Salesforce.com Unveils the Next Chapter in the Customer Service Revolution with Service Cloud 2 - Leading Market Momentum and Ne
09 September 2009 - 10:00PM
PR Newswire (US)
8,000 companies have already standardized on the Service Cloud
including Extra Space Storage, NJ TRANSIT and Plantronics Product
innovations include Salesforce Knowledge, the world's first
Knowledge-as-a-Service; Salesforce Answers, crowd-sourced community
knowledge; and the general availability of Salesforce for Twitter
For the first time, companies can amaze their customers with an
integrated customer service experience that leverages their own
agents as well as real-time conversations happening throughout the
cloud SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 9 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ --
Salesforce.com (NYSE: CRM), the enterprise cloud computing company,
today announced the next chapter in the customer service revolution
with Service Cloud 2. The Service Cloud, announced in January of
this year, is the next generation solution for customer service -
it exponentially increases the quality of service, while lowering
the cost, by leveraging the expertise of the community. Since its
introduction, the Service Cloud has led market momentum with 8,000
customers and received a number of industry accolades. The Service
Cloud will also deliver entirely new product innovations for the
customer service industry by introducing the world's first
knowledge base designed for cloud computing - Salesforce Knowledge;
an entirely new way to look at customer communities and discussion
forums - Salesforce Answers; and Salesforce for Twitter, which
allows companies to monitor and join the customer service
conversations taking place on Twitter. The customer service
application market represents a major opportunity for
salesforce.com, which according to IDC will be worth $4.2 billion
by 2012(1). (Logo:
http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20050216/SFW105LOGO) Service
Cloud 2 - Customer Success and Market Momentum for the New Customer
Service Standard -- Eight thousand companies, including Extra Space
Storage, NJ TRANSIT and Plantronics, have standardized on the
Service Cloud for their customer service operations - representing
a 175% growth in business year over year. -- Companies using the
Service Cloud have seen a 28% increase in customer satisfaction,
25% increase in call deflection, 30% increase in first call
resolution, 37% rise in service and support productivity and a 26%
increase in customer retention, according to a recent third party
survey. -- Salesforce.com was placed in the leaders quadrant of
Gartner's Magic Quadrant for CRM Customer Service Support
Contacts(2). -- Since January of 2009, the Service Cloud has won
the 2009 TMCnet CRM Excellence Award, Network Products Guide 2009
Innovation Award, CRM Magazine Service Leader Rising Star Award,
and the IP Contact Center Technology Pioneer Award for Best IP
Contact Center Service. The Service Cloud was also named to
KMWorld's list of Top 100 Companies in knowledge management.
Salesforce Knowledge - The World's First Knowledge-as-a-Service A
year after salesforce.com acquired Instranet, salesforce.com will
offer the world's first Knowledge-as-a-Service, the first ever
multi-tenant knowledge base designed for cloud computing. The core
Service Cloud knowledge base built on Force.com will deliver: --
Rapid Deployment: Companies will be able to deploy their knowledge
base in a matter of days and extend the technology to mobile
devices and public websites. Companies will be able to deploy
Salesforce Knowledge without having to install and manage hardware
or software. -- Immediate Results: Customer service agents will be
able to find the right answer, the first time, ensuring that
companies amaze and delight their customers with a truly integrated
customer service experience. -- Google Accessible: Companies will
be able to utilize the latest Force.com capabilities, including
Force.com Sites, to expose knowledge articles out to the Internet
so that customers can find information on the public Internet and
through search engines such as Google. -- Simple Customizations:
Users will be able to quickly and easily deploy changes and
customizations to the knowledge base to fit a company's dynamic and
evolving needs. -- Automated Upgrades: Product enhancements will be
automatically released three times a year. Customers will no longer
have to worry whether their applications will continue to work with
other hardware and software after an upgrade. -- Secure and
Trusted: Companies will be able to leverage all the benefits of the
proven security, reliability and scalability of salesforce.com's
trusted global infrastructure. Salesforce Answers - Crowd-Sourced
Knowledge For years, customer service centers have been limited to
knowledge articles produced by company employees, and have not
benefited from the explosion of consumer wisdom that exists across
the Web. Today, online communities and social websites hold a
wealth of knowledge and facilitate conversations around uncommon
problems, new product use cases, best practices and much more.
Utilizing the Service Cloud, Salesforce Answers will deliver a
unique online experience that helps companies leverage the
expertise in the cloud to bring the right answer to their
customers. Salesforce Answers will enable companies to: -- Start
the Conversation: Create a complete, customizable website that
facilitates question/answer style conversations between customers.
Encourage the community to ask, rate and answer questions and
issues posted to the site. -- Crowd-Sourced Knowledge: Filter the
appropriate knowledge created on Salesforce Answers directly into
the Service Cloud's knowledge base, ensuring that customers, agents
and partners will all have access to the best knowledge available.
-- Leverage Facebook: Companies will be able to set up a Salesforce
Answers community directly on a Facebook company fan page, allowing
the company to harness knowledge from the 250+ million Facebook
members. -- Create Dynamic Customer Communities: In combination
with Service Cloud features like Salesforce Ideas, companies will
be able to create dynamic, interactive customer communities.
Salesforce for Twitter - Join Real-Time Conversations on Twitter
Twitter provides a free platform for users to answer the question
"What are you doing?" in 140 characters or less and broadcast the
answer to a broader community. These "tweets" can cover any topic
area, including specific companies, brands and products. In today's
Web-driven world where there is an expectation of real-time
interaction, Salesforce for Twitter and the Service Cloud give
companies an easy way to join the real-time customer service
conversations happening on Twitter by enabling them to: -- Search
Twitter in Real-time: Search through the millions of tweets
happening on Twitter every minute to find the most relevant
customer service conversations. -- Monitor Service Issues on
Twitter: After identifying an appropriate tweet, a company can
capture and monitor a service conversation in the Service Cloud and
track the conversation. -- Join Twitter Conversations: Salesforce
for Twitter empowers enterprises to be active participants on
Twitter by enabling them to engage in Twitter conversations, right
from within the Service Cloud. -- Establish a Twitter Support
Channel: Customers can tweet their customer service issues and
instantly create a case within the Service Cloud. Once the case is
created, companies can leverage internal business processes to
route cases to the most effective service representatives. --
Deliver Real-time Knowledge: Salesforce for Twitter facilitates the
delivery of expert knowledge back into the Twitter community by
posting tweets directly from the Service Cloud's knowledge base.
Comments on the News: -- "With Service Cloud 2, salesforce.com is
doing for customer service what we did for sales: proving that the
cloud is a better way. The customer service market is being held
back by traditional technology. With two-thirds of customer service
interactions moving to the cloud and the popularity of social
networks, it is high time for a change. I am excited by the
momentum we are seeing in the customer service market and believe
it is the next billion-dollar opportunity for salesforce.com," said
Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO of salesforce.com. -- "We've seen
more and more businesses use Twitter to make smart, meaningful and
timely connections with their audience. We are excited to work with
salesforce.com as they help businesses join the millions of
conversations happening every minute on the web," said Evan
Williams, CEO of Twitter. -- "The Service Cloud's knowledge base
will give companies access to the best answers for a situation
culled from Twitter's 45 million users and Facebook's 250 million
users. The Service Cloud makes an important advance on social
networking by helping enterprises harness the power of real-time
conversations and crowd-sourced knowledge to benefit their
companies," said Denis Pombriant, Beagle Research. -- "Salesforce
Knowledge and the Service Cloud will definitely help our company
increase agent productivity and customer satisfaction, an
incredible testament to the power of cloud computing," said
Kimberly Jansen, Misys Banking Systems. -- "Comcast-Spectacor is
now a leader in leveraging cloud computing to enhance our
relationships with the Flyers and 76ers season ticket holders
because of salesforce.com. The Service Cloud and Salesforce for
Twitter have enabled us to connect directly with our customers on
Twitter and integrate these real-time conversations with our
customer service strategy," said Mark DiMaurizio,
Comcast-Spectacor. Pricing and Availability -- Salesforce Knowledge
will be priced at $50 per agent, per month for salesforce.com
customers and is currently scheduled to be available in the fourth
quarter of fiscal year 2010. -- Salesforce Answers is currently in
pilot and is currently scheduled to be available in the first
quarter of fiscal year 2011. -- Salesforce for Twitter is available
today at no additional charge on the Force.com AppExchange for
Professional, Enterprise and Unlimited Edition customers.
Supporting Resources -- For more information, please visit
http://www.salesforce.com/servicecloud2 -- Follow salesforce.com on
Twitter @salesforcenews About the Magic Quadrant The Gartner Magic
Quadrant is copyrighted 2009 by Gartner, Inc., and is reused with
permission. The Magic Quadrant is a graphical representation of a
marketplace at and for a specific time period. It depicts Gartner's
analysis of how certain vendors measure against criteria for that
marketplace, as defined by Gartner. Gartner does not endorse any
vendor, product or service depicted in the Magic Quadrant, and does
not advise technology users to select only those vendors placed in
the "Leaders" quadrant. The Magic Quadrant is intended solely as a
research tool, and is not meant to be a specific guide to action.
Gartner disclaims all warranties, express or implied, with respect
to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or
fitness for a particular purpose. About salesforce.com
Salesforce.com is the enterprise cloud computing company. The
company's portfolio of Salesforce CRM applications, available at
http://www.salesforce.com/products/, has revolutionized the ways
that companies collaborate and communicate with their customers
across sales, marketing and service. The company's Force.com
platform (http://www.salesforce.com/platform/) enables customers,
partners and developers to quickly build powerful business
applications to run every part of the enterprise in the cloud.
Based on salesforce.com's real-time, multi-tenant architecture,
Salesforce CRM and Force.com offer the fastest path to customer
success with cloud computing. As of July 31, 2009, salesforce.com
manages customer information for approximately 63,200 customers
including Allianz Commercial, Dell, Dow Jones Newswires, Japan
Post, Kaiser Permanente, KONE, and SunTrust Banks. Any unreleased
services or features referenced in this or other press releases or
public statements are not currently available and may not be
delivered on time or at all. Customers who purchase salesforce.com
applications should make their purchase decisions based upon
features that are currently available. Salesforce.com has
headquarters in San Francisco, with offices in Europe and Asia, and
trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol
"CRM". For more information please visit
http://www.salesforce.com/, or call 1-800-NO-SOFTWARE. Copyright
(c) 2009 salesforce.com, inc. All rights reserved. Salesforce and
the "no software" logo are registered trademarks of salesforce.com,
inc., and salesforce.com owns other registered and unregistered
trademarks. Other names used herein may be trademarks of their
respective owners. (1) from: "Worldwide CRM Apps Forecast
2008-2012." Dec. 2008. (2) Magic Quadrant for CRM Customer Service
Contact Centers, by Michael Maoz, April 2009
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Katy Dormer of salesforce.com, +1-415-901-8595, Web Site:
http://www.salesforce.com/
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