How to drive customer service with a Service Cloud QuickStart in Salesforce

As the age-old adage goes: “the customer is king” (or queen). And, in today’s ultra-competitive and experience-driven world, if your customer service isn’t cutting it, they can quickly take their royal patronage elsewhere. So, organizations everywhere are ensuring they can easily deliver outstanding customer service by empowering service agents with Salesforce^® Service Cloud. For many, a Service Cloud QuickStart is the most budget-friendly and effective route to fast-track their business to Service Cloud’s benefits.

In this article, we’ll explore exactly why that is, with some real-life examples. But before that, a brief overview of what Service Cloud offers in the first place:

Why businesses choose Salesforce Service Cloud

With Salesforce Service Cloud, organizations can expedite case management. It’s much easier to keep case resolution on track when processes are streamlined and automated. Service reps can be more informed and coordinated, so cases are resolved more quickly, efficiently and effectively. Great news for businesses and their customers, as there’s huge potential to both increase customer satisfaction and reps’ productivity. 

That’s not all. Organizations can also automate service processes. Field service operations can be better planned and managed, with agents scheduled, directed and tracked simply and smoothly. This contributes to more effective and expedient resolution of service matters, with more productive and efficient work by the people both inside and outside the office. Also, by applying secure service analytics to all the data used and generated, businesses can get a better sense than ever of efficiency, employee/customer satisfaction and relationships. 

Putting the spotlight on the customer for a moment, there’s another crucial benefit of Salesforce Service Cloud to mention. Omnichannel communication capabilities unify all the communication channels used to interact with customers, so communications with them can take place across all the ones they prefer. That includes social networks such as Twitter, via the native Salesforce tool, and CTI telephony through Vonage and Salesforce Dialer. 

All very compelling reasons to adopt Service Cloud, right? So, now we’ll look at how a Service Cloud QuickStart can enable your organization to get straight to those benefits, without delay. 

How we helped transform service for a client

Let’s use the example of one of our clients, a nonprofit organization which provides legal services. They realized that their work could be more effective if they took greater control of their data and their processes — and a Salesforce Service Cloud QuickStart was perfect to enable that. 

Thanks to their experience with similar projects and organizations, and a brief “discovery” period, our team quickly identified the areas where Service Cloud could deliver the biggest benefits. They streamlined case handling, adding automation which included reminder notifications when a trial date is near, for instance. Now this client’s team can be better prepared for upcoming events, with greater visibility over their schedules helping them to coordinate the team’s work and manage their time. 

The client’s correspondence processes also had potential for improvement. To keep track of interactions, we added functionality that would automatically apply communication statuses to cases — e.g., “waiting for external response”, “response received”, etc. This meant that the client’s team no longer needed to manually investigate correspondence every time they needed to check a case’s progress or status.

We also discovered another communication-related difficulty — ensuring that correspondence, which was often part of lengthy email chains, only contained the information/messages that a particular recipient should be seeing. That could include correspondence from the opposing side’s legal team, for instance. To solve this issue, we introduced a custom email template that ensured such correspondence was not included. Finally, to further enhance the client’s communication, we provided functionality to export case notes, categorized by whether they’re “legal” or “general”, so they could be more easily shared with third parties such as lawyers outside the organization. 

Making big changes in small timescales 

As a result of our work, this client is now equipped with a single source of truth that has radically improved how they operate and the service they provide to their clients. Since then, they have requested our services for a second phase: enabling better membership management and integrating WordPress, the platform for their website. 

The majority of this QuickStart implementation was accomplished in only around two weeks. We achieved this thanks to our team’s wealth of experience from other QuickStart implementations and also their work on larger-scale projects. It’s also due to our templated approach, guided by best practices and industry insights, creating prototypes fast and giving frequent show-and-tell sessions to demonstrate functionality and solution design to the client. 

It’s worth noting that work sped up considerably after the client provided a dedicated contact handling the project on their side — something we recommend to ensure the most efficient delivery and most effective solution. In fact, entire QuickStart implementations can take as little as four weeks, taking place via a process that I’ll explain now.

Our process, developed with you in mind

VRP Consulting has long experience of delivering Service Cloud QuickStart implementations, and Salesforce Service Cloud consulting in general. It’s meant we’ve been able to refine our QuickStart process to ensure it provides clients with as much value as possible, as swiftly and cost-effectively as possible. Here’s what your QuickStart implementation would look like:

• Kickoff: discuss how the project will be run, its scope, stakeholders and project plan
• Discovery: we learn your business processes and can already start showing you the possibilities of Service Cloud by advising best practice solutions for your business needs
• Configuration: we configure your solution to your needs, with show-and-tell sessions during the configuration to align and make sure we’re still 100% on the right track
• Quality Assurance: your solution is thoroughly tested to make sure it’s ready for use
• UAT & Training: after our testing, we hand over the solution to you to check if all configuration is as expected — and, of course, we provide end-user training and an admin course so you can take care of any small, recurring changes 
• Support: Once the solution has gone live, we’re are still available to assist with small adjustments and help your users get used to the platform

During this process, we provide customers with the flexibility to add/remove any of Salesforce and Service Cloud’s out-of-the-box features, according to their needs. We can also add extras such as integration with Microsoft Outlook and any of your other key business tools, as well as providing recommendations of suitable apps available in the Salesforce AppExchange. It’s all about making sure your solution fits your organization perfectly.

What’s more, so that your organization is ready to use your solution self-sufficiently, we provide training for up to 9 users as standard. This includes “training the trainer”, so your team members can pass their knowledge onto new starters and others. We also offer 8 hours of aftercare support, for answering questions that occur to you after go-live or making any final small tweaks. 

You can learn more about our QuickStart packages here. If you would like a brief overview of a VRP Service Cloud QuickStart, which you can take away and share with others, we’ve prepared a handy guide you can download. 

Time for your Salesforce Service Cloud QuickStart?

Already considering undertaking your organization’s own Salesforce Service Cloud Quickstart? As well as those we’ve explored already here, there are many more reasons you should choose VRP as your implementation partner. 

Unlike the global system integrators (GSIs) out there, we provide the necessary attention and flexibility to clients of all sizes — growing startups, small businesses and nonprofits as well as leading international enterprises — swiftly and cost-effectively. However, unlike many of the alternative options (freelancers and boutique consultancies) we also have the scope and depth of expertise, and the available resources, that are necessary to ensure your solution really delivers. 

So, if you’re ready to kickstart your own Service Cloud success, we want to hear from you. Let’s explore the possibilities together — get in touch.

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About the Author

Mateusz Twarozek

Head of QuickStart Practice, VRP Consulting

Mateusz leads VRP Consulting’s QuickStart Practice. He is a certified Salesforce consultant and is dedicated to ensuring we deliver solutions that provide clients with the most value and effectiveness possible.