SalesForce

The latest Summer '23 features have been released by Salesforce.  If you are looking to upgrade your Salesforce instance, the right Salesforce Implementation Partner can help you with the implementation of these new features and training of your Salesforce admins to make your operations more efficient and productive.  Here’s a look at the top 10 features from the Latest Salesforce Summer ’23 Release 1. Integrated Analytics Services The summer ’23 release comes with a consolidated interface for Analytics and Slack. Which means you can now enjoy a seamless engagement with all your CRM Analytics, Lightning reports and dashboards, and Einstein Discovery models and forecasts. The Analytics tab now comes with powerful search capabilities and recommendations, giving you access to organized statistics that you can turn to for all your Lightning dashboards and CRM Analytics. Using the Post to Slack feature on Lightning dashboards, you can share information such as dashboards and CRM data with colleagues throughout Slack workspaces easily. 2. Unified Analytics With the new release of Analytics Home, you no longer need to deal with analytics spread over different products. This new feature unifies all your CRM analytics data in a single place, allowing you easy access to information. Now you can get access to a consolidated view of all your CRM reports and dashboards in a structured and organised way, so you can easily access all the information you need to take quick decisions. 3. Customer Data Platform reimagined as Data Cloud In the new release, Salesforce has transformed the erstwhile Customer Data Platform into Salesforce Data Cloud with all the necessary documentation and additional features. 4. Barring Unverified Emails Sent by Guest Users This feature update disallows companies from sending emails from unverified email addresses of guest users. However, Salesforce customers that have a validated company-wide email address will not be impacted by this update. In such cases, the sender’s email address always updates to the authenticated email address. With the Latest Summer ’23 release, this enforced change effectively disallows shadowy emails from being sent by a guest user using an unverified email address. 5. Upgrade to Hyperforce Using Hyperforce Assistant The latest Summer ’23 release comes with Hyperforce Assistant which streamlines the upgrade to Hyperforce. The new Hyperforce Assistant comes with the latest Hyperforce messaging authorization feature that has better in-built reference checks to support Salesforce organizations that have a large number of Apex classes. Hyperforce Assistant is available in all editions of Salesforce Lightning as well as Classic. Once admins schedule the upgrade, they will be asked to initiate the assistant. Admins can activate the assistant manually in case you are scheduled for a major migration. During Setup, you can enter “Hyperforce Assistant” in the Quick Find Box and select the appropriate option. 6. Accelerated Quote Template Creation With OmniStudio Document Generation Quote generation is now much simpler with this latest add on. With Salesforce CPQ Plus, your reps can easily create templates to generate quotes for your customers. You can generate a Microsoft Word file in the format and language of your preference, insert tokens and upload the document. Then associate the inserted tokens with relevant Salesforce fields. Your sales reps can then start utilizing the template once it is active. They can also easily convert their documents to PDFs. This Salesforce CPQ plus update is available in both Salesforce Classic and Lightning Experience. 7. Real-Time Collaboration with Partner Relationship Management for Slack App This feature improves communication and collaboration across internal teams and external partners by bringing them together in a single channel using Slack. With Slack you can automate key business processes, and update and share records easily across collaborators. Partner Relationship Management for Slack connects your Salesforce CRM with partners seamlessly, with easy access to important information through partner portals, thereby boosting productivity, and fostering better communication. This upgrade impacts the Enterprise and Unlimited editions of Salesforce. The mandatory requirement to access this feature upgrade is to be a Slack Enterprise Grid user. 8. Codeless flow of External Data into Flow Builder This new feature allows admins to use Flow Builder to automate processes that involve external data without the need for coding by developing an HTTP callout action through a web service API. Once you enter the API details, Flow Builder automatically generates a reusable callout action which admins can immediately deploy in Flow Builder and across Salesforce. This commonly used feature has witnessed several enhancements since the last update. Now it is easier to configure and edit the API responses to HTTP callouts. This allows the use of external data inflows to be simpler and more declarative. This upgrade is available across all editions of the Lightning Experience – Enterprise, Performance, Unlimited and Developer. The reason why this feature has been introduced is that APIs often go through modifications, such as the addition of a new field or updation in an existing field in an external system. Admins with the relevant permissions in Manage Flow and Customize Applications can create an HTTP callout action. Previously, admins had to modify the auto-generated API definition in JSON to modify the HTTP callout action. With the latest update, this action can be modified with just a few clicks. Instead of editing and configuring JSON to parse the API response, admins can easily select data types for fields. With this new feature, admins will also receive more lucid error messages, simplifying the troubleshooting process and prevent runtime issues. 9. Quick Create Sandbox to Enhance Productivity Quick Create Full Sandbox is another new upcoming feature of the Salesforce’s Summer 23 Release. This feature accelerates sandbox creation and refreshing. This update means no additional actions will be required from Salesforce admins as it is the default setting. This feature will be available on eligible Hyperforce instances. Salesforce will initiate a staggered release after June 10, 2023, and users with the Manage Sandbox permission can use this feature. 10. Process Builder is on its way out. Rules have changed. Process Builder does not have the capability of adding new processes anymore. However, you can still activate/deactivate existing processes or edit them. Having said that, it is recommended that for most use cases, you migrate to Flow Builder.  The upgraded flow builder can take automation of business processes to a whole new level. Summing Up With the Summer ’23 release, Salesforce endeavours to make your daily tasks simpler, more efficient, and productive. The Summer ’23 release is designed to empower organizations to improve their engagement with customers, automate businesses processes, and drive growth. At Girikon, a Gold Salesforce Consulting Partner, we recognize that staying up-to-date with these new changes in the Salesforce platform and leveraging the new capabilities are key to maximizing your Salesforce RoI.  Contact one of our experts today to know more about how you can make the most of these exciting new features of the Summer ’23 Release.

When Salesforce acquired Vlocity in 2020, it acquired the capability to sync its core platform with industry-specific solutions & processes. This tailoring of its cloud offering addresses industry specific business needs as well as legal and regulatory needs of companies. Salesforce Industries also offers enhanced data models to serve various industries such as Financial Services, Government, Health, Government, Manufacturing, FMCG, Energy & Utilities, Communications and Media & Entertainment. More often than not, architects find themselves working on a project with industry-specific requirements. And they need out-of-the-box capabilities from the Salesforce Platform. What is Salesforce OmniStudio? Salesforce OmniStudio is powerful suite of 4 core task-based components. They are: OmniScript DataRaptor Integration Procedure FlexCards These components empower architects to consolidate applications, quickly bring up new users to productivity, and lower overall costs-to-serve. Salesforce OmniStudio is available as a complete native managed package that can add additional functionality to your existing Salesforce instance. Data model Salesforce Industries comes with industry-specific data models, as a layer on top of the Salesforce object model. The data model is completely additive. It is designed to enhance standard objects and fields or allow addition of new custom objects and fields. In other words, there is no duplication of any existing entity. OmniScript Architects across the world prefer tailored solutions to simplify maintenance and operations of systems. If you wish to deliver engaging digital experiences which can seamlessly integrate into your website, then OmniScript will help you get the best out of your engagements. With OmniScript you can easily deal with industry-specific cases. OmniScript enhances interactions by offering tools that are user-friendly can be tailored to deliver additional value to end-users. Also, it offers a code-less environment since it comes with ready-made aspects which can be deployed easily across channels and devices. Functionalities of OmniScript: It allows you to easily compose interactive processes for every use case, and allows you to branch easily. OmniStudio comes with a drag-and-drop OmniScript editor feature. Architects can use this feature to proof-read their work. There are also in-built troubleshooting tools to fix the processes. Device and channel agnostic. Users can access it from anywhere – whether mobile or web. If you are using a mobile app, you can use the OmniOut function to install Lightning Web Components (LWC) OmniScripts for these systems. It allows for easy prototyping of user experiences enabling reuse without any challenges by distinguishing between the JSON metadata structure, the data, and the templates. Allows easy generation of LWCs which can then be used in the Lightning App Builder. DataRaptor DataRaptor is a user friendly mapping tool. It allows architects to efficiently extract, store, and access data. DataRaptor allows easy configuration for negotiating any data. With DataRaptor, architects can easily extract, load and transform data conveniently. There are main 3 components in DataRaptor are: DataRaptor Extract – It allows you to retrieve data from Salesforce. With DataRaptor Turbo Extract, you can restore data from a single Salesforce source DataRaptor Load – It allows you to save data DataRaptor Transform – As the name suggests, it allows you to transform data DataRaptor acts a connecting bridge between Salesforces and OmniScript/ FlexCard. It loads data from Salesforce and sends it to these sources and sends updated data from these back into Salesforce. It can auto-generate Apex REST web services to work seamlessly with external applications. Integration Procedure Integration Procedure is a declarative process that allows you to generate multiple actions with a single hit. It reads data from Salesforce and writes data back to it. With integration procedure, you can also do the same with external systems through REST calls. Integration procedure also allows you to execute Apex code without any user interaction. These are the features of Integration Procedure: Executes functions across multiple data sources such as Salesforce, external systems. Can serve as a data source for OmniScript, FlexCard, REST or Apex. Trims data that is served to the browser from the server reducing data transfer traffic. Process huge amounts of data easily. Allows you to easily load and transform data from third-party sources without any user interaction. Works with clicks not code, which allows for easy integration and configuration. Automatically creates REST endpoints to work seamlessly with external systems. Works seamlessly with Declarative Platform Cache configuration that improves performance and reduces server processing at scale. FlexCards FlexCards is an integral part of Salesforce Industries. FlexCards allows you to create industry-specific UI components catering to specific customer needs. FlexCards uses the LWC framework and allows for easy deployment options via Community Builder and App Builder. FlexCards acts as a data source for DataRaptor, Integration Procedure, REST, Apex etc. When using FlexCards,  only data that is relevant to the user is thrown up based on the configuration. The features of FlexCards are: Displays consolidated, concise, and relevant information. Allows for contextual actions to improve collaboration across business operations Can be tailored to customer preferences across channels and devices Can access and assess data from Salesforce and external applications Has an intuitive code-less declarative editor Auto-creates Lightning Web Components Advantages of Omnistudio. Accelerate innovation with declarative tools that empower you to go digital quickly. Easily deploy industry-specific processes fast to automate interactions Simplify integrations with drag-and-drop functionality with a modular, granular-service oriented approach Build tailored flexible, scalable and branded user interfaces with an intuitive code-less configuration Automate the customer service experience easily with just a few clicks Make your business agile with scalable digital engagements. Create code-less, guided user experiences Allow your users to accomplish complex tasks effortlessly with a flexible, scalable, branded user interface. Easily help them navigate through sales and service processes with quick and personalized responses. Seamlessly integrate with your Salesforce CRM and external  systems. Integrate with external data easily. Use declarative data mapping and REST interfaces to manage complex data structures fast with a drag-and-drop intuitive interface. Connect with external systems to seamlessly bring in data into the tailored, branded experiences created using OmniScript and FlexCards Empower agents with contextual information Streamline and optimize your processes by showing only the data you need, when you need it. Construct guided user interfaces with clicks, not code. Quickly get data into FlexCards from multiple sources. OmniStudio gives you the tools to accelerate value realization. Interaction Console Get easy access to dashboard components that give you a 360 degree view of the entire customer journey and offer insights to help resolve issues faster. IDX Workbench Easily migrate changes and manage cross organizational dependencies and simplify DevOps. Visualize and compare changes across versions in a desktop app. Easily switch components across source control, sandboxes, and production. Omni Analytics Visualize data to understand process performance and identify trends.  Take actions to improve core metrics and KPIs. Project Explorer Structure industry processes by organizing metadata into collections that can be accessed from anywhere in the org. Search and navigate easily across items. At Girikon, a Salesforce Implementation Partner, we recognize the promise that Salesforce Industries and OmniStudio bring for architects. And with Salesforce’s commitment to continued enhancement, it promises enduring productivity and innovation for architects.  Contact us today to learn more.

Generative Artificial Intelligence (Generative AI) is the latest next generation technology. Generative AI tools have made it very easy for employees and professionals to compose and refine emails, fine tune presentations and reports, write code, put together social media campaigns, and fast track customer service interactions. But not everyone is able to maximize its full potential. More often than not it comes down to the prompt, the statements or questions you feed into a Generative AI tool. The better your prompts, the better will be the Generative AI response. The key takeaway If you want to get the most out of Generative AI and the generative pre-trained transformer (GPT) models that generate conversational language, you might want to get your hands dirty in prompt engineering. This gives the Generative AI model clearer details for what you want instead of being ambiguous. Generative AI is getting smarter as you read this, but it cannot read your mind. It can only give you responses based on its understanding of the prompt you give it. So be specific. GPT works better when the prompt is longer. The prompt, which is the question you are asking the tool, needs to be precise and contextual for it to generate the right response. And that’s the key to unlocking the full potential of Generative AI. What you need to know When writing a prompt, approach the tool like you’re having a normal day to day conversation with a colleague. Use clear language and descriptions.  The devil is in the detail. The Generative AI tools will work better for you if your prompts are precise and detailed. You can have an interactive conversation with your Generative AI tool and dive deeper into what you’re looking for. These following tips would be helpful when writing prompts for Generative AI: Write clearly and concisely so your Generative AI tool understands your specific request. Write linguistically correct, complete sentences with descriptive words, that clearly describes what you’re looking for. For precise responses, ask specific questions, and avoid questions that offer a yes/no response. Add context to your prompt. Explain what is it that you wish to achieve and define your target audience. Engage in a back-and-forth conversation. Follow up the initial response with further questions to go deeper and get even more specific and relevant responses.  What is prompt engineering? Prompt engineering is the art of asking clear, descriptive questions or providing detailed information to Generative AI tools, such as a GPT tool or chatbot, to fetch the best results. With the meteoric rise in adoption of Generative AI tools for personal as well as business use, effective prompt engineering skills can help you improve the efficacy of these generative AI tools. The more specific and descriptive your prompt, the better the AI generated results. And you can get creative like you would ask an expert of the subject of your enquiry. For instance, you can even ask the Generative AI tool to reply as someone well known, like Isaac Newton, to get a response from that individual’s point of view. Generative AI uncovers information from piles of data available on the internet. However, narrowing down your query by providing specific questions or instructions in your prompt and adding context will deliver better results. So get creative. Whether you are an expert prompt engineer or a novice in generative AI, it would be prudent to follow these 6 tips mentioned below to get the most from this disruptive technology. Be specific: For example, instead of writing, “Create a social media campaign,” which is a very generic instruction, you can write, “Create a social media campaign for an ecommerce website that sells sports apparel for tennis fans of Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal.” Engage conversationally: Generative AI may not understand localized dialect or colloquial language. Imagine you are speaking to a co-worker, not a computer. Use open-ended questions: Avoid question with binary responses like a yes/no response.  These prompts limit the Generative AI’s ability to surface detailed, contextual information. Set a persona: Get creative. Ask the Generative AI tool to give answers from the point of view of a public figure (past or present) like Isaac Newton or Christine Amanpour depending on the subject you want to ask about. In fact, you can even define a specific role for specific answers like an operations manager or lawyer.   Define your audience and channel: Specify in your prompt whether you are writing for millennials or GenX. Specify where the audience is going to read it – such as on a social media platform, a blog post, or on website. Ask follow-up questions: The beauty of Generative AI is that you can engage in a back-and-forth conversation with it while maintaining context. It’s akin to speaking with a human. Except that it’s not. If you are not happy with the initial response, you can ask follow-up questions to get more specific responses. This technique is sometimes referred to as “prompt chaining,” where you split your prompts sequentially to get more specific and tailored answers and use answers from one prompt to draw out the next. Use prompt engineering effectively for Generative AI products to work with you and not against you Generative AI tools are new and evolving as you read this. They are not perfect and they’re definitely not human. They are designed to make you feel like you’re having a conversation with a human on the other side, but in reality, it’s a back-and-forth with a computer that has access to heaps of data. Keep these points in mind during your Generative AI prompt writing and subsequent usage of the responses: Generative AI is not always factual. Sometimes it makes up answers, so ensure that you verify what you get. Avoid any copyright infringements. Ensure that what your Generative AI tool gives you isn’t plagiarized from somewhere. Generative AI tools do not understand nuance, local dialects and subtlety. They are not from your neighbourhood. Ensure that your prompts are as specific and clear as possible. Generative AI is not always completely accurate. It’s a fundamental reality of this technology and as a user you need to ensure that you verify any factual data or information before publishing it. Generative AI is already creating a revolution in CRM applications. Girikon is a Certified Salesforce Implementation Partner with a global delivery model. To know more about how Generative AI can work for you, connect with an expert today.

Global Digital Skills Index from Salesforce research conducted in 2022 indicates a growing digital skills crisis. The in-depth research about digital skills is based on a survey with 23,000+ respondents (existing and prospective workers) across 19 countries. It includes areas such as their impact on the future of work, their job readiness concerns, and the importance of continuous up-skilling.

COVID has changed the way we live. Today, we spend most of our time online, looking for products and services. For marketing professionals, this translates into a great opportunity to stay connected with their audience in today’s pandemic context. But there is a catch. Customers are overwhelmed with digital information, and they are interacting with brands across multiple channels with so many options available. Which means not every interaction is attracting engagement. Today, engaging with customers is a whole new ball game. It requires faster and precise decision making about what needs to be communicated, how it needs to be communicated, when and where. The need of the hour is to deliver relevant messaging that conveys a deep understanding of the customer context. AI-driven solutions, with their ability to make intelligent recommendations, can help marketing teams make the right decisions, in quick time. They can also help marketing teams to launch contextual campaigns with personalised communication with their audience, achieving better engagement levels and enhanced customer experiences. So what exactly is AI Marketing? AI marketing is based on technology that uses machine learning algorithms to make automated decisions based on data aggregation and its analysis, along with analysing market trends and data that may impact marketing initiatives. Typically, AI technology is used in digital marketing activities where speed is critical. AI-powered marketing solutions use data to understand the best fit ways to communicate with your audience, and deliver personalised messaging at the right time, on the right channel without intervention from marketers, thereby ensuring a high level of efficiency. Digital marketers across the world today use AI to augment the efficacy of their efforts or to perform more complex tasks that would otherwise consume huge amount of time or resources. Here’s a look at how AI-powered solutions are transforming the marketing game: 1.  Smarter segmentation for enhanced audience discovery Understanding the customer is the foundation of today’s digital marketing strategy. AI-powered solutions can intelligently segment your audience. By scouring hundreds of data points across multiple marketing campaigns, AI-powered solutions can help marketers discover new sub-segments. Let’s look at an example. An outdoor hiking gear brand has an audience segment of “trekkers”. AI reveals to marketers that there are two categories in this segment – leisure trekkers and tech-savvy trekkers. With these insights, they customize their product recommendations based on the segment they are targeting. For example, leisure trekkers are shown apparel and accessories, and tech-savvy trekkers are shown the latest navigation devices or solar chargers. Identifying the right segment helps marketing teams deliver hyper-personalised marketing messages. Marketing solutions powered by AI technology can reveal unique customer traits within a segment. This can then be used by marketers to customize the marketing content and drive more engaging interactions. 2.  Accurate predictions to improve lead conversion Before the digital revolution, marketers relied on their experience and “gut-feel” to arrive at marketing decisions. AI-powered marketing solutions eliminate the guesswork by surfacing accurate, data-driven predictions and recommendations. These predictions allow marketing teams to personalise every customer journey and improving lead conversion through the marketing funnel. Let’s look at Einstein Engagement Scoring. This AI-powered feature of Marketing Cloud applies machine learning algorithms on customer data to arrive at a score for a company's email subscribers. The score tell you how likely each subscriber is to engage with your email campaigns, and eventually, to convert. The feature can also tell you the likelihood of each subscriber opening an email, click the links within the email body, or to un-subscribe. Marketers can use these AI powered predictions to build more tailored customer journeys. For instance, customers with a low likelihood of opening emails can be targeted through social media and mobile messaging. 3.  Personalised messaging across channels to drive engagement AI algorithms can use data such as browsing history, age, and recent interaction history with a brand to serve up a campaign landing page that is most likely to resonate with the subscriber. The same applies in advertising. The algorithm can use that data and serve up the right content for an ad in real time based on the user’s profile. This allows marketing teams run tailored ad campaigns that are relevant and better targeted at users, thus boosting ROI. With the evolution of technology, today’s AI-powered marketing solutions can be further targeted to help marketing teams deliver just the right amount of content. For example, Marketing Cloud Einstein has a feature called Engagement Frequency. It tells you the just the right number of emails to send out to customers and prospects for brand recall without being perceived as spam. Likewise, it also tells you which subscribers are being left out or being contacted too often. Based on this intelligence, marketing teams can customize their messaging strategy for improved customer engagement. In fact, AI-powered solutions can also tell you if a social media strategy would be a better bet than an email marketing campaign. Customers value the experience as much as the product and service, and brands will need to deliver personalised messaging across channels to stay ahead of the curve. AI can take your marketing team's understanding of your customers to the next level. Conclusion Marketing teams across industries are rapidly adopting intelligent technology solutions to improve overall operational efficiency and the customer experience and drive growth. This need for customer intelligence has ushered in a new era of Artificial Intelligence (AI) marketing solutions. With these AI-powered marketing solutions, marketing teams can get a deeper and nuanced understanding of their audience. The AI-powered insights can help marketing teams to drive conversions at scale. Regardless of the size of your marketing team, AI-powered marketing technology can help improve productivity, boost ROI, improve organizational efficiency, all while processing heaps of data your team may not have the bandwidth to deal with. If you are new to AI, even your first small step into AI-marketing like using a machine learning program to draft an email subject line and a greeting for your upcoming marketing campaign, can keep your brand ahead of the curve. It’s a small but significant step towards an AI-powered future. As a Gold Salesforce Consulting Partner, Girikon is in a great position to help you leverage the powerful technology of the World’s No1 CRM platform. To know more about how your marketing teams can use Einstein for Marketing Cloud to deliver personalised, contextual marketing campaigns, contact us today.

Imagine a scenario where a customer calls customer support only to navigate through multiple options and then being put on hold for several minutes before getting through to an agent. Only to be put on hold again as they look for answers to your problem. We’ve all had to deal with this at some point. And this is only half the story. Imagine being asked the same question over a hundred times a day by different customers. And not knowing answers to most of those questions. That’s what customer service teams have to deal with on a daily basis. In a world of fickle customer loyalty, how do businesses deliver excellent customer service? Disruptive technology like Artificial Intelligence (AI) may have the answer. Let us look at 10 ways in which AI can enhance the customer experience. 1. Chatbots Customer service reps today have to deal with a large number of calls on any given day. And on top of that there’s performance pressure to reduce the average resolution time. Enter Chatbots. Not only can chatbots provide quick answers in real-time, they can also reduce the case load on human agents by resolving common customer queries quickly. 2. Cost reduction Chatbots can help businesses trim customer service costs significantly by accelerating response times, freeing up agents to work on more complex cases, and resolving a very high % of routine customer queries automatically. A great example of this is call automation, which combines machine learning and voice recognition to augment existing IVR systems while delivering a significant cost reduction as compared to human agent assisted set ups. 3. Round-the-clock support Customers want service delivered at the time and on the channel of their choice. Businesses must be available at all times to customers to support them. Automated customer service makes that possible. It allows enterprises to deliver 24/7 customer service and resolve cases as soon as they come to light. This means customers don’t have to wait for long periods for a response. Prompt case resolution improves customer satisfaction and builds trust, loyalty and brand reputation. 4. Improved human interactions with customers AI can play a key role in supporting human interactions with customers. Two of the most common ways in which AI is supporting customer service is through AI-driven messaging and email tagging. AI-driven messaging allows service reps to handle a big chunk of cases with chatbot assistants. With AI-driven email tagging, service reps don’t have to read every customer email. AI-powered tools can scan and tag emails, and direct them to the right inbox. This frees up time for service reps so they can work on more complex tasks that necessitate human intervention. 5. Personalized experiences According to Salesforce, 72% of customers want to be able to solve service issues by themselves. AI technology can play a significant role in enabling customers to find what they are looking for more efficiently. AI analyzes customer data and key metrics, and makes intelligent recommendations on products or services to customers.  AI is always working in the background, analyzing every incoming piece of data, and suggests best fit content to customers. AI enables service reps to have a better understanding of customers, so they can send relevant content to them at the right time on their preferred channel. As a result, customers are able to find what they are looking for without having to call customer service. 6. Gathering data AI-powered technology simplifies data aggregation and serves a unified customer snapshot. Earlier, AI relied on existing customer data that was fed manually. Today however, things are far more advanced. Today’s AI-powered solutions proactively request data automatically. They can easily analyze patterns in behaviour, understand customer sentiment and quickly respond to their needs. 7. Predictive insights It is critical for businesses to deliver engaging and personalised experiences to customers.  AI powered personalization makes it easy for businesses to serve up tailored products or services to customers. Many businesses around the world that have integrated AI technology into their systems to deliver relevant information to customer, have seen significant improvement in their customer satisfaction scores. This improves brand reputation and builds loyalty. 8. Deeper insights from customer data In the early days, data mining was tedious and time-consuming. Today with AI-powered tools and solutions, huge amounts of data can be captured and analysed faster than ever, to get deeper customer insight, opening up new market segments and opportunities for brands. With AI, businesses can capture every customer action, uncover their interests, and apply these insights to drive targeted campaigns. AI can help businesses get faster results, get deeper insight, and eliminate human error and bias. And freed up human resources can be utilized for more complex tasks. 9. Assisting customers to drive decision making In today’s COVID 19 context, customers spend a lot more time online. They engage with brands across devices, and personalization across every touchpoint becomes all the more critical to assist customers in making the right decision. AI-powered assistants respond to customer queries in real time, and with a deeper insight on customers, are able to serve up intelligent recommendations to accelerate decision making. This frees up agent time and they can focus on more pressing tasks. In case of service requests when the conversation between a chatbot and a customer becomes complex, the interactions is automatically handed over to a human agent with a snapshot of the entire interaction history. AI powered solutions can sense behaviour patterns based on which they can make smart predictions. 10. Simplified task management One huge advantage of customer service chatbots is that you need only one chatbot to handle literally thousands of concurrent customers. Imagine the amount of agent time that can be freed up to resolve routine issues like serving up expected delivery date of a product they ordered or when is their insurance renewal due. This has transformed the relationship between brands and customers. How many times have you hung up on the customer support line because you lost your patience wating for an answer? And how many times have your support calls been left unresolved? You are not alone. Brands around the world are proactively investigating the use of AI into their business to interact directly with customers. While human agents can get overwhelmed performing tasks when they have to deal with mountains of data, AI can deliver answers without breaking a sweat. AI can easily sift through piles of data, analyzing, searching and serving up relevant information to customers in real time. AI can analyze unstructured data at lightning speed, something a human cannot do. AI analyses data and identifies patterns, which can be easily overlooked by a human. AI has in-built Natural Language Processing (NLP) capability. It can read a support ticket and instantly direct it to the right team. Customers are growing increasingly digital today.  It is becoming imperative for businesses to integrate AI into their existing systems to acquire new customers and retain them, at scale. AI has the potential to take the customer experience to whole new level. By making the customer journey more engaging, it can help you stay a step ahead of your competition. And it also eases the lives of service reps. In many ways they are the flag bearers of your brand. Automated responses, personalization, case routing, data analysis and intelligent recommendations, predictive insights, case prioritization are some of the things AI can do without breaking a sweat.   As a Gold Salesforce Consulting Partner, Girikon has been helping organizations around the world leverage the world’s most powerful CRM platform to drive productivity and growth. We recognise that improved efficiency and quality of your customer support will lead to happier customers. To know more about how AI can help your customer service teams improve your CSAT scores, contact us today.

CRM is reshaping customer service today and Salesforce Consultants are helping customers around the world remodel their customer service operations with the world’s leading Customer 360 platform. With rising customer demands and fickle brand loyalty, it is time to stop escalating customer issues and resolve them using a collaborative approach. With the help of the right Salesforce Partner, you can build an intelligent service swarming model to make your service teams become more efficient by bringing expertise to customers faster. Imagine a situation when a key customer reaches out to you with a complex issue. it’s the moment of truth. Does your agent escalate the problem or collaborate on it? If the process you follow is always to escalate then visualize this: a team of experts comes together quickly to help your service agent to resolve the problem. This is service swarming. Service swarming eliminates guesswork from customer service.  It allows service agents to share resources and expertise to resolve complicated customer problems faster. Let’s dive deeper into what service swarming is and how it can benefit your agents and therefore your customers. What is service swarming? Service swarming, often referred to as Intelligent Swarming, is a collaborative approach to customer service. A team of experts from across your organization collaborate with your service agents to resolve complex cases or larger incidents faster. These experts can be from any department such as sales, commerce, operations, legal, finance, or any other department, depending on the issue. This enables teams to leverage their expertise and collaborate on complex issues as and when they come to light. These experts share their knowledge and resources with service agents during the service swarming process. Once they arrive at a solution, the team documents the process and creates a knowledge article so other agents can reference it in the future when similar issues emerge. In today’s digitally connected world, businesses must be prepared to respond in real quick time to large incidents such as security attacks and service outages. The moment an incident like this occurs, the clock starts ticking. There is a barrage of customer calls. Service agents scramble to juggle between diagnosing the problem and dealing with the overwhelming number of calls. An SLA breach looms large which would lead to a PR nightmare. It’s critical for customer-facing teams to be able to quickly and seamlessly collaborate across departments to identify and resolve the problem. Swarming is particularly useful when there is a larger and complex issue facing a single customer like a security breach.  Swarming can also be scaled to address major incidents that affect multiple customers, like a Denial of Service (DoS). In either case, a collaborative approach that brings together multiple teams, departments, and in certain cases even external partners, is vital to finding a resolution. For instance, if a customer contacts a brand about goods showing up as delivered but not received, the agent can bring in the logistics partner to help.  The benefits of service swarming in customer support In a traditional customer service model, agents resolve most cases on their own. They search the knowledge base and seek the help of colleagues for issue resolution. But as more time passes, the customer starts to lose patience. The agent escalates the case to an agent at the next hierarchal level or connects with a supervisor, or in some cases transfers the case to an entirely department, which frustrates the customer even more. A swarming service model turns this entire process on its head. Agents collaborate with a team of experts and are able to arrive at a resolution faster. Not only that, in the process they also become more knowledgeable and efficient, which leads to cost savings for your business. Service Swarming leads to: Personalized customer engagement: According to Salesforce, 82% of customers expect resolution to their problem by interacting with just one person. Service swarming significantly reduces the complexity of larger problems because now the agent is their single point of contact for the customer throughout the case. This fosters a one-to-one relationship that builds trust and loyalty. Accelerated skills development: In any organization, knowledge spreads across many layers and sources. When a complex case is passed off by agent because of lack of knowledge, they lose out on an opportunity to gain valuable experience. However, when they collaborate with experts in a swarm, they learn something with every case resolution. The learning that comes over time with a swarm approach would otherwise take years to build. Scaled automation: According to Salesforce, 63% of agents say it’s extremely challenging to balance promptness and high-quality service. But isn’t that exactly what customers expect from you? With automation, agents can save time and lower operational costs by eliminating repetitive tasks, thereby boosting team efficiency at scale. Service teams more time to focus key activities like building strong, trusted customer relationships. Teams working together: Service Cloud has a unique feature called Expert Finder. The name says it all. Customer service agents no longer have to work in isolation. Service agents can quickly identify and access a support network of experts and resolve the issue. In fact, agents can be incentivized based on their participation and performance. When a case is resolved, supervisors can recognize those involved and award points which encourages greater participation. Evolved success metrics: Performance metrics such as average resolution time and first-contact resolutions are always valuable. In service swarming scenarios however, those metrics don’t always apply. Other key metrics such as lower customer wait times, escalation rates, and case handover take priority. Using these indicators, customer service managers can track agent productivity, expert utilization, customer satisfaction, and retention. Swarming is a new approach to customer service and gives you a fresh perspective of your service teams. There is a paradigm shift in the way your agents and experts work together to resolve customer issues. Now both have a customer centric approach. Collaboration becomes central to customer service; no one is working in isolation. A swarming support model requires a unified platform At Salesforce, the customer is at the centre of everything they do. With a unified platform, you can bring together automation and AI to drive productivity and efficiency. With automation and AI, building on a collaborative approach to problem solving, teams can do more with less, allowing you to focus on the most important thing – making customer delight the goal of every experience. A delightful experience leads to greater trust and lasting value. If you want to implement service swarming in your business to scale your service operations and make it more efficient, you need to invest in the right technology.  Empower your service reps a unified platform that is built for team success, allows for a high degree of automation, delivers insights with AI and helps you to deliver personalized customer experiences every time. With a unified platform, your teams can work together from anywhere and deliver the value that your brand stands for. Salesforce Service Cloud is the world’s leading customer service platform and can help your teams resolve issues and incidents seamlessly. With Slack, you can bring in cross functional swarm experts and easily navigate seamlessly across text, voice and video to deliver case resolution in quick time, thereby building on customer trust and loyalty. And while all this is happening, your service teams are being empowered with fresh knowledge that makes them future ready. Girikon is a Certified Salesforce Development Partner delivering value to customers across the globe. To know more about how we can help you deliver best in class SLAs in customer service with service swarming, contact us today.