How companies treat customers determines whether they stay. However, customer expectations are higher than ever and that brings with it challenges. Salesforce’s solution consists of AI, but also other forms of data processing and an important self-service component.

Salesforce has only hosted its first heart of the serviceEvent in Zaventem. “The demand for it really came from our customers,” Jan Verbrughe tells us between the well-attended sessions. He is Senior Director Solution Engineering Northern Europe at Salesforce and thinks service is hot around the world. Businesses want efficient, cohesive, and sustainable relationships with their end customers, and this drive is mutual.

Higher expectations, less staff

Nga Phan, Senior Vice President Core Service & Platform at Salesforce, confirms this in her keynote. “Customer expectations change in real time. They expect the contact to be quick and efficient while being personal. In addition, customers want to get in touch with them through various channels, from the website to WhatsApp.” That is a problem, Phan explains: “Teams are overwhelmed today.”

Customer expectations change in real time.

Nga Phan, Senior Vice President Core Service & Platform Salesforce

So time for solutions. As so often, data plays an important role. As a company, you need to know your customers. A salesperson needs to know what complaints a prospect has, a call center agent needs to know what a customer bought and when, and a service specialist on WhatsApp needs to know that the customer called the previous day with a similar problem. Silos are made to be demolished and the future is ahead of us only source of truth.

From genius to data cloud

Salesforce was introduced last year to bring together data from internal Salesforce sources as well as external systems in real time genius. Genie has since been given a different name: Data Cloud. “In our region, numerous customers are already working on the data cloud,” says Verbrughe. “The Data Cloud provides a universal view of data streaming in real-time from multiple sources. Data from the cloud is available to end users like agents in the contact center so they can better serve customers.”

The Data Cloud aims to make it easy to bring data together from hundreds of different sources. Jürgen De Cock, Director CX at Cinionic, dreams out loud on stage about the possibilities. “We are world leaders in cinema, but at the same time we are a company with only 40 employees,” he says. “We need to work smarter and more efficiently.”

For Cinionic, that doesn’t mean waiting for problems. De Cock: “We want a 360-degree view of our assets and their health.” In principle, this is possible with the data cloud. Data from external systems is then merged with customer data, allowing Cinionic to spot problems before the customer notices them or, ideally, before they occur.

ChatGPT as the ultimate service agent?

Data can thus lead to better customer service. Anyone talking about data today cannot ignore AI. During the event, Phan will therefore be repeating the Einstein GPT demo that we previously saw on the sidelines of the Trailblazer DX conference. In this demo, the generative AI plays the role of a competent assistant in numerous interactions in a controlled manner.

Verbrughe immediately adds a nuance. “When customers see these advanced solutions, they quickly think the technology is far from their bed show. ChatGPT-like solutions are not necessary for them yet. However, AI is much more than that.” According to Verbrughe, AI is already ubiquitous in Belgium, although this is usually not noticed.

Better start out simple

“AI can be very mundane,” he notes. “Think of email classification, where the content is scrutinized by machine learning algorithms and instantly routed to the most appropriate agent. A technical question goes to a tech, an invoicing question with accounting, without anyone having to go through it manually.” It gets even easier: “AI is also voice routing, with French-speaking questions to French-speaking staff and Dutch-speaking emails to Dutch-speaking ones Agents are sent.”

AI can be very mundane.

Jan Verbrughe, Senior Director Solution Engineering Northern EuropeForeclosure

According to Verbrughe, profits can be made very quickly from such AI implementations. Chatbots are also very popular, but here too he sees that sometimes the hype overrides the need. “Sometimes the board thinks the company should do something about bots when there’s not even a manual solution.”

In his opinion, AI and bots make sense, but only if the internal processes are in order. Already have a chat solution? You can then analyze the questions and answers to identify common questions with similar answers. You can then have the question answered by a bot. Walking is allowed, but the prerequisite is that you can already walk.

Do it yourself

During the event, it’s not the AI-driven service that steals the show, but a seemingly more mundane form of service. Phan, De Cock and Verbrughe agree: the best form of customer service is self-service. “It’s a good idea to give customers the opportunity to solve problems themselves,” explains Verbrughe. He refers to a concrete example of a company in the Netherlands. “If an end customer receives a package there that doesn’t suit their taste, they can use the website or the bot to start a flow in which the return shipment is automatically initiated.”

So self-service does not mean that end customers have to solve their problems themselves, but that ready-made solutions are available for problems that are to be expected. Such data and automation-driven solutions are efficient for both the customer and the company itself. Of course, it is only really possible to develop an advanced self-service portal when you know which questions come up frequently and when the right systems are connected. The data cloud is once again lurking outside the door.

If you are looking for solutions, you will find data

On the heart of the serviceAt this event we experience a much more curious and engaged audience than at many other events. Companies of all stripes recognize that their customer relationship needs to be improved and are actively looking for solutions. “Service is the order of the day,” beams Verbrughe, “but many of our businesses are still using homegrown on-premises solutions.” This often means that data is trapped and without a central data source there is no basis for building modern customer experiences.

And with this data? You can not only help end customers with this. “The call center is the canary in the coal mine,” says Verbrughe, who started his career in one of those centers at the time. “I knew for the techs when there was a problem with a system because the phones were coming into the call center. Your customers sit in the call center, where they vent their frustration.” Data from call centers, chats or other forms of service are so valuable, not only to help an end customer, but also to keep your finger on the pulse.

This is an editorial in partnership with Salesforce. Want to know more about what’s happening in customer service? Then take a look at the company’s State of Service report.