Salesforce Service Cloud Reviews

• Service Console
• Knowledge 1
• CTI Integration

It's increased our contact centre agent efficiency.

There is no control over the appearance of Visual Flow pages, giving the appearance of an amateur web application within the Salesforce interface.

It would also be good if there were a workforce management component to balance call distribution in a contact centre based on agent skills and experience.

I've been using it on and off for 12 years.

The solution is very stable.

It's very scalable. Being cloud-based, the application easily scales to high user and transaction counts.

Tech support is responsive, but they often suggest the solutions that one has already read by doing a Google search. I usually have to escalate to tier two to get the answer I need.

But to be fair, being a certified Salesforce consultant, my questions are usually more complex than a regular end user’s questions.

I migrated my tech support team off of BMC Remedy and have migrated many clients off of Siebel and other systems.

Salesforce is much more easily configured so it can change as your business processes change; it’s extremely scalable so it can grow as your business grows, and it’s API is extensive so you can integrate with back office systems in a relatively straightforward way.

It's straightforward. For a small- to medium-sized business, the system can usually be set up with no custom development. Enterprise organisations will usually require some code to be written along with data migration and data integration.

However, when I migrated my team from BMC Remedy to Salesforce, I did so with no previous training and was able to customize the system to my requirements using the declarative interface. I migrated the data myself using the salesforce Apex Data Loader, which is available for free.

I implemented it myself as described above. However, I would recommend using an integrator. They know the system really well and can ensure your system is implemented following best practices and taking advantage of all the latest features.

While my original implementation was satisfactory, it could have been much better. One example is, I lost all of my record creation dates from the legacy system because I didn’t know that Salesforce could make the Created By and Created Date fields editable when creating records as part of a migration.

My recommendation on pricing is: “negotiate”. The Salesforce account executives can be flexible on price at times so don’t be afraid to negotiate a better price. You may have to commit to a longer contract but you won’t regret it.

Also, if you’re going to do an implementation project, only purchase enough licenses for the implementation team and arrange to start paying for your other user licenses when you go live.

If you’re doing a three month implementation, there’s no need to pay the subscription fees for users who won’t log into the system until you go live.

Use a Salesforce partner and make sure their consultants are certified. Talk to three different firms, and don’t let price be the only driving factor. Rather, look at the firm that seems to best understand your requirements, has good answers on why particular parts of the implementation will cost what they’re proposing, and has a solid methodology that they can easily explain to you.

Simply choosing the least expensive option often costs more in the end with either delays, change requests or worst case, failure.

• Knowledge Base - can provide answers to customers, and customers can find answers themselves
• Customer Community - direct customer feedback

We have improved our customer service and call-deflection rate with Service Cloud, particularly with Knowledge Base and Customer Community features

The pricing of the various editions could be improved.

I've used it for six years.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

10/10

8/10

We previously used Microsoft CRM Dynamics.

Data migration was an issue since it required extensive data mapping and business rule changes.

We did it in-house.

It's estimated at 135% over two years.

It should be implemented only in organizations with over 20 users. Otherwise, it's expensive to manage.

We also looked at Pegasystems.

You should start with organization-wide default settings, then user set-up, then accounts, contacts and the cases and case-related items should be last.

For us, the Force.com platform is the most valuable feature.

It's a great tool for collaboration because it can track and share everyone's input. You can also configure workflow rules to enforce process.

I've used it for over five years.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

It depends on your contract with Salesforce. There is a lot of information from the user and developer community that does not require a support contract with Salesforce.

I used to use Clarify/Amdocs.

The initial set up can be a non-event. However, most businesses would need complex customizations.

I have done it both in-house and with a vendor.

Put a lot of thought into your business processes before implementing Salesforce. It is very easy to automate chaos if your business process is not well-defined.

Put a lot of thought into your business processes before implementing Salesforce. It is very easy to automate chaos if your business process is not well defined.

1. Pipeline management
2. Reporting and dashboard
3. Custom objects

A custom community helped us to build a T2 channel partner community, which has bidding and price approval features. It also improved our productivity compared to our competitors. It doesn't require too much coding.

In the marketing part, I want to see a more powerful campaign function with BI integration.

I've used it for eight years.

The governor limits are a headache sometimes. We have to either find a workaround or ask Salesforce to improve the limits.

7/10.

7/10.

It depends. If the business role, process, security rule are already there and quite complex, or volume of data need to be migrated are quite high, it will be complex. Lots of things need to be considered.

With the vendor. If you start from scratch, you'd better work with a vendor team. Then you can either develop your in-house expertise during the project implementation, or hire someone in marketing who has the skills.

Our users are satisfied with the product, and they spend less time on this tool, but create more opportunity and other data.

Have a discussion with a sales consultant from Salesforce and they will give you proposal regarding your requirement/company size, etc.

With the consideration of cost, platform extendability, and performance, Salesforce was finally chosen.

It is a quite a good product. If you are going to replace your existing on-premise CRM with a new cloud solution, don't hesitate to call them. But it has limitations as well. Work with a consulting partner, they will help you to boost your productivity.

• Sales Automation
• Service Console

It gives a 360 degree view without any gaps, while serving the customers, which in turn, increases customer satisification.

Already, Salesforce is on the correct path by moving things towards Android, and iPhones. It also needs a faster and smoother UI.

I've used it for four years.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

10/10

10/10

I've not used any other solution.

It's straightforward, with supporting documents, customer care, and tech support available if you meet any issues.

We did it in-house. I would advise you that before starting the implementation, you go through the implementation guides.

ROI is satisfactory.

Pricing and licensing is done per number of users.

From a startup, marketing/sales/service can implement this product to increase productivity and customer satisfaction.

• Reporting
• Forecasting
• Adding document templates
• Email tracking
• Integration with Marketo

Salesforce provides a really good overview of the pipeline and the stages of each sale. This allows management to make accurate forecasts in terms of what will come in by the end of the month/quarter/year.

They need to improve the email integration with Outlook. At the moment the plugin is very unstable, and crashes from time to time. The only other option is to include a Salesforce email address into BCC, which isn't convenient.

Also, I’ve not checked for a while, but for a long time Salesforce didn’t have a very good mobile app, at least not for Android. If they could build a proper one with the same functions as the desktop version, that would be really cool!

I've used it for four years in total.

No, but I wasn’t the one conducting the deployment.

Other than the occasional slow response, which was probably caused by bandwidth problems on our end, the system was always robust and stable.

Not really. As our organization grew, we were able to add more users to the system without any issues.

I’ve never had to use it, so I couldn’t tell you.

It’s pretty good. I’ve not had to use tech support as such, as I’ve found all of the answers to my questions on the Salesforce community forum.

Previously we used a very old CRM system called Goldmine. We switched because Goldmine offered no reporting tools whatsoever. The managers, to get an overview of the deals that were due to close that month, had to have a daily check with every member of the sales team, and then compile a list of deals closing that month. Also, the interface of Goldmine wasn’t really that great. The entire system was becoming too primitive for our organization as it grew.

No, nothing complex about the initial setup. I registered the account, and started using it.

We had an in-house consultant who did all of the implementation, and customization of Salesforce for us.

It's hard to tell, as the biggest ROI was the time saved in terms of reporting, ease of creating views and reports, generating quotes, and monitoring the progress of every sales cycle.

We had an enterprise site license, so it covered all of the users.

No, not really. We had known about Salesforce for while, so when the question was raised that we needed a new CRM system, Salesforce was chosen by default.

It’s a great product, highly customizable and flexible. My advice is do it, but make sure there is someone either from Salesforce or one of your own IT guys, who can customize the system for you.

We use the solution to check activities, manage customers, and initiate customer communication.

The most valuable feature of the solution is the traceability of actions. The solution helps me quickly get an overview of what has happened in the past, especially when I return from vacation.

The solution’s user interface could be improved.

I have been using Salesforce Service Cloud for five years.

I rate the solution ten out of ten for stability.

Around 5,000 users in our organization use Salesforce Service Cloud.

I have previously used HubSpot. HubSpot looks more modern, but Salesforce Service Cloud is way more powerful.

I would recommend the solution to other users. It's a daily tool, and you need to be able to look up things quickly. Hence, a bit of training is definitely recommended. Salesforce Service Cloud is worth the money. The solution is powerful and its information density is pretty high.

Overall, I rate the solution a seven out of ten.