the native feature sets in the product as much as possible by using the configuration and declarative functionality instead of customizing the solution using code.

Not only will the initial implementation be quicker, ongoing maintenance and support will be cheaper and easier as well.

There are several Case Management and Call Centre solutions, but the Salesforce product is considered a best-of-breed solution, and is a leading industry product. Compared to Siebel and other case management solutions, Service Cloud is more cost effective and easier to configure.

• The most important feature is the seamless integration with Salesforce data. ZenDesk inserted data when not present, but the integration left something to be desired with many Contact last names of Unknown (which is challenging with deduping). It is important to have the reps directly using Salesforce so they are more inclined to keep Account and Contact data current.
• We haven’t used Salesforce Knowledge, but this would also be beneficial.
• Being able to report on the Case data and use it to create Dashboards for our upper level management who are already familiar with Salesforce is important.

We can create Dashboards showing which clients are receiving a high level amount of cases or Case Types that trigger a possibility of an issue with the client.

It gives our Account Management team the chance to be proactive and solve any underlying big issues a client could be experiencing (and prevent them from seeking other vendors).

• Why is merging Cases not something that comes out-of-the-box? We had to purchase Case Merge Premium to merge our Cases.
• The Macro creation isn’t very user friendly. It would be beneficial to organize the macros into folders also. I think the average support rep without Salesforce knowledge would have issues creating macros.
• When sending a reply email to a client directly from the Detail View of a Case, it will insert your signature at the very bottom of the thread (which no one sees). You have to use the Case Feed to insert your signature below your reply.
• Sending an email from the Case Feed has a character limit (which can be extended, but it is limited). If you have a very long email correspondence with a client, you may need to shorten it in order to send.
• There is no field on the Case to show who the last email correspondence was from. I had to create my own field for this.
• When opening a Case tab in the Service Console and a customer replies to the Case while open, you have to completely refresh the tab to see the recent email to reply to (not automatic). Sometimes a rep may not notice this, go to send an email, and get an error that they need to refresh.

I've used it for approximately one year.

There are no issues with deployment at this time.

We've had no issues with stability.

We have no issues with scalability at this time.

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We were using ZenDesk before being purchased by another company that was using Service Cloud. After we merged orgs, we began using Service Cloud. As a help desk solution, ZenDesk is much better. I've also used Kayako.

We had no issues with the initial setup.

We used a vendor because we were migrating data from another organization at the same time.

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Use standard fields/options when possible and keep it simple! Don’t overcomplicate things and make sure to ask support reps what their problem points are and what they need to be successful.