Service Cloud Solution Design - Given a scenario, analyze customer requirements to determine an appropriate solution design considering capabilities, limitations and design trade-offs

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Design Capabilities

  • Salesforce provides multiple editions through its famous subscription model to ensure different kinds of contact centers ranging from small-scale to enterprise scale. Customers can subscribe and enable service to their customers. It provides out-of-the-box to fully customizable support.
  • Capabilities to deliver a smarter, more personal customer experience on the world’s #1 CRM platform for service using below service cloud features
    • Lightning Service Console - Put productivity tools like macros, shortcuts, and templates at agents finger tips along with 360-degree view of customer.
    • Case Management - Resolve cases faster by combining streamlined processes with easy access to the full details, context and history of every case and customer interaction.
    • Knowledge Base - Drive quick case resolution and maximize agent productivity with recommended articles and optimized article search.
    • Service Process and Automation - Customize and automate any service or approval process with drag and drop simplicity using lightning flows.
    • Omni-Channel Routing - Deliver smarter service by automatically matching cases to the agent with the best skill set to resolve them
    • Service Analytics - Make your team and business smarter with prebuild dashboards and apps and AI-powered insights and predictions.
    • Telephony Integration - Integrate with most popular CTI systems. Log notes instantly when customer calls and manage calls from within the console without touching the phone.
    • Automation with Macros - Free up support agents by automating common, repetitive, multistep tasks to resolve customer issues more efficiently.
    • Asset and Order Management - Track customers’ assets, orders, support history and more in one place for a complete view of their activity.
  • Ability to build self-service portals and communities for more personalized support and happier customers. Features include
    • Customizing portal or community and build brand.
    • Create a seamless self-service experience connected to Salesforce platform
    • Embed service directly into portal
    • Help customers help themselves and each other.
    • Deliver personalized, intelligent customer service
  • Ability to deliver smarter support on your customers’ terms, time frame and channel
    • Connect your customers over the digital channels they love
      • Phone - Mobile Messaging
      • Web - AI-powered live chat support to sites and mobile apps
      • Social Networks - Address issues instantly by monitoring social networks in real time
      • Communities - Help customers find answers on their own with a self-service community or portal
      • Web - Build personalized support right into their site or app, in a snap.
    • Supercharge support team with AI-powered chatbots
    • Maximize agent productivity by bringing every case into one place.
  • Ability to connect workforce to deliver intelligent and productive onsite service with Field Service Lightning, features include
    • Creation of work orders from any case at a faster pace
    • Optimizing schedule and intelligently assign jobs
    • Harness power of Einsteins AI to increase first-time fix rate
    • Manage jobs from any mobile device
    • Make smarter decisions
  • Service cloud Einstein makes AI easy to use because it is built right into Platform, features include
    • Ability to deliver intelligent, satisfying self-service
    • Eliminate hold time and reduce handle time
    • Build Einstein Bots with clicks, not code
    • Make every service rep bionic.
    • Deploy Einstein AI rapidly and configure it easily
    • Get the most out of AI, faster, using best practices
  • Ability to deliver unforgettable experience using the world’s most complete customer service platform
    • Deliver smarter service with a 360-degree view of every customer
    • Support both customers and field agents wherever they are using the mobile-first platform
    • Customize and extend service capabilities with easy to use platform tools.
    • Innovate faster on platform that scales as you grow.
    • Relax knowing data is safe and secure.

Process Automation Rules

  • Assignment rules - automatically assign incoming cases to agents or queues (a group of agents).
  • Auto-response rules - personalized email responses that can be sent to customers based on case details
  • Escalation rules - used to escalate cases to right people whey the SLAs are violated
  • Quick Text - Predefined text blocks that can be created so that agents can reuse as and when needed
  • Macros - Repetitive tasks on objects including cases can be completed automatically.
  • Entitment Processes - These can be configured for setting up milestones.

Support Channels

Based on business requirements below support channels can be configured

  • Web - Web-to-case can be utilized to capture information provided by customers in web and automatically convert them into cases.
  • Email - Email-to-Case or On-Demand Email-to-Case can be utilized to automatically convert emails from customers to cases.
  • Phone - A call center can be set up in Salesforce to receive phone calls from customers and allow support agents to make outbound calls.
  • Chat - Live agent can be set up to allow customers to chat with support agents.
  • Self-Service Community - A self-service community with a public knowledge base allows customers to discuss with other customers and solve their issues on their own.
  • SOS - SOS provides an in-app channel with video conferencing, screen sharing and guided assistance.
  • Social Networks - can be set up to address issues instantly by monitoring social networks in real time.

Design Considerations

  • Review the out-of-the-box capabilities and compare them to your current needs. How do you want to change default configurations? Evaluate modifications to fields, picklists, layouts, and other features that are required to support your business processes.
    • Email templates can be created and used for automated or customized notifications
    • Case Contact Roles can be setup to associate multiple contacts to a case
    • Case Teams can be created for sharing cases with SMEs and other Interested parties
    • Case Path can be utilized to train agents on how to work on a case.
    • Quick Text and Macros can be created to improve productivity of the agents
    • Required fields (at layout level and object level) and Validation rules can be created to maintain the data consistency and quality of data.
    • Relationships can be utilized to relate cases with other standard and custom objects based on requirements.
    • Custom Report types can be created to analyze data.
    • Appexchange can be used to download required custom installable applications to avoid reinventing the wheel.
    • Case Assignment Rules can be used to assign cases to the right team once they are created.
    • Workflow, process builder and flows can be leveraged for additional customization.
    • Case Escalation rules can be used to make sure cases are progressing well and escalated based on the SLA.
    • Case Milestones can be configured to manage SLA.
  • Apex, Visualforce and Custom Lightning components can be created to meet complex business requirements that cannot be met with OOB capabilities.
  • Plan for integrations with transactional systems, external data sources, custodians, and any other platforms that your business relies on.
  • Beyond the pre-configured settings, evaluate whether you need advanced customizations.
  • Estimate the size of your user base and determine your licensing requirements.
  • Determine if any limits or limitations affect your implementation.

Design Limitations

  • Limits exists for Assignment, Escalation and Auto-response rules
    • 2000 total rules across all objects
    • 50 Active Rules per object that includes assignment, workflow, auto-response, escalation, and processes
    • 500 rules per object.
    • 3000 rule entries per Rule
    • 25 Filter criteria per Rule
    • 200 actions allowed per rule
  • Limits exists for Entitlement Management
  • Required fields and Validation rules needs to be considered before a case is created through Web-to-Case and design the page accordingly.
  • Case Path has limitations
  • Macros are recommended for all objects except opportunity products.
  • Email limitations - https://help.salesforce.com/articleView?id=000271357&language=en_US&type=1
  • Availability of features between Classic and Lightning needs to be considered.
    • Case path and lightning flow are available only in LEX
    • Keyboard shortcuts are not available in LEX
    • Javascript buttons designed in classic may not work in LEX
    • App exchange apps may or may not work in LEX so be cautious.

Design Trade-offs

  • Refers to the functionality that is lost while gaining others
  • Installing a managed package from AppExchange may gain a part of functionality but not 100% of your requirement.
  • Choosing between available options
    • between on-demand Email-to-Case ( (it restricts attachments size to below 25MB but helps the creation of emails to cases without the requirement of installing an agent)) and Email-to-Case
  • Sticking to Classic will not benefit the company to utlize the latest and greatest features that are available in Lightning.

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