Category: Call Center & Support Teams

Leverage Salesforce flow automation to reduce sales rep workload & facilitate your company’s sales process

Posted on by Olga Kamylevich

The role of the modern Salesforce administrator has evolved to encompass a broad set of responsibilities. Today’s admin is expected to collaborate with sales and marketing leadership to optimize technologies and processes that drive revenue growth, improve customer experience and ensure data integrity. To do so, they must have a deep understanding of their business’s go-to-market processes, customer needs, and the software technologies that turn company strategy into action.

In this article, we will explore the importance of modern Salesforce administrators and how they can leverage Salesforce automation alongside native applications to foster improved customer engagement, drive team collaboration and improve data management.

1. Email Automation: Automate Customer Engagement & Calls to Action

Automated scheduling platforms have revolutionized the sales and support processes by streamlining appointment booking, reducing manual workload for sales and support teams and providing customers with convenient self-service options that enhance their experience.

Salesforce admins can help their businesses to drive sales process efficiency and velocity by leveraging tools such as SUMO Scheduler alongside Salesforce’s flows and email alert capabilities to automatically send appointment invitations to prospects and customers. Salesforce Flows can be written to control when the invite is sent based upon the completion of specific data fields on the contact record. This can be done by creating a trigger that monitors changes to relevant fields on the participant record and launches the flow.

By automating this process, you can ensure that potential customers are always given the opportunity to schedule an appointment when they are ready, without the need for manual intervention from your sales team. This can help to improve conversion rates and streamline the sales process, ultimately leading to more successful outcomes for your organization.

Examples of process improvements:

  • Record update triggers flow to send emails with an invite link.
  • Implement automation to route support tickets to the appropriate agents or teams based on their expertise or workload.
  • Set up automated processes to calculate and update opportunity forecast based on historical data and sales trends, etc.

2. Automated Subject Updates – Make Your Appointments Stand Out On Customers’ Calendars

Customer-facing meetings are the lifeblood of any sales and support rep’s business – Missed or canceled appointments directly impact their goals and bottom line. Fortunately, by leveraging simple Salesforce flows in conjunction with appointment scheduling automation, admins can help their customer-facing teams reduce cancellations and increase appointment participations.

One way to do this is by updating the appointment subject to include the participant’s name and phone number. This makes it easier for clients to identify important appointments with your team, ensuring that they remain top of mind. This is important because most clients use their external calendar as the source of truth, and updating the subject line with this information provides greater flexibility and transparency for both parties involved. This is especially important if the client is juggling multiple appointments and needs to quickly reference the details of each one.

Source: SUMO comes with many email templates out of the box that you can customize to fit your needs.

Updating the appointment subject line also takes into account any internal meetings that may be taking up the participant’s availability. By allowing for flexibility in scheduling, you can ensure that appointments are scheduled at a time that works for both the client and the participant, without the need for manual intervention.

At the same time, maintaining the meeting category within Salesforce allows you to keep accurate records and generate valuable insights into the sales process. You can still track the meeting category and other relevant data points within Salesforce, while ensuring that the end user doesn’t have to go to Salesforce to find the information they need.

Overall, updating the subject of the appointment to include the participant’s name and phone number while maintaining the meeting category within Salesforce is a powerful way to optimize your sales process and improve the end user experience. By providing accurate and efficient reporting while also personalizing the meeting experience, you can drive greater success for your organization and strengthen relationships with potential customers.

3. Using A Different Email Field

As a Salesforce admin, you understand that every customer has unique needs and requirements, and that flexibility is key when it comes to meeting those needs. That’s why the ability to use a different email field other than the standard Salesforce email field is a powerful tool for admins.

First, it allows Salesforce admins to provide greater customization for their clients and a more personalized experience that meets their specific needs.
For example, a client may want to use a specific email field for regulatory compliance or to meet internal company policies.

Second, it can help to improve the accuracy of notification delivery.
Sometimes, the standard Salesforce email field may not be the most accurate or up-to-date source of contact information for a participant. By allowing clients to choose a different email field for notifications, admins can ensure that notifications are delivered to the most accurate and up-to-date email address.

Source: Salesforce allows you to define and manage email addresses that can be used as the “from address” when sending an email through Salesforce.

Third, it can help to improve efficiency and automation.
By automating the process of selecting the appropriate email field for notifications, Salesforce admins can save time and reduce the risk of errors or manual input mistakes. For example, if a client wants to use a specific email field for notifications based on a certain set of criteria, this can be easily set up using flow automation, saving time and reducing the need for manual input.

Practical examples of the use of a different email field for notifications could include:

  • A client who wants to use a different email field for appointment notifications based on participant location, so that notifications are sent to a local email address.
  • A client who wants to use a different email field for appointment notifications based on the type of participant, such as a customer vs. a partner or vendor.
  • A client who wants to use a different email field for appointment notifications based on the type of appointment or meeting, such as a sales meeting vs. a training session.

Overall, the ability to use a different email field other than the standard Salesforce email field for SUMO Scheduler appointment notifications provides greater flexibility and customization for clients, improves accuracy and efficiency, and allows Salesforce admins to better meet the unique needs of their clients.

4. Automate lead creation in Salesforce when an appointment is booked

Leveraging a Salesforce native scheduling tool can help your sales team to automate the lead creation process and ensure that all prospect information and demographics are accurately captured in your CRM.

As soon as an appointment for service A is scheduled, the system will automatically generate a corresponding lead in Salesforce with all the relevant fields populated. It can save valuable time for both the sales rep and the admins while also ensuring that your sales org remains free of redundant contacts and data errors.

Let’s see some real Use Cases.

  • Medical Clinics:
    A medical clinic using Salesforce can integrate its appointment scheduling system with the CRM. When patients book appointments for specific services or treatments, a corresponding lead is automatically created in Salesforce. This lead can contain important patient information, appointment details, and the service required. This automation streamlines the patient onboarding process, reduces manual data entry for the clinic staff, and ensures accurate and up-to-date patient records.
  • Education Institutions:
    Educational organizations can use Salesforce to manage student admissions. When prospective students schedule appointments for campus tours or admissions consultations, the scheduling tool can trigger the creation of a lead in Salesforce. This lead can include the student’s contact information, academic interests, and appointment details. The automation helps admissions teams to efficiently track and manage prospective students, ensuring personalized interactions and a smoother enrollment process.
  • Financial Services:
    Financial institutions can leverage Salesforce to automate lead creation when clients request consultations or financial advice. When clients schedule appointments with financial advisors through an online scheduling tool, a lead is automatically generated in Salesforce with relevant client information and appointment details. This automation allows financial advisors to have a complete view of client interactions, track follow-ups, and provide personalized financial advice.

By automating lead creation in Salesforce when appointments are booked, businesses across various industries can enhance their sales processes, improve customer experience, and optimize their CRM data management.

In conclusion, automated scheduling flows on Salesforce can be used to make work more simple and reliable, especially when it is used with the automated online scheduling application SUMO Scheduler. The combination of these two tools provides a seamless and efficient scheduling process that saves time, reduces errors, and improves customer satisfaction. Businesses that want to streamline their scheduling process and improve their performance should consider using automated scheduling flows on Salesforce with SUMO Scheduler.

By embracing automation, Salesforce administrators can drive significant improvements in efficiency, productivity, and overall business performance. So why wait? Join the automation revolution today and take your sales team to the next level!

13 Reasons Your Organization Should Focus on Customer Experience

Posted on by Olga Kamylevich

Research shows that customers will pay more, buy more and be loyal to a company that delivers an excellent customer experience. Customer experience should not be confused with customer delight. When a company delights a customer, they are usually going above and beyond the customer’s expectations for a specific moment.

Customer Delight vs Customer Experience

Zappo’s customer service reps, who are called genies, are famous for their examples of customer delight. One of Zappo’s genies, Steve, is famous for having spent over 10 hours on the phone with a single customer. This act was going above and beyond that customer’s expectations and thoroughly delighting them.

Customer experience is the customer’s summary impression of a brand after several interactions. Sample interactions include a company’s website or social media posts. From these first touchpoints, the customer may go to a brick-and-mortar location to view the item in person. If the customer sees a product or offer online, then visits a store and finds the sales staff is unaware of the item or the item is not in stock, the customer is given a negative experience. Every interaction should make it easy for the customer to do business with your company. The customer experience does not end with a purchase either. Interactions with a company’s service or support departments need to still maintain focus on the customer, the brand promise and be obstacle-free.

Digital solutions play a significant role in the customer experience. They are instrumental in a modern customer experience strategy. Companies investing in these types of technologies that are made to cater to customer expectations will easily surpass their competitors.

Examples of removing obstacles for customers and delivering a seamless experience with digital solutions like AI, CRMs and online scheduling include offering services like reserving an item online and pick up in-store, sales and service knowing a customer’s purchase history and preferences, and allowing customers to schedule an appointment or join a virtual queue via mobile phone, website, or an on-site kiosk.

Delighting a customer is isolated to moments with a single customer. Customer experience is the consistency at every touchpoint along every customer’s journey with your entire organization.

The Numbers

This data is merely a sample of statistics spanning the past 5 years proving that customer experience is too valuable to get it wrong. Companies that are focused on a customer experience strategy and embracing digital solutions as a part of their strategy to meet customer expectations will easily surpass their competition.

When asking consumers what impacts their level of trust with a company, offering excellent customer service is ranked number one. (Zendesk) 2013

52% of consumers say they have made an additional purchase from a company after a positive customer service experience. (Zendesk) 2013

Gartner predicts that 89% of businesses are expected to compete mainly on customer experience. (Gartner) 2014

Increasing customer retention rates by 5% increase in profits by 25% to 95%. (Harvard Business School) 2014

26% of companies leading financially use CX technologies, compared to 7% of laggards. (Bain) 2015

A customer experience promoter has a lifetime value to a company that’s 600 to 1,400% that of a detractor. (Bain) 2015

75% of consumers are more likely to make a purchase from a company that knows their name and purchase history and recommends products based on their preferences. (Accenture) 2016

54% of customers have higher expectations for customer service today compared to one year ago. This percentage jumps to 66% for consumers aged from 18 to 34 years old. (Microsoft) 2017

70% of consumers say they have already made a choice to support a company that delivers great customer service. (American Express) 2017

84% of organizations working to improve CX report an increase in revenue. (Dimension Data) 2017

47% of consumers have made the choice to switch to a different brand due to bad customer service within the last year. (Microsoft) 2017

33% of customers who abandoned a business relationship last year did so because personalization was lacking. (Accenture) 2018

Forty-two percent of consumers said they would pay more for a friendly, welcoming experience, and 52% would pay more for a speedy and efficient customer experience. Of course, price and quality are still the top considerations when consumers make a purchase decision. (CMO) 2018

10 Statistics on Why an Omnichannel Strategy Works

Posted on by Olga Kamylevich

Customers are shopping online, in-store or both at the same time. Their expectations of brands have become more demanding in terms of the shopping experience they encounter. There is a wealth of touchpoints for a customer to connect with a brand and the customer expects their interactions to transition smoothly from one channel to the next no matter where they begin their journey – online or offline, on an app or with a customer service rep.

Omnichannel marketing allows traditional consumer companies to more effectively compete with their online-only counterparts. The value and returns created from an omnichannel strategy are greater than the initial investment in building out a seamless experience across multiple channels.

The following statistics deliver a compelling argument for any consumer-facing company, from retail to financial services, to invest in an omnichannel strategy.

Be Everywhere Your Customers Are

Omnichannel customers spend 4% more in-store and 10% more online than single-channel customers. For every additional channel they use, customers spend more money. (Harvard Business Review, 2017)

48% visit brand websites to research products. Younger consumers (37% of teens and 27% of Millennials) use video channels to research. (CMO, 2018)

73 percent of customers shop across multiple channels (Harvard Business Review, 2017)

49% of consumers buy from their favorite omnichannel brands at least once per week (Marketing Land, 2016)

Give Your Customers What They Want

9 out of 10 consumers want an omnichannel experience with seamless service between communication methods. (UC Today, 2019)

71% of consumers want a consistent experience across all channels, but only 29% say they actually get it. (Gladly, 2018)

Nine out of 10 consumers say they expect a seamless transition when moving from one communication method to another. (NICE inContact, 2018)

Omnichannel Investment Pays Off

Personalization at scale can drive between 5 and 15% revenue growth for companies in the retail, travel, entertainment, telecom, and financial services sectors. (McKinsey, 2017)

49% of consumers buy from their favorite omnichannel brands at least once per week (Marketing Land, 2016)

Businesses that adopt omnichannel strategies achieve 91% greater year-over-year customer retention rates compared to businesses that don’t. (Aspect Software, 2014)

Omnichannel shoppers have a 30% higher lifetime value than those who shop using only one channel. (Google, 2014)

It’s Not Too Late

And here’s one more bonus statistic: According to Rakuten, 26% of companies have yet to take any action regarding an omnichannel strategy.

It generally costs a brand more to win a new customer than retain an existing one. With an omnichannel marketing strategy in place, brands can not only have an edge on their competition for new customers, but they can also build long-term loyalty amongst their existing customer base.

How Automated Scheduling Enables Customer Success

Posted on by Olga Kamylevich

Many retail, software and equipment companies offer warranties, maintenance or updates for their products. Who is it that is responsible for making sure these services happen for the customer? Whether it is the customer or the company that must set up a service appointment, the process of contacting a person and finding a mutually agreeable date and time is highly manual and can extend the time it takes to get a customer serviced.

Hassle-free scheduling and rescheduling

Everyone’s schedule is busy these days, and your customers are no exception. With automated scheduling, customers can easily see available times and sign up for the slot that works best for them. It only takes a few minutes out of the day, and there’s no back-and-forth involved. Your customers also get that same hassle-free experience if they need to reschedule. If something comes up, they can easily move their appointment with the click of a button.

Get connected with the right person — the first time

With an automated scheduling system, you can automatically route customer appointments to the right team member based on criteria like location, type of service, and availability. This reduces the probability that a customer will accidentally make an appointment at the wrong location, or with the team member who isn’t actually qualified to solve their particular problem. After all, nothing is more frustrating than taking time out of your busy day only to find there’s been a mixup.

Appointment planning made easy

When a customer sets up an appointment through your automated system, they have the option of having it automatically added to their digital calendar of choice. That makes one less step for them — saving them time — and also makes it less likely that they’ll miss the appointment. Equally helpful, they can choose to have reminders sent via email or text. The automatic reminders are not only convenient for customers, they can also provide an incredible benefit to your company.

Kaiser Permanente found that mobile reminders resulted in 1,837 fewer no-shows. This saved the company around $275,550. An average of $150 per appointment.

A Great customer experience

With automatic online scheduling, your customer can set their own appointment at their convenience. By providing a self-scheduling link embedded on your website, a reminder email or in a text, your customers can make appointments with your sales and support teams at any time, from any device. This lets them successfully take care of business at the moment that thinking about it — whether that’s in the subway on the way to work, on Sunday night when the planning for the next week, or at 3 AM while they’re browsing on their smartphone.

Your customer can also select to receive automatic reminders via text, email or phone. Thanks to a self-scheduling link, your customer can successfully connect with your company in minutes. You could cobble together a scheduling solution out of your CRM, paper, phone, email, and Post-Its. Or you could use a seamless solution that’s easy to install and configure. Save your energy — and your problem-solving creativity — for where it really counts: Giving your customers a phenomenal experience. 

With SUMO Scheduler, you get:

  • Ease of implementation with Salesforce
  • A single set of secure customer data, so there are no worries about syncing issues.
  • Detailed reporting and outcomes are at your fingertips.
  • Simple integration with the solutions you already use, like Outlook.
  • Ability to install anywhere: Your Salesforce® Community, portal, website, intranet, social media sites, automated emails, email newsletters, and more!

Invest in your call center’s success – Making after-call work time effective

Posted on by Olga Kamylevich

Service Against the Clock

Call center agents are pressured to be efficient and provide customers with a positive service experience. Agents have a list of tasks that need to be completed both during and after every interaction. They also have to work within a time limit on just about every task. One of these tasks is done after an interaction is completed. It’s referred to as After Call Work.  Take a look at this comment from a thread dedicated to After Call Work or ACW from the Reddit group r/talesfromcallcenters.

Don’t use After Call Work for after-call work

“My job allows us 45 seconds of ACW. Meanwhile, if someone is calling in with like 5 different issues they all have to go under 5 different categories with detailed notes. So we have to keep track to keep our call under 6 1/2 minutes while keeping detailed notes (no abbreviations at all) and actually working on the reason why they called in to begin with. It’s very hard for me to type and talk at the same time. I jot notes down so I don’t forget why they are calling but I either start typing what I’m saying or saying what I’m typing! I’m a fast typist and can get my notes done pretty quickly but not in 45 seconds! Especially for multiple reasons for calling in.” jennabellie. Reddit. Reddit, Inc. Web. 2017.

The Work of After Call Work

The work after a call involves a long list of information like call purpose, customer concerns, and call outcome. ACW activities can also include sending follow-up emails and forwarding requests to a supervisor. It is often a long list of information that must be logged before the agent can pick up their next call. It’s an important KPI for call centers no matter if they are inbound, outbound or hybrid of both functions. Some call centers limit a support agent’s ACW time, some push their agents to have a majority of the call notes recorded during their calls. As is apparent from the Reddit comment above, these approaches have still their pitfalls.

Managing the Minutes

Managing ACW tasks can be solved by combining internally created resources and processes with technology tailored to a call center’s needs. These are some of the universally recommended internal strategies and tools for managing ACW:

Make call text management practices a detailed part of your training process.
Set up a mentor program by pairing seasoned agents with agents that are new or struggling with managing their after call work activities.
Provide reusable repetitive call text that agents can cut and paste into their notes for common call issues.
Allow the use of an approved list of call center abbreviations to help with completing notations while on a call.
Create a bank of templates for emails responses for common issues.
Build a resource library of responses for common live chat questions.
Lastly, one of the most useful internal strategies is to practice continuous quality improvement measures. Ask for feedback from your agents on the after call processes and resources currently in place and regularly after implementing any changes. This practice can help in identifying what is working and what isn’t.

Supercharging the Minutes 

Working with your team can help curb the challenges agents face in managing their ACW tasks and time limitations. If you have this part of the equation figured out then it’s time to turn your attention to the technologies in place. CTI tools that work with your CRM will, among many other things, will provide more accurate customer records, call data and analytics on agent efficiency.  

At the foundation of a good call center technical stack is a good CRM (customer relationship management), like Salesforce. The blocks that build upon this foundation are CTI (computer telephony integration) applications. Important information is centralized in one location, easily obtained from your CRM after every call.

For example:

  • Call Tracking – Active call or even voicemail recordings can be automatically added to a customer case within your CRM and data entries can be programmed to populate a helpdesk ticket. CTI tools allow the syncing of data from phone calls to CRM and ticketing so call data doesn’t get siloed.
  • Note-Taking – CTI tools allow agents to directly update a CRM with non-call customer interactions from emails and texts to social media. 

The Domino Effect of Good ACW 

Although ACW occurs after an agent has interacted with a customer, it is important that is well-executed as it contributes to a customer’s level of satisfaction and overall experience. The information recorded benefits the customer should they need to interact again with your organization. 

There are customer cases that can require scheduling follow-up calls, consultations or service appointments. This is an opportunity to extend the quality of customer service that your call center provides. Rather than making it difficult for your customer to schedule a follow-up call or meeting, your agents can make it convenient for the customer by offering self-scheduling:

  • Scheduled maintenance like software and equipment updates 
  • Email drip updates on renewals
  • Schedule an appointment from a chat 
  • Incoming calls from customers to schedule initial consultation or service for a physical location

Self-scheduling is a convenience for both call centers and your customers. Customers value the ease of scheduling an appointment and are more apt to keep the appointment. And agents can spend more time on higher priority tasks rather than repeatedly calling or emailing a customer to set or reschedule an appointment.

Related resources: Invest in Your Call Center’s Success – Average Time in Queue

If you would like to consider appointment scheduling for your call center, SUMO Scheduler includes all the features discussed above. You can even make your own custom reports on any table or field in the database and have a report or collection of reports emailed to you every Monday AM before your management meeting. And as a Salesforce® native application, SUMO can extend the power of your Salesforce CRM and Service Cloud®.

SUMO extends the Service Cloud® with powerful scheduling features like:

  • a host of powerful auto-assignment modes.
  • Sending appointment invites from Salesforce to contacts from cases.
  • Inviting contacts to schedule with you or a co-worker.

Not to mention, the ease of data management as everything is in Salesforce with no need to manage two sets of customer data. Let one of our scheduling experts show you how we can help your agents be more productive, deliver better service faster, and improve your organization’s C-SAT.

Invest in Your Call Center’s Success – Average Time in Queue

Posted on by Olga Kamylevich

People still use the phone

Despite customer interaction channels like Twitter and live chat, the emergence of chatbots and evolving AI technology, many consumers still use the phone to communicate with companies.

Customers most certainly do use these digital channels for assistance. They will consult these channels and other resources that are available 24/7, like knowledge bases and forums, but they do so usually for simpler issues. When they use the phone to contact customer service, they are usually doing so because they want to talk to a real person about more complex issues.

The problem is it’s still a channel that struggles to deliver a positive customer experience.

Success is measured in seconds

There are a number of metrics that affect the high negative opinion customers have of calling call centers for assistance. Call center managers understand and track these metrics, but knowing the metrics important for their call center to succeed is often much easier than tracking them. One of these many KPIs (key performance indicators) for a call center is Average Time in Queue.

This KPI is a measure of the time a customer spends waiting in a call queue for a service or support representative to pick up their call. So in a nutshell, it’s all about how long your customers are waiting to talk to someone on your team and your call center’s success in this area is measured in seconds rather than minutes.

In 2017, Arise conducted a Google Consumer Survey of over 1,500 U.S. Consumers regarding the wait time they considered acceptable before hanging up the phone. From a selection of five options, the results tallied as such:

Why turn back the clock

Customers don’t like to wait on the line to talk to an agent no matter how entertaining the call waiting music. As the seconds on the clock tick away, so does your customer’s patience and confidence in your company. Reducing the time a customer waits on hold makes for not only happier customers but more loyal ones as well. And every second you are able to save your customers being on the phone creates a ripple effect that travels all the way down to your bottom line.

Customers are inclined to repeat their business with your company when their experience with your company is a positive one. And loyal customers are better for business than new ones. Loyal customers will stay with a company longer, tend to buy more and are inclined to recommend the company to others.

How to turn back the clock

Stealing back seconds from the clock starts with your call center team. Getting the opportunity to speak to a human being is, after all, the reason your customers are using the phone to contact your company. Here are a few ways to improve your Average Time in Queue statistics.

Training

You’ve already made the significant investment in hiring real people with the right set of hard and soft skills for helping your customers. These new hires will be representing your company to your valuable customers, so it is worth investing in training them well.

Start training on day zero. Start their training as soon as they are hired. Provide new hires access to a database of product and/or service knowledge, procedures, and call simulations to be reviewed before they start. You’ll have agents that will be more confident and capable of hitting the ground running.

Let them learn from the best. Choose your best call center agents to conduct training sessions and provide coaching. Give your new agents someone that can share their mistakes and successes, real-life call scenarios, and advice.

Never stop training. Be it a lunch and learn about new call center practices or a 15-minute session on a recent successful call, training should always be ongoing. No matter how experienced the agent, there is always something new to learn.

Tools

Besides providing good and consistent training, giving them the right technology will allow your agents to better serve your customers. Inbound and outbound tools can better support your agents and serve your customers.

Customer information, on-demand. Not just a useful tool for sales teams, a CRM (customer relationship management) platform is a long-term investment in the productivity and efficiency of your call center. The customer data stored on a CRM can give call center agents insights into the customer with whom they are interacting. Access to a centralized customer database helps improve call times. With a history of the customer’s purchases, services, issues, and their outcomes at their fingertips, agents can understand and even anticipate a customers’ needs.

Bridge the communication gap. CTI (computer telephony integration) software allows you to connect your call center’s computer interactions with your phone system and other communication channels like email, live chat, text messaging and even fax. Agents make and take calls from their desktops or laptops just by clicking on a number or a link. An added benefit is the software integrates with a CRM. This connection can retrieve a customer history so your agents know who is on the other side of the line and what their past interactions were with your company. In one click, agents can reduce their response time while being prepared for the interaction and greeting your customer by name.

Deliver one-click convenience. Sometimes your customer requires more than one interaction with your support agents. Finding a date and time that works for your customer can take more of your agent’s and customer’s time than expected. An appointment automation tool can simplify the booking process by giving your agents a single tool to manage appointments and enable multiple systems, like a CRM and calendars, to sync for full transparency across the entire call center team.

By providing a self-scheduling link in a follow-up email regarding a customer’s issue or case, your customer can self-schedule from an available set of time slots with the agent who knows their situation. This enables your agents to shorten their case close rates. A full service appointment automation tool will also provide real-time reporting and analytics. It allows you to build dashboards with the statistics that matter to your businesses. Your agents and managers can get real-time updates on customer experiences, and monitor important data such as appointment volume goals, staff utilization goals, and no-shows goals.

A puzzle worth solving

Effectively managing the Average Time in Queue in your call center certainly cannot be done with any one method or tool. The tools and processes you put in place are only as good as the people you have put in place as well. However as long as you support your investment in your people and provide them with a good set of call center technologies, you can deliver expect to deliver an excellent customer service experience and happiness more consistently.

If you would like to consider appointment scheduling for your call center, SUMO Scheduler includes all the features discussed above. You can even make your own custom reports on any table or field in the database and have a report or collection of reports emailed to you every Monday AM before your management meeting. And as a Salesforce native application, SUMO can extend the power of your Salesforce CRM and Service Cloud.

SUMO extends the Service Cloud® with powerful scheduling features like:

  • a host of powerful auto-assignment modes.
  • sending appointment invites from Salesforce to contacts from cases.
  • Inviting contacts to schedule with you or a co-worker.

Not to mention, the ease of data management as everything is in Salesforce with no need to manage two sets of customer data. Let one of our scheduling experts show you how we can help your agents be more productive, deliver better service faster, and improve your organization’s C-SAT.

Salesforce AppExchange Recommends these 9 Apps to Crush Your Goals

Posted on by Olga Kamylevich

The Salesforce AppExchange is a veritable treasure trove of business applications. As the world’s largest application marketplace for businesses, every application listed endeavors to help companies further improve the functionality of their Salesforce accounts and their reach to their customers.

However, with over 3,000 apps, it can be a little hard to keep up with everything that happens on the AppExchange. Fortunately, the AppExchange team has a helpful resource available to all partners and customers. One of the ways you can keep in the know is by accessing articles on the Ohana page of the AppExchange.

Delivering an assortment of content and information, Ohana has something for everyone.

Last week SUMO scheduler, along with 8 other Salesforce applications, was included in an Editor’s PIck listing of apps that can help you and your team not only end your year with a bang but also set your business on the path to nailing your 2018 goals.

Check it out here: Close 2017 Strong with These 9 Apps