A new offering from customer relationship management giant Salesforce is aimed at bringing customer service in the field into the connected, Internet-of-Things era — something many organizations have been struggling with, according to Salesforce. Field Service Lightning provides a single platform for automated scheduling, optimized service and connecting customers, field agents, dispatchers and other employees via any device, from anywhere.
Released for general availability Tuesday, Field Service Lightning targets problem areas of customer service in the field that can lead to slower responses, higher costs and customer dissatisfaction, Salesforce said. For example, it provides workers with in-the-field access to customer information, which only 46 percent of employees currently have, according to Salesforce’s recently released “2016 Connected Manufacturing Service Report.”
Salesforce said Field Service Lightning is designed to work in a mobile era that’s seeing more and more connected devices all the time. By harnessing all these connections companies can bring together all areas of field service to “deliver a seamless customer experience from phone to field,” the company said.
‘Lack of Information’ Hurts Field Service
“In the era of the Internet of Things, service organizations have a tough job — customers expect everything and anything to be connected,” Mike Milburn, general manager and senior vice president of Service Cloud wrote on the Salesforce blog this week. Citing Salesforce data that shows a majority of employees can’t access customer information in the field, Milburn added, “This lack of information is the #1 reason that agents have to make a return visit, leading to high costs, frustrated employees, and worst of all, unhappy customers.”
Milburn said Field Service Lightning is designed to reduce such problems by providing a unified platform for better-connected, mobile and intelligent customer service in the field. This will give service employees access to customer data when they need it, avoiding the need to print out service tickets for reference on the go, he said.
“A staggering 65 percent of field service workers still print out their service tickets and bring them in their vehicles,” Milburn noted. He added that Field Service Lightning not only provides anywhere/any-device access to customer information, but also enables personnel to update service records from the field.
‘360-Degree View’ of Customers
By gaining access to customer records, whether in the office or in the field, service employees are able to have 360-degree views of the customer that help them better address service problems and even offer new services to customers who might need them, Salesforce said. For example, a service technician responding to a report of an Internet outage might — after noticing the customer’s past requests for faster Internet — be able to offer an upgrade during that service visit.
Field Service Lightning also enables more automated and intelligent service scheduling, allowing companies, for instance, to set rules that automatically route more experienced employees to more complicated service calls, Salesforce said. Dispatchers, meanwhile, retain the ability to manually adjust assignments if jobs take longer than expected or field workers are delayed by traffic.
Field workers, too, will be able to view and update orders on the job and any information they add will be automatically and seamlessly updated, Salesforce said. Field Service Lightning is priced starting at $ 135 for existing Salesforce customers that already have at least one Enterprise Edition or Unlimited Edition Service Cloud license.
Image Credit: Salesforce.
