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 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 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.

I have used it several times for past employers and clients. The most recent was a medical device firm that needed to document issues reported by customers regarding the use of their products.

It's all cases the solution was the first of its kind in the environment (it was previously manual). To be fair, just about any system would make an improvement in that situation.   What made SFDC particularly useful was the ease in setup and the ability to quickly refine it.

The most valuable feature was the ability to quickly add customizable fields (and by quickly, I mean in less than two minutes) that were easily incorporated into the existing framework.   

The system was remarkably easy to understand which made the setup quick. This is important because it gave us the ability to get started quickly.

While there is extensive reporting in the system, there is not always a direct route to get what you are looking for. There are plenty of tools in the market that provide those capabilities. I would just prefer it if there were an SFDC option.

I have used many different solutions, but I have not switched to SFDC from them (this is not a knock on SFDC, but more of a situation where the other systems did their jobs).

The answer to this question will vary greatly depending on the firm's requirements and available resources. For example, will out-of-the-box SFDC work? Do you require additional apps or is there a plan to customize? The best advice I can give you is to spend time upfront to nail down short and longer-term needs.

The most recent two were a choice between native ERP (Epicor) functionality and SFDC. These were the only two reasonable options because built-in compatibility with the ERP was a condition.

When looking at SDFC, take a look at the whole ecosystem.

• 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.

The flexibility of the platform is what really separates it from the crowd. With Salesforce, I can:

• Use clicks vs. code for automation purposes. Examples of this are workflow rules and visual flows.
• Utilize Salesforce's proprietary Java based language to implement more complicated business logic. Additionally, I am able to extend this functionality with their JSP based visual-force language.
• Salesforce has many different ways of accessing their platform with APIs. There is the REST, SOAP, Metadata, connect. Salesforce also offers a lot of pre-built toolkits (Like Javascript and PHP) which make external connections a snap.

The platform is being used to unify multiple business divisions onto a single platform. Currently, each of the eight or so businesses are utilizing their own platform based on multiple technologies (one is a DOS based system with a Fox DB). By utilizing Salesforce as our centralized platform it is enabling our business units to share leads across divisions and give a singular view to our customers.

I would like to see them focus on improving existing functionality instead of trying to market new functionality that is not enterprise ready. While I appreciate their push towards staying on the bleeding edge, it is a shared platform. Thus it is essential that new functionality is able to function with large amounts of data, which Lightning currently is not.

I've used Salesforce for over six years

There have been no issues with the deployment.

There are some governor limits which can make life difficult at times; however, I believe it is important to have these limits in place in order to maintain stability.

I believe that Salesforce gives you the ability to grow your CRM instance in a very scalable way and is usually fairly willing to extend the governor limits with good cause.

This is the one area that I really dislike about Salesforce. Dealing with their Level One support is a nightmare. I used to be in tech support, so I recognize the need for level one, however, for enterprise level customers whom pay for their "premier support", should get premier support not outsourced technical support with whom it takes over an hour of re-iterated explanations of a problem. Granted, most of the issues I call about are complicated; however, that in and of itself should allow for easier escalations.

For this particular project, I did not; however, I have evaluated others against Salesforce in the past. What has usually been the tipping point is:

• The flexibility of the platform
• The tri-annual releases, which ensures that the platform is up-to-date
• Normally painless upgrades

This question will vary vastly from organization to organization. It it easy to get setup with Salesforce; however, with its malleability, setups can be incredibly complex.

I've done it with both. My recommendation would be to steer clear of vendors. Find good people to work with in house. Vendors usually will only add extra time to the project. They usually deliver less than optimal solutions that will need to be re-done later. I have worked with major providers, including like Apprio, ICON and Slalom. All of these vendors have had "consultants" with much less exposure to the platform than myself and generally delivered really crappy code that took way longer to develop than it should have.

Hire experts. Look for an advanced certification if you can find one, if not make sure that they are experienced. Throw fundamental problems at them during the interview to see if they are able to respond appropriately. Salesforce is an IT platform, thus the experts should have a fundamental understanding of database and code structures. Remember that a part of a good implementation will involve process transformation. Do not look at the platform to as a new way to do old things. Take this as an opportunity to evaluate what you are doing well and not well, then use technology to improve those area's that are appropriate. Also, remember that technology should not be used as a nanny system. It is a tool and should be used as such. Utilize users that are power users of your existing systems. Let managers or executives drive overall objectives, and let the power users provide guidance on how the system will be utilized. In the plethora of implementations I have been involved in, this is a common occurrence and ends up creating a lot more work once development has been completed.

We use the solution to check activities, manage customers, and initiate customer communication.

The most valuable feature of the solution is the traceability of actions. The solution helps me quickly get an overview of what has happened in the past, especially when I return from vacation.

The solution’s user interface could be improved.

I have been using Salesforce Service Cloud for five years.

I rate the solution ten out of ten for stability.

Around 5,000 users in our organization use Salesforce Service Cloud.

I have previously used HubSpot. HubSpot looks more modern, but Salesforce Service Cloud is way more powerful.

I would recommend the solution to other users. It's a daily tool, and you need to be able to look up things quickly. Hence, a bit of training is definitely recommended. Salesforce Service Cloud is worth the money. The solution is powerful and its information density is pretty high.

Overall, I rate the solution a seven out of ten.

There are several valuable features:

• Case assignment rules allow for auto assignment of cases as they are received.
• Email-to-Case allows me to set an email address to receive cases. I distribute that to my customers and they create cases for me when they email that address. I don’t have to keep up with cases within my inbox.
• Queues allow cases to be sent to a queue, which has multiple members. They each are notified of a new case and can take ownership as necessary.

Our support team are aware of the outstanding issues that need to be addressed in terms of open cases. Statuses allow us to organize them in a meaningful way. Reports and Dashboards allow management to follow support KPIs, such as number of cases closed vs. received, age of open cases, count of cases assigned to each rep, etc.

They could improve upon analytics. The reporting function is extremely user-friendly and powerful. I can get the reports that I need 99% of the time, but it is not a robust BI tool.

I've used Service Cloud since 2009 as first a customer and then as an implementation consultant. I have implemented it in various companies with multiple verticals.

We've had no issues deploying it.

The stability is unmatched.

The scalability is unmatched.

Customer service is great.

Technical support is great. Opt for the higher “Premium Support” to open up support channels like Chat with support as well as training videos on demand.

It is what you make it. I have implemented it with a simple configuration without many rules around who can do what in what status and when people should be notified of happenings.

I have implemented it with more complex business rules that required a bit more configuration. The product is set up to allow for both as well as scalability from a simple to complex set up as the organization needs it to grow.

We implemented it through a vendor because of a lack of in-house knowledge at the time. I have since been an implementation consultant who has seen initial in-house implementations. Salesforce is so admin friendly that the temptation to try it out alone is strong. I know that budget can be a concern but I would advise to use a vendor who knows the product.

In most cases, it takes more effort (and money) to fix what in-house novices have put in place than it would have been to set it up right the first time. If the in-house crew has a good technical aptitude, they can usually carry on from there. Just get the foundation right to ensure user adoption and scalability.

Purchase a license for any and all users. Sharing a login hinders usability and visibility of who did what and when. Some third-party vendors can get reports to non-users, but anyone who needs to do anything in the system needs to have their own license.

We did evaluate Microsoft CRM, but you get what you pay for there. We needed the flexibility and dependability of the Salesforce product.

I love this product. I believe it is the best in the industry and is only getting better. Use an implementation partner for initial setup and get the foundation right before trying to venture out on your own. Assign an individual(s) as the system admins and use the implementation as a training ground for them. Make sure they understand the configuration put in place by the vendor so that they can maintain going forward and possibly manage tweaks on their own. Technical aptitude is a must when choosing those admins.