In a forceful move to compete in the contact center market, Salesforce recently launched the Salesforce Contact Center, its own version of a contact center solution and a full-fledged contact center as a service (CCaaS) platform that the San Francisco-based behemoth says will provide companies with more personalized CX and substantial cost savings.

Bringing together a comprehensive set of tools, the new solution aims to provide companies the functionality normally available from contact centers. And by offering automated and intelligent customer service in real time through the solution’s automated bots, digital channels, and self-service hubs, the solution allows companies to leverage real-time data to obtain a more complete and unified view of each customer, resolve customer issues more quickly, and improve customer satisfaction, Salesforce officials say.   

Overall, Salesforce Contact Center can furnish savings on average of up to 27% in service and support costs, the company claims. With organizations being asked to do more amid shrinking budgets and worldwide economic uncertainty, the need has never been greater for a solution that enables service agents to offer customers a seamless CX, Salesforce executives declare. 

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Launch Features

The launch represents a move by the largest provider in the customer relationship management (CRM) arena to muscle its way into the lucrative CCaaS space, where the likes of Microsoft and Oracle—and now, Salesforce—are adding more CX-related components to their offerings. In fact, traditional CCaaS features such as contact management, marketing automation, and sales tracking are now also available on many core CRM platforms.

In the case of Salesforce Contact Center, the solution is built on Service Cloud, one of various product clouds available from Salesforce on its CRM platform, and various capabilities culled from within the vast Salesforce portfolio are offered.

The new solution includes a native voice channel with bundled telephony or the option to partner with telephony connectors on Salesforce AppExchange. Salesforce Contact Center also offers various digital engagement channels, including live chat, SMS, and messaging apps like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger. Self-service options are available via self-help pages and AI-powered bots to solve frequently asked questions. And the solution’s feedback management feature deploys surveys to collect real-time feedback from customers to help companies arrive at informed business decisions. 

Two features will be available as out-of-the-box functionality starting in February 2023. The first feature, Einstein Conversation Insights, uses Einstein AI to analyze customer interactions to flag next-best actions in real time, as well as spot conversation trends and use data-driven insights to coach service agents. With the second feature—shift scheduling and omni routing—work is directed to the appropriate agents regardless of channel, and shift schedules are adjusted accordingly to reflect demand.

Ryan Nichols, a senior vice president at Salesforce, says the company’s new solution is important. “With Salesforce Contact Center, organizations can instantly transform their contact center, empowering agents to provide automated, intelligent, and seamless customer service experiences,” says Nichols. “In an environment where customers have more choice than ever, experiences centered around real-time customer data will help turn potentially negative interactions into long-term customer loyalty.”

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