Salesforce Service Cloud Certification Study Guide For Beginner

Salesforce CRM is used to connect people and information. In this blog, we will discuss one of the core services of Salesforce, i.e., Salesforce Service Cloud and how it revolutionized the customer support by smoothing interactions between an organization and its customers.  Also, we will learn how Salesforce adds more value to your business.

We will start the discussion by explaining the need of Salesforce Service cloud, what is Salesforce service cloud, what are the services offered by the Salesforce service cloud for increased customer satisfaction and engagement. In the end, we will discuss one real-time example of Coca-Cola and how it become extremely successful in enhancing customer experiences using the Salesforce Service Cloud.

So, let us get started why some organization should choose Salesforce Service cloud.

The need for Salesforce Service Cloud

If your Company takes care of customer needs deeply then Salesforce Service Cloud is the right choice for your business. It does not matter either you are working in the B2B or B2C domain; there are several customers raising queries regularly. These queries are further managed by service agents. With the help of Salesforce Service Cloud, it is possible for a business tracking and solving these queries effectively. This is an effective style for transforming customer experiences. Let us dig deeper and learn Salesforce Service Cloud creates an impression.

• With the help of Salesforce Service cloud, agents can work from anywhere, and easy management options lead to agent productivity and reduction of overhead agent costs.
• Salesforce Service Cloud helps in enhancing customer experiences dramatically and connects customers via live agents. It increases customer retention, customer loyalty, customer satisfaction, etc. It maximizes the lifetime value of your customers and repeats business from existing customers.
• With the Salesforce Service cloud, your data is completely safe and secure. It follows the multi-layered approach to protect the information that is considered highly important for any business.
• Salesforce Service Cloud allows you to interact with your customers on social media platforms like Facebook or Twitter etc.
• Salesforce service cloud promotes case tracking for faster query resolution. It also helps in better management of day to day activities, and manual errors are also reduced to a larger extent.

In simple words, Service Cloud improve the operational processes of a business that leads to better customer experiences later. Based on a recent study, growth in performance metric has increased drastically using Salesforce Service Cloud. By looking at the below infographic, it is clear that agent productivity enhanced by 40%, the resolution of cases increased by 41%, and customer retention promoted by 31% with the successful implementation of the service cloud in Companies. This infographic makes clear why businesses prefer Salesforce Service Cloud in improving customer experiences. Now let us understand what is Salesforce Service Cloud and what services it has to offer.

What is Salesforce Service Cloud?

Salesforce Service Cloud is based on the customer success platform gives you a 360-degree view of customers and enables you to deliver smarter, faster, and more personalized customers experiences.

It allows creating a connected knowledge base, enabling live agent chat, managing case interactions all together at a single platform. It allows highly personalized customer interactions and helps to sell products or services based on past activity data. You must be wondering how can you access the service cloud in Salesforce. Here is a quick series of steps to access the service cloud console quickly.

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• At the first step, log in to the salesforce.com site.
• Create one SF console app.
• Focus on the display
• Customize the push notifications
• In the end, grant users console access.

Salesforce Service Cloud – What services it has to offer?

Salesforce Service Cloud offers a wide range of features as shown in the image below like case tracking, query resolution, live agent facility, communities and more. Let us discuss on major services in brief one by one.

• Cases – Whenever a customer reports an issue, it is taken as a case. Cases are further divided into three major categories; these are Email2case, Web2case, Escalation & Autoresponse. A case is generated automatically as soon as customer query is sent to the Company portal through registered email ID. The support team should get ready to resolve that particular query. With the Escalation and autoresponse scheme, the users are notified that their queries are registered and they will be resolved soon. If a case is not closed in the given timeframe, then the user can take actions further.

• Solutions – For every tough problem, there is one solution saved automatically for future references by sales reps.
• Knowledge – There is one knowledge base in the Salesforce service cloud where users can edit, create or manage content as per their convenience. There are information documents where users can search for solutions for their queries.
• Communities – Communities allow users to get connected with other business partners, customers, developers, etc. that are not part of your organization but considered vital for business growth.
• Console – A console in Salesforce Service cloud is responsible for delivering more powerful customer experiences by pulling all information together. It is the place to find all details related to the customer profile, dashboards, histories, etc., all at a single place.
• Social Media – The service cloud is possible to leverage with social media platforms where it is easy to manage customer interactions.
• Live agent – If you want to manage one-to-one interactions with customers, the live agent facility helps you to answer your queries more quickly and stay connected with users for longer time intervals.

This is clear from the features and services that service cloud is all about providing amazing customer experiences and building powerful relationships with customers. When everyone is connected to a single platform, the service cloud is a smart choice for organizations these days. Now, let us understand how much Salesforce service cloud costs for enterprises.

What is Salesforce Service Cloud Cost?

Salesforce Service Cloud is available in three popular versions, these are Professional, Unlimited, and Enterprise Edition. Once you go through the table below and decide the best plan that suits your requirements the most.

Professional -$75 USD/User/Month

Enterprise - $150 USD/User/Month

Unlimited - $300 USD/User/Month

  There are different services offered for all three editions, and it is easy to use and phenomenal when it comes to driving better customer experience. Certainly, Salesforce has changed the style of how customers interact with organizations using services over the internet. Now let us discuss how Coca-Cola implemented Salesforce service cloud to solve the complex business challenges.

Salesforce Service Cloud Use Case – Coca-Cola

Salesforce Service Cloud is used by Companies for better customer relationship management and support.  In this section, we will talk about the Coca-Cola use case to analyze customer behavior and build data-driven strategies. The use case will give you a depth idea of how can you use Salesforce service cloud extensively across any domain.

Service Cloud is an integrated platform to connect employees, customers and supplies all together at a single platform. Earlier, Coca-Cola faced several issues in managing customer relationships. A few of them are listed below.

• The in-house repair facility in Company had technicians who used to track their jobs on paper. This process was high time-consuming, and it demanded a lot of efforts too.
• The repair document and call center suffered from frequent downtime.
• There were speed, functionality, connectivity, and scalability issues.
• The mobile app synchronization was extremely slow.
• The overall user satisfaction rate was low.

Traditionally, big Companies outcompeted smaller ones. But it is just the history today. In the technical era, only fast companies can outcompete instead of their sizes. Now when technicians in Coca-Cola are connected to the Salesforce service cloud, it is easy for them managing customer issues in the real-time. It helps in reducing response time dramatically. Also, agents may get quick access to customer histories. With all these features, the productivity of the Coca-Cola Company has shot up by 30 percent or even more. Also, the Company can understand customer needs in depth and cater them more effectively. Here are key points for how Salesforce service cloud contributed to their excellence.

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Increased Customer Satisfaction: it is possible to deliver one to one support to customers through different channels, apps, video chats, or agents instantly.

Mobile app: With the constant mobile app support, customers can interact through a live agent. They can share screens, and on-screen guided assistance is also possible. This amazing customer support results in making them happier.

Analytics – Salesforce service cloud makes it possible gathering and evaluating information with the help of custom dashboards. Coca-Cola used analytics to check past transactions and took immediate actions too. It helped them in making better decisions in less time.

Enhanced Agent productivity - With the help of Salesforce Service cloud, Coca-Cola agents started working from remote locations, and easy management options helped in enhancing the overall productivity of their business.

This has been a massive step forward for the Coca-Cola Company and amazed everyone with easy and smooth implementation. Now it must be clear to your how Company implemented the Salesforce service cloud to make their customers happy. Other than this, there are more interesting stories which show how businesses have benefitted from service cloud implementation and taken their business to another level.

Salesforce Service Cloud Certification Study Guide

Learning Salesforce service cloud fundamentals is not enough but certification is also necessary for the relevant industry knowledge and experiences. It helps you in quick implementation of the service cloud and focus on the right things only. Before you start preparing for the certification exam, make sure that you have the right learning materials and sources. You can take help from the Trailhead or look for the online tutorials.

If you can afford training, then join some training institute online for the assured success. The online training institutes prepare you for the certification exam and provide placement assistance too. The training materials at the beginner level usually focus on service cloud fundamentals, case designs, custom application development, etc. At the advanced level, you will learn the service cloud in depth and how industries use it.

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Salesforce Service Cloud certification is designed for people who already have implementation experience. I would recommend spending much time in implementing each of the features; it will take huge time in practice but makes you more proficient over the platform. Don’t forget to consider related study materials and video tutorial for the exam. Check the percentage of each section and prepare yourself accordingly. Go through every question carefully and answer selected questions only that you are sure of and avoid other complex questions.

We wish you luck with the Salesforce service cloud certification exam!

Final Words:

There are multiple integration options available for the service cloud as shown in the image below. Since everyone and everything is so much connected with the effective usage of the Salesforce service cloud, it is a definite choice for your business in 2019. To know how to implement Salesforce service cloud, you should know the basic and practical aspects of the platform. For detailed and structured information, it is a better idea joining online Salesforce certification program and make yourself proficient enough to use Salesforce CRM for your business in the modern technical space.