News

Service Cloud Workforce Engagement – Right Agents, Right Skills, at the Right Time

By Lucy Mazalon

Service Cloud Workforce Engagement is a new Salesforce product that will help companies deliver exceptional service by using artificial intelligence (AI) to predict customer service demand. This will enable companies to staff the right agents, with the right skills, at the right time.

Salesforce’s complete customer service suite will be unrivaled, becoming the only provider to offer the following on one single platform: Core Service, Digital Engagement, Service Cloud Voice, Salesforce Field Service – and now Service Cloud Workforce Engagement.

Agents will have a single workspace that integrates all of the data, systems, and coaching they need to deliver personalized service and resolve issues quickly. There are three new features to dive into:

  • Service Forecast for Customer 360
  • Omnichannel Capacity Planning
  • Personalized Agent Engagement

Service Forecast for Customer 360

Uses AI based on data from the Salesforce platform and integrated third-party tools to:

  • Predict how many requests will come into the contact center in real-time, across all digital channels and regions.
  • Help service leaders organize their workforce and adjust to account for unplanned events

Example: a retail service leader will be able to predict the number of Cyber Monday support requests and adjust their forecast accordingly, to account for expected phone demand versus chat. They could adjust just before an influx in calls in response to an active social media influencer promotion.

From the dashboard above, designed with the service leader in mind, you can see multiple dashboard filters for workload type, date range, interval (daily/weekly/monthly), channel, region, skill, criticity. Forecasts then zoom in by case load, transcript volume, and possibly more. The data breakdown, that can be refreshed on-demand, tops this view off as a true contact center control panel.

Omnichannel Capacity Planning

  • Balance staffing needs across any digital channel — including phone, email, web chat, text and social channels.
  • Assign the right agents at the right time based on their skills and availability.

Example: a bank may see customer calls dropping because of hour-long wait times on phone channels, but with omnichannel capacity planning, service leaders will be able to address these coverage gaps by cross-training agents to support multiple channels and businesses.

The dashboard above features a bar chart that clearly compares available workforce versus scheduled work items. The line represents any gap in workforce capacity that needs to be fulfilled ahead of time. As we have heard, this is taking capacity by specific skill in demand, and the leader is warned that there are ‘gaps detected in two job profiles’. While the overall workforce capacity looks ok, the drill-down into different skills (charts on the right) tells another story – capacity gaps that would have otherwise been masked.

The OmniSupervisor view displays which agents are online, which channels they working on live (eg. one case, one chat) and their capacity as a %:

Personalized Agent Engagement

  • myTrailhead integrated directly into the Service Console.
  • Provides real-time coaching and on-demand training from anywhere.
  • Quickly onboard and continually train agents by delivering bite-size, guided learning paths.

Example: if a service leader at a meal subscription company identifies an agent who needs help understanding new pricing details, they will be able to deploy a guided learning path that explains a customer’s options.

Why Workforce Engagement, Why Now?

The trend in customer service has been all about operational efficiency over the past 30 years. Now there are new challenges:

  • More operational complexity: multiple communication channels customers can use, no longer just phone calls to handle and monitor.
  • COVID-19 surges: contact centers are dealing with a huge surge in the volume of questions during this year of unprecedented events.
  • Work-from-anywhere: service leaders are managing staffing resources amid the transition to the work-from-home environment.

Service Cloud Workforce Engagement is stepping in to offer a connected view of the employee and customer, all on one cloud-based platform.

When will Workforce Engagement be available?

Service Cloud Workforce Engagement is expected to become generally available in the first half of 2021. Pricing information will be made available at general availability.

Find out more:

  • Learn more about Service Cloud Workforce Engagement here.
  • Read why Salesforce is entering the Workforce Management market here.
  • Learn more about how Fisher & Paykel is leveraging Service Cloud Workforce Engagement in our Leading Through Change episode, airing at 10am PT on 12/10. Register here.

The Author

Lucy Mazalon

Lucy is the Operations Director at Salesforce Ben. She is a 10x certified Marketing Champion and founder of The DRIP.

Leave a Reply