Enterprise software company, Salesforce, hopes to track not just customers and customer service marketing, but field services too. It has launched Field Service Lightning, which allows enterprises to connect their entire service workforce with tools for agents, dispatchers, and mobile employees.
The power of IoT
The cloud-based tool harnesses the power of Internet of Tings (IoT) and signals from other connected devices. Dispatchers can leverage smart scheduling to provide automatic, real-time assignments based on employee skills, availability, and location. Service employees in the field will be able to create and update work orders, and can also change requests and job status from any device.
These services earlier were outsourced to third parties like ServiceMax. Field Service Lightning is designed to bring repair personnel, service representatives and other field workers into the mobile era by giving them real-time access to latest customer data on their mobile phones or tablets.
Mike Milburn, SVP and GM, Service Cloud, Salesforce said, “We are just beginning to see what customer service can look like in the era of mobile and IoT. Field Service Lightning gives companies the ability to reinvent their approach to service by connecting the phone to the field on a single platform, resulting in an amazing customer experience.”
With connected devices becoming smarter and more predictive, Salesforce’s Field Service Lightning has the potential to create new opportunities to reinvent the customer service experience.
Let us look, how?
Salesforce authorized ClickSoftware, a field service provider to schedule, optimize and build a service cloud based on the customer requirements. So, when a potential customer makes a call to the customer service representative, a service request gets initiated that extracts relevant information of the customer record. The arrangement then made will perform certain activities like look for the closest field service technician, skills required and urgency of the task based on the factors like location, size etc.
Meanwhile the field service coordinator can view the appointments scheduled in a map and communicate directly with the representatives over messages. The field service person will carry a tablet or a smartphone application that will direct them to their next field consignment. They will have access to entire customer records and can gain complete understanding of the situation in hand and also update the record on their mobile app.
For example, a technician can view the inquiries made by a cable customer for a better internet connection. He could help the customer find the appropriate plan and also offer a discount on the repair visit after authorization from the cable company.
Dissolving the drill for enterprises
Create work orders from any case, fast
With work orders, one can efficiently track repairs, maintenance, or other work taking place in the field. And work orders are integrated with accounts, contacts, assets, cases, entitlements, and service contracts so you can pull in data across Salesforce.
Manage complex assets
One can track information about customers’ products with Advanced Assets. Additionally, one can leverage asset hierarchy to track products made up of several parts all in one view. This makes it easier to identify which parts of an asset need repair faster.
Schedule and dispatch work, intelligently
With Smart Scheduling, one can instantly book service appointments from Lightning Console. It also increases employee productivity by automatically assigning appointments to the right technician based on time, skills, location, and business rules.
Manage and monitor technicians
Dispatcher Console ensures that the right job is assigned and routed to the right mobile employee every time. One can immediately see alerts for issues that need attention and can schedule bulk jobs with just one click, and track and monitor the service delivery in real time.
Access information from any mobile device
Mobile employees can access to work orders and other key information at their fingertips. With the Salesforce1 Mobile App, service technicians can use automated processes to support a full range of field activities. They can even connect to experts and reports from anywhere and access information offline.
Monitor performance in real time
Salesforce’s real-time reporting and analytics lets you tap into business data from multiple systems to know more about your customer. Drill down into data on the fly from any device. And gain visibility into agent, dispatcher, technician, and partner performance from a single platform.
Field Service Lightning is available for sale immediately and is priced starting at $135 for organizations that have at least one Enterprise Edition or Unlimited Edition Service Cloud license.
This release has given Salesforce a leap ahead its rivals that provide field service management like Oracle after its 2014 acquisition of field service specialist TOA Technologies and Microsoft’s July purchase of FieldOne.