Prepare for a Voice Implementation
Learning Objectives
After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:
- Understand how to prepare for a Voice implementation.
- Describe key considerations for setting up Voice.
Introducing Service Cloud Voice
Service Cloud Voice makes it easier for support agents to answer and make phone calls, track customer information, and resolve customer issues—all within the Service Console. Voice integrates telephony with Salesforce CRM, helping you to:
- Give your agents all the context they need to help your customers. Provide a complete view of each customer across all web and social channels.
- Help your agents close cases faster by recommending the right Knowledge articles, voice transcription insights, and next steps.
- See your agents’ key performance indicators at a glance in the Voice Analytics Dashboard. Monitor call usage, minutes, and billing to avoid surprise charges (applies only to Amazon Connect).
To see more of what you can do with Voice, watch this demo.
To get started with a successful Voice implementation, it’s best to know what you need and what you should consider first.
What You Need Before You Set Up Voice
Before you begin a Voice implementation, make sure that you and your org are ready. To avoid unnecessary challenges while you set up Voice, follow these recommendations.
- Review Voice limits and limitations. Just as you wouldn’t begin hiking in a forest without a map, you shouldn’t set up Voice without knowing what lies ahead of you.
- Voice is available only in Lightning Experience.
- Voice is available only as an add-on license to Service Cloud or Sales Cloud.
- Voice is supported only on the Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox web browsers.
- You must enable cookies in the browser to allow single sign-on (SSO).
- Additional limits range from call recordings to Omni-Channel to Amazon Connect and more.
- Review Voice key concepts. Before you begin your trek, familiarize yourself with some landmarks so you don’t get lost. Terms like telephony provider, connected app, Lambda function, contact center, contact flow, and softphone are vital to know before you begin your Voice implementation.
- Make sure Salesforce satisfies the Voice prerequisites. Before you turn on Voice, set up the prerequisite services in your org. Create a custom domain and a single sign-on URL so agents can easily log in to your contact center. Enable Omni-Channel so your agents can make and receive calls.
- Choose a telephony model. Service Cloud Voice comes in three flavors, which vary based on telephony provider, setup process, and other characteristics. Compare options to decide which is the best for your business.
- Increase Amazon service quotas. If your contact center will use Amazon Connect telephony, decide whether to increase your Amazon service quotas. Quotas control:
- The maximum number of concurrent active calls
- The maximum number of transcription jobs
- The list of countries that can be called in outbound calls
With some preparation under your belt, you’re in a better spot to plan your Voice implementation.
How to Plan a Successful Voice Implementation
Experts who support Service Cloud Voice recommend completing these steps as a best practice to plan a Voice implementation.
- If you’re basing your implementation on a Voice demo, review the demo with your account rep to understand the functionality that you want to use in your org. Like most Salesforce features, Voice works with many application behaviors to support your org’s needs. Available functionality depends on your telephony model and provider. Make sure you know what comes standard with Voice and what requires customization.
- Review Voice limitations against your baseline. To save time, after you establish baseline requirements for Voice, identify any limits or limitations that may pose challenges to your implementation.
- Plan your phone number porting. Decide how to use your existing phone numbers in your new contact center. Phone number porting is highly regulated, can’t be rushed, and requires making a porting request with your telephony provider many weeks in advance.
- Design your environment and testing strategy. Decide how many sandbox orgs you need. Decide how many Amazon Connect test instances you need. Then, develop a plan to migrate data between production and test environments.
- Review AWS networking requirements. If your contact center will use Amazon Connect telephony, review Amazon’s networking guidance so you can avoid blocking important network ports.
- Plan your routing requirements. Your interactive voice response (IVR) determines how customers navigate your phone support and get routed to agents. Consider:
- Your current routing logic
- How you’d like to improve routing using Amazon Connect routing
- Profiles and queues (or equivalent features) from your telephony provider
- Prebuilt solutions
To learn more about each step, see the Service Cloud Voice Planning Checklist.
Voice Considerations
Keep these considerations in mind as you prepare to set up Voice and throughout your Voice implementation.
Open a phone number porting request in advance. Phone number porting moves a phone number from one telephony service provider to another. It takes time and may cause disruptions. How long it takes to port numbers depends on the country, the complexity of the request, the type and quantity of numbers being ported, and your carrier. Open a porting request as far in advance of your go-live date as possible.
Get expert help for your Voice implementation. Instead of guessing how to solve a specific problem during your implementation, get answers from experts. At the Service Cloud Voice Trailblazer Community, you can post questions, sign up for digital service office hours, find AWS training resources, and review various tips, tricks, and best practices.
Service Cloud Voice is a partnership between Salesforce and Amazon Web Services, and both are committed to supporting Voice customers in their respective areas of expertise.
When you complete the preparation steps and tasks listed in this module, you're ready to set up Voice. In Salesforce Help, follow the steps in Service Cloud Voice.