Omni-сhannel in Salesforce: Setting the Standard for Customer Service

Modern consumers demand convenience, connecting with companies from anywhere using smartphones or laptops. The true advantage emerges when customers have multiple options tailored to their preferences—a solution to the common pain point of limited accessibility. 

Unfortunately, few businesses provide this diverse range of communication touchpoints, leaving customers yearning for flexibility. Offering customers choices not only defines exceptional service but addresses the pain points of limited access, elevating the customer experience and enhancing the quality of your product or service. 

60% of customers express that their interactions often resemble communication with distinct departments rather than a cohesive company. Additionally, 66% frequently need to repeat or reiterate information to various representatives. 48% of customers have switched brands for better service, and an overwhelming 94% agree that excellent customer service significantly boosts their likelihood of making repeat purchases. 

Four Pillars of Customer Service 

The challenge is apparent: how do you boost omni-channel Salesforce productivity without overwhelming frontline agents? 

Many turn to process automation, now a cornerstone for almost 80% of high-performing service organizations. 

Let's delve into its strategic implementation and impact. 

Don't forget to check out: Case Study: How Salesforce Marketing Cloud Helped an Online Business Gain More Sales and Customer Satisfaction 

What's the Difference between Multichannel and Omni-channel Customer Service? 

Omni-channel and multi-channel customer service involve interacting with customers across various channels, but their approaches differ. 

In multi-channel customer service, a company provides support and engagement through multiple independent channels. These channels may operate in isolation, and the customer can choose the most convenient one. However, the challenge lies in ensuring a consistent experience across these channels, as they may not be integrated, potentially leading to fragmented interactions. 

Omni-channel customer service takes a more integrated approach. It focuses on providing a seamless and unified experience across all channels. In an Omni-channel strategy, customer interactions are interconnected, allowing for a consistent and cohesive experience as customers move between channels. This approach emphasizes continuity, enabling customers to transition between channels without losing context, and ensures that the organization has a holistic view of the customer journey. 

Multi-channel and Omni-channel Customer Service in Salesforce 

Overview of Omni-channel Salesforce Customer Service 

The service industry focuses on three key aspects of omni-channel support, i.e., being: 

• Thorough 
• Consistent 
• Connected 

This means engaging with customers across any channel, maintaining a consistent service experience, and having a unified view of the customer through a single CRM. 

A genuine omni-channel service center lets customers easily connect with support on different channels, giving support agents quick access to a complete customer profile. It's about avoiding separate departments' complexities and resolving issues promptly. 

Omni-channel Performance Dashboard in Salesforce 

At the same time, according to Salesforce's 'State of Service' Report, artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming more important in Salesforce's customer service toolkit. AI, which can gather essential information and suggest optimal steps, has seen an 88% increase in adoption since 2020, from 24% to 45% among service decision-makers. This emphasizes the growing role of support going omni-channel in the Salesforce ecosystem. 

Omni-channel Case Routing in Salesforce Service Cloud 

Organizations often need a combination of case assignment strategies, especially global service teams requiring simultaneous criteria like product specialization, language, agent availability, and location. 

In Service Cloud, Omni-channel Routing, or case assignment or case distribution, is the intelligent automation that ensures the correct Salesforce records reach the appropriate owner at the right time. This process involves various strategies, including assigning cases based on agent skills, capacity, language and handling diverse input channels. 

To determine the need for extending omni-channel routing, ask yourself and your sales team a few questions: 

• What if cases need to be reassigned after creation? 
• How can case assignments reflect real-time workload, not just workload at the time of the assignment? 
• How are cases weighted in terms of complexity, and can a unified score improve assignment accuracy? 
• Are business hours respected to avoid assigning cases when agents are offline? 
• How can additional inbound channels seamlessly incorporate the same complex assignment logic? 

Queue-Based Routing 

In this method, agents are grouped into distinct queues, typically reflecting a single skill or specific business aspect, such as Billing or Technical Support. 

Omni-channel then assigns work items to these queues, with agents being members assigned tasks based on queue priority. 

Smaller companies favor queue-based routing with fewer product offerings and agents operating in confined geographies. Its simplicity makes it an attractive choice for streamlined setup and efficient operations. 

Skills-Based Routing 

Skills-based routing involves tagging agents with specific skills and assigning work items based on these skills. 

This method proves highly effective for larger organizations with extensive product ranges, complex skill sets, and multilingual support requirements. 

Agents are matched with work items requiring their unique expertise, optimizing the allocation of tasks. 

Leveraging this native Salesforce feature is advantageous for organizations navigating diverse product portfolios and catering to global audiences, ensuring a targeted and efficient approach to customer support. 

External Routing 

External routing is the solution if you already have a preferred routing system and are introducing Salesforce into your workflow. 

Your company can retain its established routing system by seamlessly integrating third-party routing through a partner application with Omni-channel. 

Skilled developers can leverage Salesforce's standard and streaming APIs to write code that facilitates the collaboration between third-party routing systems and Salesforce. This method allows your organization to route work efficiently to the Service Console while maintaining the routing system of your preference. 

Check out another amazing blog by Twistellar here: How to Prepare for Salesforce Data Migration in 2024? 

How to Address Major Challenges
of Multichannel Customer Service in Salesforce 

What if your service agents had more time to focus on high-priority cases? If you offload some of the routine tasks your service team has to a smart assistant that could deliver real-time results, you can make your team more effective. 

Solving Customer Problems with Einstein for Service 

Possible customer support issues to name a few: 

• Needing help locating the right knowledge articles 
• Occasionally misrouting cases due to data typos 
• Challenges in finding approved responses for use in chat and messaging interactions with customers 

To increase your team's productivity, you can turn on a few Einstein for Service features to help your agents help your customers. With a smart assistant, your agents make fewer mistakes, they find relevant information faster, and your service processes are easy to enforce. 

Einstein Case Classification in Salesforce 

How does it work? 

Here is a list of the most prominent features of Einstein for Service: 

• Einstein Bots: Automating issue resolution in chat, enhancing efficiency and customer satisfaction. 
• Einstein Case Classification: Predicting field values for efficient categorization of incoming cases. 
• Einstein Case Routing: Collaborating with Case Classification for effective case triage and routing. 
• Einstein Case Wrap-Up: Enabling quick and accurate case completion for chat agents. 
• Einstein Article Recommendations: Recommending relevant knowledge articles for timely responses. 
• Einstein Reply Recommendations: Analyzing chat transcripts for pertinent reply suggestions. 
• Einstein Next Best Action: Utilizing data insights to recommend optimal agent offers and actions, enhancing customer engagement. 

Now that you're familiar with Einstein for Service's capabilities, you're ready to help your customers and service team. But where within the organization is this help needed? 

Einstein for Service Benefits for Omni-channel Support

Increased Productivity for Agents and Admins 

Einstein Case Classification and Routing simplifies processes by predicting case fields, eliminating manual data entry, and accurately directing cases to the right team. The outcome: increased agent productivity, fewer case transfers, and minimized escalations. This straightforward approach aligns to improve operational efficiency in the Salesforce environment. 

Enhancing Self-Service and Scalability 

Einstein Bots tackles common queries and processes. Automating these tasks and efficiently collecting case details facilitates a seamless handoff to agents. This not only decreases average handle time (AHT) but also achieves increased customer satisfaction (CSAT) and case deflection. 

Efficient Case Closing 

Einstein Case Wrap-Up offers a valuable advantage by suggesting case field values. This saves agent time and allows for more focused customer interaction, contributing to increased overall productivity within the Salesforce ecosystem. 

Decreased Time Spent Searching for Answers 

Einstein Article Recommendations provides a relief to overwhelmed support agents by promptly surfacing the most relevant knowledge articles to address customer inquiries efficiently, resulting in improved first-call resolution (FCR) and customer satisfaction (CSAT), streamlining the support process in Salesforce. 

Dynamic Recommendations at the Point of Impact 

Einstein's Next Best Action delivers real-time recommendations. This dynamic advantage elevates agent productivity, increases first-call resolution (FCR), and fosters revenue generation, ensuring optimal decision-making at critical customer touchpoints within Salesforce ecosystem. 

To Wrap Up

Omni-channel support elevates customer service, fosters efficiency, and ensures a cohesive customer journey. Salesforce's robust features, showcased in our exploration, offer a transformative solution. 

Salesforce is a strategic ally for businesses aiming to elevate customer interactions. Its omni-channel capabilities enhance processes, increase agent productivity, and surpass contemporary customer expectations. 

Consider seeking a professional Salesforce consultation for a tailored approach and expert guidance. This commitment to excellence will reshape your customer service landscape and position your business as a leader in the competitive market. 

This article was originally published at Twistellar.com