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Learn About Service Cloud Voice

Learning Objectives

After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:

  • Explain what Service Cloud Voice is.
  • Describe key benefits of Service Cloud Voice.
  • Explain the differences between Service Cloud Voice and Computer Telephony Integration (CTI).

What Is Service Cloud Voice?

Like most companies, Ursa Major Solar offers phone support to its customers. Even with the rise of digital engagement and the fact that customers use an average of 10 different channels to contact companies, 93% of customers pick up a phone to call for help.

With that in mind, Sita Nagappan-Alvarez, the CEO of Ursa Major Solar, wonders if there’s a way to improve the phone support experience for both her customers and support agents. According to PwC’s report on the Future of CX (Customer Experience), 80% of customers consider speed and convenience most important for good service. Sita wants a faster way to deliver better service over the phone. She’d also like to ensure that her agents have all the customer data and productivity tools they need to focus on customers—not technology—when customers call. To Sita, delivering exceptional service is as critical to her business as building extraordinary solar panels. Sita asks her rock star admin, Maria Jimenez, for help.

Maria has been hearing a lot about Service Cloud Voice. Even though Maria set up Call Integration for Lightning Experience a while ago, she’s learned that Service Cloud Voice is a feature for the Service Console that offers some advanced capabilities, such as:

  • Gives supervisors real-time Omni-Channel visibility into phone calls, call analytics, and agent performance.
  • Integrates telephony, customer data, and digital channels all on one platform—the Service Cloud platform.
  • Boosts agent productivity and shortens call times with fewer clicks and less data entry and wrap-up tasks.
  • Implements a phone channel quickly without code.
  • Offers choice in which telephony system to use.
  • Uses voice transcription to surface next-step recommendations powered by artificial intelligence (AI).

All of these capabilities sound incredible to Sita. But she wonders how they work with her service team’s existing console and digital engagement tools.

Service Cloud Voice and the Service Console

Just like other channels, Service Cloud Voice appears in the Service Console so that agents have a 360-degree view of each customer and their requests. The console is a virtual help desk that lets anyone on your service team, or anyone at your company, see a personalized view of each customer and their case, alongside any digital conversations. And that positions everyone to deliver a better customer experience.

The console displaying multiple digital engagement channels.

Service agents use Service Cloud Voice to capture customer information from voice calls and other digital channels added to the console, such as email, chatbots, web chat, social media, online communities, SMS messaging, and more. Agents use this data to answer customers’ questions and deliver great customer experiences, no matter where customers are. Using real-time transcription, Service Cloud Einstein analyzes conversations to serve up the right knowledge articles and next actions for agents. Supervisors can see all conversations in real time to triage issues and offer hints and training. An admin like Maria can easily add or remove any digital engagement tools from the console at any time. Agents can work on multiple channels and customer cases simultaneously to make everyone happy.

The combination of the console and Voice gives agents an efficient, streamlined experience — bringing together telephony, digital conversations, AI, and customer relationship management (CRM) data all in one place.

Here's what a console with Voice offers.

The console with key Service Cloud Voice features pointed out.

  1. Telephony inside of Salesforce—natively integrate phone conversations inside the console rather than screen pops to share one platform for easier data capture and a better call experience.
  2. Automatic voice transcription—convert human speech into text on cases and other records in real time with no typing or hassle.
  3. Omni-Channel to push calls to agents and manage workloads alongside other channels—agents access a single Omni-Channel widget for calls and any interaction with fewer screens, clicks, and distractions.
  4. AI assistance—next best actions and automated case wrap-up help agents personalize calls and close cases quickly.

Key Differences Between Service Cloud Voice and Computer Telephony Integration

Service Cloud Voice sounds amazing to Sita, but since Ursa Major Solar already uses Computer Telephony Integration (CTI), she asks Maria to list some key differences.

Service Cloud Voice

Computer Telephony Integration (CTI)

Natively built for the Service Cloud platform and available preintegrated and out of the box with Amazon Connect or easily connect to partner solutions via AppExchange.

Requires the integration of a third-party telephony system on each computer to enable calls. Admins install computer telephony integration (CTI) packages created by developers or partners from AppExchange to create a call center.

Seamless integration of data and voice transcription to automatically populate records, suggest actions or content with AI, and unlock powerful reporting options with Analytics.

Includes screen pops, click-to-call, and some data recording and analytics features based on call information.

Call-control tool integrates with one Omni-Channel widget for easy access to all digital and phone conversations for fewer clicks and screens. Supervisors can see all digital interactions and help out.

Call-control tool integrates with the console’s footer and is separate from other digital conversations.

Resolve calls with the help of automation and Agentforce for Service. AI leverages real-time call transcription to recommend next best actions and knowledge base articles, initiate workflows, and more.

AI could not leverage the full service platform - knowledge articles, customer data profile, etc, to the same extent.

Sita understands that Service Cloud Voice offers some major enhancements over CTI. But before she commits to making the switch, she’d like to learn more about benefits.

Benefits of Service Cloud Voice

Along with the advantages already mentioned about Service Cloud Voice, Maria points out to Sita these benefits by role.

Role

Benefits

Agents

  • Focus on providing service instead of navigating across different systems or technologies.
  • Accept phone calls quicker and easier with embedded call control tools (softphones).
  • Spend less time typing notes as call content is automatically captured.
  • Reduce onboarding time since Voice is handled like any other digital channel.
  • Set presence status to accept any kind of interaction.
  • Take advantage of AI like next best actions, recommended replies and case wrap up to save time and provide better responses.

Supervisors

  • View the status of all agents across channels in one place (Omni Supervisor).
  • View multiple call transcriptions simultaneously in real time right alongside other digital channels.
  • Use transcripts and recordings for after-the-fact agent training and coaching.
  • Connect phone conversations to cases and contacts for enhanced data collection and visibility.
  • Provide real-time support to agents who may raise a flag for help during a phone call
  • View real-time call analytics to track contact center KPIs.

Admins & IT

If choosing Service Cloud Voice with Amazon Connect:

  • Purchase all contact center infrastructure from one vendor for a more unified system.
  • Set up telephony and CRM with ease, as both are directly in Salesforce Setup with few external dependencies.
  • Add new users to the contact center in Salesforce quickly.
  • Payment and support for telephony all comes from Salesforce.

If choosing Service Cloud Voice with Partner Telephony:

  • Use their choice of telephony partners.
  • Set up telephony using a prebuilt managed package from the telephony partner.

With all of these benefits, Sita is excited to have her service team switch to Service Cloud Voice. She asks Maria what they need to do next. The answer: Plan for an implementation.

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