Plan for Digital Engagement
Learning Objectives
Prepare for Digital Service
Maria knows that adding multiple channels is the second stage of the general setup process for Service Cloud. (See the Service Cloud for Lightning Experience module for a refresher.)
Maria understands why she shouldn’t set up channels or digital engagement first: If a customer reaches out for help, but there’s no consistent way to track, route, or respond to their question, who would receive the case to resolve? A customer or agent lost in an unclear case management process makes for an unhappy customer and agent.
Maria is excited about setting up digital engagement features for service. Before she sets up any features, she asks Ursa Major Solar’s service team some questions about how they work. She wants a thousand-foot view into their general processes and requirements before she implements any specific features.
| Fundamentals | |
|---|---|
| Question | Answer |
| Do your agents have a complete view of the customer? | Yes, during our case management implementation, we customized a Service Console to show account, contact, and other records for 360-degree views of customers. The console is ready to support multiple channels. |
| Are you able to effectively route cases or messaging sessions to the right agents? | Yes, during our case management implementation, we set up some queues, assignment rules, and escalation rules, but we need to look into Omni-Channel. Omni-Channel routing sounds more robust and can automatically push and prioritize a variety of work to agents, without them picking items from a queue or determining priorities. We definitely need Omni-Channel for better automation and to scale the growth of our service team. |
| Are you using automation to save time and speed case resolution? | We’re using some of the basic assignment and escalation rules. However, we’re not using anything like automated conversations with chatbots to answer routine questions online. We’re also not using any kind of AI or machine learning to make automatic field predictions to speed up case resolution. Someone needs to look into self-service, Einstein Bots, and Einstein Case Classification. |
| Do your agents spend a significant amount of time switching between applications to get customer information or answers? | The console has made it easier for agents to see complete views of customers, but we need to do something about knowledge. We implemented Salesforce Knowledge, but we need to add the Knowledge component to the console so that automation suggests correct answers to agents while they’re working on cases. |
| Self-Service | |
|---|---|
| Question | Answer |
| Where can customers find answers to questions about your products or services? Can they access answers and information on a website or a mobile app? | Currently, we have a Web-to-Case form on our website where customers can submit cases. But that’s it. We’ve been wanting to update our website for a while, but we haven’t made the time. After reading about Experience Cloud sites, we need something like that online where customers, agents, and experts can collaborate and share ideas. We also need a source of truth for some documents about our solar panels. And adding a chatbot on an Experience Cloud site to answer common questions would help unload some of the most tedious work from our agents. |
| Is there a business process—like registering a solar panel—that requires your customers to call an agent? Is there data that can only be accessed over the phone? How can you make this easier to access? | Unfortunately, to register solar panels, customers have to call an agent. Clearly, we need a web presence like an Experience Cloud site where customers can register any of our products online and do so at their own convenience. Also, since we implemented Salesforce Knowledge, we need to share some of our articles online so that customers can troubleshoot routine issues themselves, 24/7, without having to phone an agent during business hours. |
| If you already have a knowledge base for your customers, are you using marketing automation to increase engagement and adoption of the portal? | Once we have a self-service site, and set up some social media channels, we will definitely look into message automation to drive traffic and awareness to it. Thank goodness we already have Salesforce Knowledge with some incredibly helpful articles that are ready to share online! |
| Social Presence | |
|---|---|
| Question | Answer |
| Do you receive service-related questions on social media? Are the right people responding? | We don’t know. We have no social media presence right now, at least none we’re participating in or responding to. We have to add a variety of social media channels to our digital engagement plans—we have to reach customers where they are at. |
| Are customers chatting online about themes related to your product or industry? | Ryan De Lyon, our customer service manager, has heard some customers are posting questions about our solar panels on Twitter and Facebook. Since we are not monitoring those channels, we don’t really know what is going on there or how our brand is affected. Ideally, once we set up social channels, we’d like to contribute to conversations about the solar panel industry and lead a few talking points to build new relationships and drive more business. |
| Are your customers already building online forums of their own to discuss your products or services? | We don’t know—we need to research this topic. A few months ago, one of our agents mentioned that there was a website displaying some of our solar panel manuals with a few comments posted on the site, but we’re not sure what that is about. Sounds like we need to look into it immediately. |
| Messaging | |
|---|---|
| Question | Answer |
| Where does most of your customer traffic come from? Is it from mobile or desktop? | We don’t know. We think that most of the people we interact with have mobile phones and use text messaging. Once we have some of our digital channels up and running, like self-service sites or social media, we should post a survey to our customers and try to determine how many of them prefer communicating with us from mobile devices or desktops. |
| Do you know your percentage of customers using iPhones versus Android? | No, this is another area for a customer survey once we have digital channels set up. The answer will help us learn on which devices to build mobile service apps in the future. |
| Are your customers using international messaging apps like WeChat or WhatsApp? | Currently, we don’t have any international customers. In the future, however, we hope to expand globally, so this question is important for us as we plan for growth. |
| Automation & AI | |
|---|---|
| Question | Answer |
| Do your agents spend time on data entry or repeating steps on every case that they work? | Our agents do type a lot of the same things in the console, but we’re already looking into the console’s Macros and Quick Text features to reduce repetitive tasks. Macros will help agents select email templates, send emails, and change case statuses all with one click, whereas Quick Text will help agents send a variety of predefined messages to customers so they save time typing the same responses, no matter which channel. |
| Do you have a list of the top common questions, such as order status or password reset that you get from customers on a regular basis? | Yes, our agents spend a lot of time answering similar questions, especially on order statuses. If we had a self-service site or a text messaging channel where Einstein Bots could answer those questions, our agents could focus on solving more complex issues that require creativity and teamwork. |
| Do you have any picklist or checkbox fields on cases that machine learning could prefill for agents; any recommendations for knowledge articles or next actions for agents? | Yes, some useful fields to predict are Case Reason, Escalated, and Priority—having those automatically predicted would save agents time and clicks. And, anytime a useful article from our knowledge base could surface to an agent without searching for it is a productivity boost. Also, any kind of AI that suggests next-best actions for agents while they work would be a dream come true. Offloading some decisions during customer interactions could only help agents focus on building better relationships. |
Digital Content Considerations
As Maria plans for digital engagement, she sees a unique thread that ties a number of features together—content. She wonders, “Do we have the right content ready to help agents and customers across multiple channels?” Based on the answers to the planning questions above, she knows the answer is no.
Traditionally, content is something only marketers, advertisers, or media agencies created. Support agents worked with a limited content choice of case open or case closed. If service teams created content, it was usually a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) page on a website. With chatbots, SMS messaging, social media posts, or conversational interfaces from buttons all the way to online payments, content is a big piece of how to deliver service. Content is also a critical component for closing the loop on marketing, selling, and servicing. Content creation and curation requires a new set of skills for service. The teams at Ursa Major Solar will have to give considerable thought to the content that appears in each stage of a basic digital customer journey.
Next Steps for Digital Engagement
Now that Sita and Maria have answers to their questions, they take a step back to prioritize Service Cloud feature implementations. There are a lot of features they can set up, so they ask themselves a few more high-level questions.
- Which channel should we set up first, second, and so on?
- Are our agents trained to communicate on those channels?
- Will agents cover all channels or will some agents cover specific channels?
- Will the channel take into account international customers and multiple languages?
- Are our console and case management processes ready to support each new channel and automation or AI?
All of these questions should be asked before adding a new digital channel to a multichannel support model. Once Maria gets the answers she’s looking for, she can begin setting up specific service features for Ursa Major Solar. It looks like there’s a lot more Trailhead in Maria’s future.
Resources
- Trailhead: Service Cloud Agent Productivity
- Trailhead: Omni-Channel for Lightning Experience
- Trailhead: Make Service Cloud Smarter
- Salesforce Help: Solution Kits for Retail and B2C
