Salesforce Service Cloud Reviews

• Case Management
• Service Cloud Console
• Workflow Rules
• Territory Management

Logging activities and creating opportunities are easier than before, and it provides visibility of the sales pipeline.

Reporting needs improvement as sometimes we need to export data and work with it in Excel.

I've used it for three years.

Once set up, we've had no issues with deployment.

We've only had one stability issue in three years.

No issues with scalability.

9/10 - Sometimes cases need to be escalated more quickly.

No other CRM product was used before.

I did not participate in the initial setup.

We implemented it through a vendor team.

If you want to use Enterprise Edition or above and use a complex architecture, look for an experienced consultancy/in-house consultant to set up your organization initially.

It is at a very mature stage. We are are able to customize Salesforce so that the we can unleash it in our own way, in a way we like, rather than being confined to doing things their way.

The business for one of our client was completely based on Excel for renewing the business. With the implementation of a complete Service Renewal Cycle using Salesforce, their threshold value of conversion got reduced from 1-2 weeks to a single day!

• Salesforce Community
• Salesforce Sales Cloud
• Content
• Library

I have been using this solution from more than three years.

There have been no issues.

There have been no issues.

It is easy and perfect for scaling.

3/10

3/10

One customer switched from Siebel to Salesforce. They did this as Siebel was not adaptable to changing client environments.

It's always easy.

I am part of a vendor team and do the implementations for our customers.

It is always easy when you get to an account executive for the licenses.

I would recommend Salesforce only if you're a large business. For mid-level businesses it is quite hard.

The features we find most valuable are--

• It's easy to customize,
• It's a responsive solution,
• It provides a great user experience, and
• The console is nice, easy to use, and provides relevant and timely data.

When I was a sales administrator for about 70 users, we went from needing two full-time administrators to just one part- time administrator. It greatly reduces overhead in terms of personnel needed to manage he organization.

I've used it for about two years.

We encountered no issues with the deployment.

We encountered no issues with stability.

We were able to scale without incident.

The Salesforce customer service has been excellent.

Technical support has been great.

The initial setup was moderately complex. It requires strong consultant skills to design how you want to process cases.

Don't look at just license costs. Factor in infrastructure savings as well as reduced head count needed to support Service Cloud.

The built-in, ready-to-go package of case management, email management and social media management with a knowledge base helps to speed up the implementation time. I can have a new service center operational within a few days if needed, although more complex implementations still may take much longer.

The most important feature though is the platform’s upgrade approach. There is never a need to install an upgrade. The upgrades are applied automatically three times a year, and every customer is always operating on the latest version of the software.

As a consultant, I have seen the implementation of Service Cloud reduce contact center handle times by minutes per call, which can translate to millions of dollars in savings for large operations. The cloud infrastructure helps to speed up implementation time and accelerates how quickly you can release new features to users.

For most contact centers, it will improve overall uptime performance, but it is important to ensure a good quality internet connection for all users. There is no way to access Service Cloud if you lose your public internet access.

My clients have raised concerns with the knowledge search algorithm. Sometimes it seems the most relevant knowledge articles are not the ones that are returned in the search results. Salesforce has made substantial strides to improve on this over the past few releases.

Salesforce is rolling out a new user interface called “Lightning Experience” which is not yet available for Service Cloud. I would like to see it fully rolled out to Service Cloud, which they do plan to do.

Seven years as an implementation consultant.

There are elements of Service Cloud which cannot be smoothly migrated from sandbox environments to production, leading to manual steps in a deployment.

For example, translations have to be manually applied in production, and on-demand email-to-case must be set up directly in production.

I have had mixed experiences with standard technical support over the years, so I would highly recommend considering buying premium technical support to enable skipping of the first line of tech support.

I have worked almost exclusively with Salesforce for the past several years because Service Cloud is the solution all of my clients have been buying. I previously worked with RightNow, which is now Oracle Service Cloud. But I found the upgrade process with RightNow to be problematic, leading to customers getting stuck on out-of-date versions of the product.

Companies already using Salesforce for other CRM functions will find Service Cloud implementation to be straightforward. If a company is migrating to Service Cloud from an on-premise solution like Siebel or SAPCRM, the biggest change is getting adjusted to life with a cloud platform.

The support model needed is different with Service Cloud. There are no servers to maintain or patch, but there must be a plan in place to evaluate and prepare for the three yearly upgrades and to prepare users to take advantage of new features as they are released.

I am an implementation consultant, so my advice would be to consider using an implementation consultant for your first release, but have a plan in place to transition in house over time. Make sure your implementation consultant partner is certified and follow up on their references. Use them to educate your in-house team during that first implementation.

Anyone can learn Salesforce if they have prior CRM experience, so make sure your in house team gets involved in the implementation and takes ownership. At some point the consultant will leave, and then you must be able to take over.

The best time to negotiate the price is at the very beginning. Since this is a subscription model, you will be paying for it indefinitely, and it’s easier to negotiate the rate down from the beginning.

Also, have an exit strategy in place to transition off of the platform should you not be happy with license negotiation during future renewals. It will give you more leverage during those negotiations.

Anyone can sign up for a free “developer org” to play around with the product. Get hands on with it and get comfortable before making a purchasing decision. The Salesforce Trailhead program provides free online tutorials to learn about all the features of Service Cloud.

Also, consider attending the annual Dreamforce conference to learn how other companies are using Service Cloud and to get advice from them.

• Service Console
• Knowledge 1
• CTI Integration

It's increased our contact centre agent efficiency.

There is no control over the appearance of Visual Flow pages, giving the appearance of an amateur web application within the Salesforce interface.

It would also be good if there were a workforce management component to balance call distribution in a contact centre based on agent skills and experience.

I've been using it on and off for 12 years.

The solution is very stable.

It's very scalable. Being cloud-based, the application easily scales to high user and transaction counts.

Tech support is responsive, but they often suggest the solutions that one has already read by doing a Google search. I usually have to escalate to tier two to get the answer I need.

But to be fair, being a certified Salesforce consultant, my questions are usually more complex than a regular end user’s questions.

I migrated my tech support team off of BMC Remedy and have migrated many clients off of Siebel and other systems.

Salesforce is much more easily configured so it can change as your business processes change; it’s extremely scalable so it can grow as your business grows, and it’s API is extensive so you can integrate with back office systems in a relatively straightforward way.

It's straightforward. For a small- to medium-sized business, the system can usually be set up with no custom development. Enterprise organisations will usually require some code to be written along with data migration and data integration.

However, when I migrated my team from BMC Remedy to Salesforce, I did so with no previous training and was able to customize the system to my requirements using the declarative interface. I migrated the data myself using the salesforce Apex Data Loader, which is available for free.

I implemented it myself as described above. However, I would recommend using an integrator. They know the system really well and can ensure your system is implemented following best practices and taking advantage of all the latest features.

While my original implementation was satisfactory, it could have been much better. One example is, I lost all of my record creation dates from the legacy system because I didn’t know that Salesforce could make the Created By and Created Date fields editable when creating records as part of a migration.

My recommendation on pricing is: “negotiate”. The Salesforce account executives can be flexible on price at times so don’t be afraid to negotiate a better price. You may have to commit to a longer contract but you won’t regret it.

Also, if you’re going to do an implementation project, only purchase enough licenses for the implementation team and arrange to start paying for your other user licenses when you go live.

If you’re doing a three month implementation, there’s no need to pay the subscription fees for users who won’t log into the system until you go live.

Use a Salesforce partner and make sure their consultants are certified. Talk to three different firms, and don’t let price be the only driving factor. Rather, look at the firm that seems to best understand your requirements, has good answers on why particular parts of the implementation will cost what they’re proposing, and has a solid methodology that they can easily explain to you.

Simply choosing the least expensive option often costs more in the end with either delays, change requests or worst case, failure.

• Knowledge Base - can provide answers to customers, and customers can find answers themselves
• Customer Community - direct customer feedback

We have improved our customer service and call-deflection rate with Service Cloud, particularly with Knowledge Base and Customer Community features

The pricing of the various editions could be improved.

I've used it for six years.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

10/10

8/10

We previously used Microsoft CRM Dynamics.

Data migration was an issue since it required extensive data mapping and business rule changes.

We did it in-house.

It's estimated at 135% over two years.

It should be implemented only in organizations with over 20 users. Otherwise, it's expensive to manage.

We also looked at Pegasystems.

You should start with organization-wide default settings, then user set-up, then accounts, contacts and the cases and case-related items should be last.

For us, the Force.com platform is the most valuable feature.

It's a great tool for collaboration because it can track and share everyone's input. You can also configure workflow rules to enforce process.

I've used it for over five years.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

It depends on your contract with Salesforce. There is a lot of information from the user and developer community that does not require a support contract with Salesforce.

I used to use Clarify/Amdocs.

The initial set up can be a non-event. However, most businesses would need complex customizations.

I have done it both in-house and with a vendor.

Put a lot of thought into your business processes before implementing Salesforce. It is very easy to automate chaos if your business process is not well-defined.

Put a lot of thought into your business processes before implementing Salesforce. It is very easy to automate chaos if your business process is not well defined.