It’s release time again! As we dive into Salesforce’s Winter ‘25 release, Service Cloud users have plenty to look forward to. This update introduces a host of innovations that enhance AI capabilities and optimize businesses’ customer service operations.
Let’s explore the top features that are set to transform your Service Cloud experience into a smoother and more exciting one…
1. My Service Journey (Beta)
This is Beta for now, but it has the potential to be one of my favorite new features. My Service Journey is designed to help businesses optimize their existing Service Cloud implementation. It basically helps you make the most of Service Cloud and maximize its full potential.
When you have a comprehensive view of your org’s capabilities as well as possible upgrades, it’s infinitely easier to utilize some features you never knew could be applicable to your business.
Start by selecting what business goals you would like to achieve. Let’s say I would like to improve productivity. On the list of Service Areas, you can choose which part of the service process you’d like to optimize.
I chose Agent Console > Open the Case. A list appears where you can choose which one you would like to implement. Let’s say I would like to have my cases categorized consistently every time a record is created.
With this comes a detailed description of what it’s for, the products and licensing needed to use it, and some implementation best practices and resources from Salesforce Help. It’s basically everything you need to successfully implement the feature!
You can also favorite the feature or tag it as “Not Started”, “Planned”, “In Progress”, “Completed”, or “Not Interested” – so it’s easier to track your plans and progress along the way. Using this will surely elevate your Service Cloud roadmap!
2. Entitlements and Milestones
If your org already uses entitlements and milestones to define service levels, outline service process steps, and keep track of cases that need immediate attention, this release has an enhancement that can make everything smoother than it already is.
Standard milestone actions can now be automated through flows, allowing service agents to prioritize cases based on the remaining milestone time as manual work is reduced. When the milestone is completed, nearing violation, or violated, actions like Einstein-powered email alerts, simultaneous record updates, and Slack notifications can now be automated via Flow.
We know that the remaining time until the next milestone can be seen on the case record itself. Now, you can add that to the case list view, so it’s easier to track which ones need immediate attention. When agents handle multiple cases simultaneously, this becomes incredibly helpful as it gives a clear indication of which ones have to be prioritized first.
3. Enhanced Messaging Channels and Capabilities
The messaging offerings available in Service Cloud have now been expanded with new types. These advancements empower teams to engage with customers more effectively across a variety of channels, ensuring a unified, continuous, and responsive customer experience.
- LINE Messaging: this improves communication with customers, especially in regions where LINE is popular, like Japan. Conversations can even include images, videos and emojis!
- Bring Your Own Channel (BYOC) and BYOC for Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS): BYOC was previously GA in June 2024 but was called Partner Messaging. This feature offers flexibility by allowing businesses to integrate their preferred third-party messaging platforms into Salesforce. It allows all the features you love from that external platform to enhance the agent experience. BYOC for CCaaS is essentially the same thing, but for integrating preferred contact center vendors.
- More Messaging Component Formats: BYOC and BYOC for CCaaS now supports quick replies, buttons, list selectors, forms, time selectors, and carousels.
- Delivery Acknowledgements and Read Receipts: Agents will now know whether or not their messages have been read for messaging sessions in BYOC and BYOC for CCaaS.
- Messaging for In-App and Web (GA): If your business has its own website or mobile app, you can now deliver a highly customized messaging experience for your agents and customers by using the Messaging for In-App and Web API.
- Salesforce Mobile App Messaging (GA): This was Beta in Summer ‘24 – glad to know it’s now widely available! Agents can now message on the app even when on the go.
- Unified Messaging for SMS: Provide a streamlined experience for managing SMS communications – now marketing and service can be linked to a single phone number!
4. Routing
Eligible orgs will now be automatically upgraded to Enhanced Omni-Channel. This feature now includes Omni-Channel for mobile, which is a delivered idea. IdeaExchange is super rich with feature requests, and we’re glad this one is now generally available!
Omni-Channel for mobile allows service agents to support customers on the go. This enhancement ensures that service teams can provide timely assistance, handle work requests, and even change status – regardless of their location.
Here’s another delivered idea from the IdeaExchange: Description for Queues! When you create or edit a queue, you can now add a brief description so other users who view it will know its purpose and function.
5. Feedback Management
With more and more businesses minding their customers better nowadays, collecting customer feedback has become more crucial than ever. Salesforce has made this easier with post-chat survey invitations, wherein unique survey invitations can be sent within a chat window. This helps gain comprehensive insights into customer satisfaction immediately after interactions.
Note: This is available for orgs with Feedback Management – Starter or Feedback Management – Growth enabled.
6. Employee Service
In this release, Salesforce introduces new features called Employee Hub and HR Service Workspace, which aim to streamline the human resource (HR) service processes. These solutions centralize HR tasks and provide a more organized approach to employee service and managing employee needs.
Employee Hub
This feature applies to Experience Cloud. Employee Hub is all-around, meaning employees can log in and use it for various things like reading knowledge articles, quickly navigating to important and frequently used resources and pages, submitting service requests, and obtaining manager approvals. Employees can also seek HR support from here through email, voice, and messaging channels.
Each employee has their own profile, which they can freely manage as well. This is fully customizable by administrators, so it aligns with organization needs and employee preferences.
HR Service Workspace
The HR Service Workspace is a centralized hub designed to empower HR personnel to manage employee records and inquiries effectively and seamlessly. This is also an all-in-one solution like Employee Hub but geared towards the management side of the company as it enables HR teams to create, update, and delete employee records, gain a comprehensive view of employee information, communicate effectively, and efficiently handle service requests.
With the added benefit of Workday integration, administrators can easily create employee records directly through Workday, ensuring data remains consistent. Additionally, administrators can efficiently manage access by creating profiles and assigning appropriate permissions to employees in bulk. Now that’s an efficient HR operation!
7. Service Intelligence
Service Intelligence in the Winter ’25 release introduces real-time customer service insights via Einstein Case Management (Beta). This enables managers to measure agent performance against target SLA times on Omni-Channel queues, providing near real-time insights to optimize service delivery.
Agents can now quickly identify and prioritize cases based on urgency, status, customer effort scores, and SLA targets. Additionally, the new “Flag to Supervisor” Flow allows agents to immediately alert supervisors to critical case updates, ensuring prompt and effective intervention if needed.
Here’s another one for SLA management features: SLA Times can now be set for Omni-Channel queues! Set a default SLA for all Omni-Channel routing queues and customize times for up to ten specific queues.
Note: These features require the Service Intelligence User permission set to view metrics and the Service Intelligence App Admin permission set to manage SLA targets. Target SLA times are configured in the Service Intelligence Setup during the installation process to ensure accurate monitoring and adherence.
Knowledge Management
You can now enhance your understanding of article effectiveness and compliance with a detailed view of your Data Categories in the Knowledge Performance Dashboard, accessible in Enterprise and Unlimited editions for an additional cost.
Note: The Knowledge Performance dashboard requires the Service Intelligence User permission set to view and the Service Intelligence App Admin permission set to manage. Simply click on the Knowledge Performance dashboards to access data category metrics and gain a more comprehensive evaluation of your Knowledge management.
Here’s one thing that can help with your Knowledge article reviews: Flows. This release gives you the capability to install the “Flag for Review” Flow, which automatically sets an article’s next review date to the current date. When reviewed, managers can also publish articles directly from Knowledge Performance dashboards. Since this feature involves the Knowledge Performance dashboard, it requires the same permissions mentioned above as well.
As AI capabilities have been developing swiftly this past year, let’s see what Einstein has to offer with this release!
8. Einstein for Service
AI is now more integrated into service workflows with several new features…
Einstein Data Library
Salesforce continues to push the boundaries of AI with the general availability of the Einstein Data Library. This feature grounds generative AI responses, ensuring more accurate and context-aware interactions with customers.
Einstein uses your Knowledge articles and fields as information to base responses on, so it can quickly check accuracy for best results and greater reliability.
Einstein Case Management (Beta)
The Einstein Case Management Beta offers real-time insights that help service teams manage cases more effectively. This tool provides performance metrics, including target SLA times on Omni-Channel queues, allowing managers to monitor and improve agent efficiency.
The Beta version’s real-time capabilities promise to significantly boost case resolution times and customer satisfaction.
Einstein Article Recommendations (Pilot)
Einstein Article Recommendations for Conversations offers relevant article suggestions to agents during voice and enhanced messaging sessions. This can help reduce handling time, which leads to improvement in customer satisfaction. While this feature is currently in Pilot and available to select customers under specific terms and conditions, it is subject to change and may be discontinued at Salesforce’s discretion before general availability.
I do have high hopes for this, though, as it can be super helpful to support agents! Recommendations are provided automatically during conversations on the Voice Call or Messaging Session record page, but they can also be configured to appear only on-demand via the Einstein Article Recommendations setup page.
Einstein Work Summaries
Einstein Copilot is fairly new, but now you can tailor how Einstein drafts Work Summaries in Copilot by adding your own formatting rules or restrictions to the prompt template. Users with the appropriate permissions can customize the Summarize Record action in Copilot by editing or creating prompt templates in Prompt Builder.
You can now also quickly catch up on cases with AI-generated case summaries using Einstein Case Summaries. Imagine giving agents the capability to see case progression – including conversations, updates, and escalations – all from the Case Feed or Case Comments!
Note: This feature requires Einstein add-ons as well, so reach out to your Account Executive for assistance on licensing if you haven’t yet.
Summary
And that’s it for introducing Salesforce’s Winter ‘25 release updates for Service Cloud! These powerful new features not only enhance AI-driven service but also improve and optimize HR processes as well as customer engagement.
Since it’s up to you to use these innovations to boost efficiency and deliver personalized customer experiences, we do recommend analyzing your org’s current service process pain points to decide which of these aligns with your goals.
What other new Service Cloud features have you spotted that are worth adding to the mix? Let us know in the comments!
Read More
- 10 Hottest Salesforce Winter ’25 Features For Admins
- 10 Salesforce Winter ’25 Features for Developers
- 10 New Flow Features in Salesforce Winter ’25
- Sales Cloud: Top Salesforce Winter ’25 Features
- Account Engagement (Pardot) Winter ’25 Updates You Should Know
- 7+ Marketing Cloud Growth Updates in the Salesforce Winter ’25 Release
