The News
On April 17, 2018 Salesforce announced
their next-generation Field Service Lightning, which shall take customer
experiences to new heights.
The release implements four major
improvements, which are:
·
The ability to easily plug in
an appointment management into a web site
·
Simplified initiation and
execution of return processes by customers and technicians
·
The ability to select and
dispatch repair crews for more complicated service jobs based upon abilities
and availabilities
·
A guided setup using a visual
wizard to set up Field Service Lightning and that reduces the number of clicks
necessary to get started by approximately two thirds on average.
Below is the full text of the announcement.
Alternatively you can read it here.
Next-Generation Field Service
Lightning Takes Customer Experiences to New Heights
Paolo Bergamo, SVP and GM, Field
Service Lightning & Mobile
4.17.18
If you’ve ever spent a day waiting
for the washing machine repair person or the utilities worker to show up, you
know how trying it can be. But, when that employee shows up on time, armed with
the right parts and is able to fix your problem on their first visit, you’re
amazed. Even delighted. It feels like the company has your back.
Here at Salesforce, we’re
laser-focused on provided a connected customer experience. That’s the main
reason why we launched Field Service Lightning two years ago. We wanted to
extend the world’s #1 service platform, Service Cloud, to field service - to
equip mobile employees and dispatchers with all the information they need to
provide customers with a connected experience that simply “wows”.
And today we’re excited to announce
the next generation of Field Service Lightning that empowers companies to
provide world-class service experiences in the field.
· Appointment Management: Ever spent 20 minutes on hold just
trying to schedule an appointment with a company? Our new Snap-ins Appointment
Management makes it easy for businesses to embed a scheduling interface on
their website (with just one line of code!) and empowers customers to easily
create and manage appointments on their own time and from any device.
· Return Orders simplify the return process for customers
and technicians. Customers can initiate a return from a company’s website, or
field technicians can create return orders onsite. This means a quick,
headache-free return not only for the customer, but also for the mobile worker
who is assigned to retrieve the product.
· Crew Scheduling allows dispatchers to assign a crew
of multiple people to a job, which is especially critical for complex projects
like oil rigs repairs and elevator installations. Now dispatchers can assign
different crew members based on their skill levels and expertise, so every job
gets done right, the first time.
And of course … we never forget our
Trailblazers! They need simple tools to customize their Field Service Lightning
experience.
· Guided Set-Up offers an easy, visual wizard that
walks admins through a simplified set-up process, reducing clicks to get
started with Field Service Lightning by approximately 66%, on average. The
wizard walks admins through the process to configure territories, job types,
and appointment booking windows to make the initial set-up a breeze. Based on
our expertise in field service, admins can establish the minimum viable
requirements to get their field service team up and running in a matter of
minutes.
What’s been most rewarding for us
since launching Field Service Lightning is the momentum from our ecosystem and
customer Trailblazers. Because it is built on the Service Cloud platform, Field
Service Lightning is highly customizable.
GearsCRM, a Salesforce Gold
Consulting Partner, has deployed 15 diverse implementations of Field Service
Lightning. “We’ve seen the immediate benefits that a truly mobile and connected
workforce can bring to customers. With Field Service Lightning, our clients are
able to provide a first class support experience to their customers and make
their mobile workers’ jobs easier. It’s a win-win,” says Harry Radenberg,
President and CEO of GearsCRM.
Pricing & Availability
· Return orders and guided set-up are
available today for no additional cost with any Field Service Lightning
license.
· Crew scheduling is available with Field
Service Lightning Dispatcher and Field Service Lightning Plus at no additional
cost.
· Snap-ins appointment management will be
available in pilot at no additional cost starting in June 2018 to customers
with a Field Service Lightning and Community Cloud license.
Additional information
· Check out this interactive guide for field service Trailblazers
Both, the ordering and the return order process,
are built upon powerful workflow and rule processing engines and can be widely
tailored to customers’ needs. They help the user through the process with a
kind of guided procedure and, where necessary, use AI based tools to come to
good suggestions. Demoing the new system, Salesforce uses a cable TV upgrade as
their scenario for scheduling and also for returning the old part.
 |
| Snap-In Appointments Manager; image: Salesforce |
The crew scheduling functionality helps
optimizing the schedules and repair times using an algorithm that calculates
repair times based upon the skill sets of the technicians in the crew and the
crew size.
Overall, the release of Field Service
Lightning is targeted towards delivering an improved on-site experience for
both, the customer and the employee, says Dana Chery, Sr.
manager of product marketing at Salesforce.
The bigger Picture
Field Service Lightning itself has been
launched a bit more than 2 years ago and is used in a variety of industries as
diverse as health care and retail. It is heavily invested into since. As
Salesforce does not communicate customer numbers broken down by product line it
is hard to assess product traction, though.
MyPoV and Advice
Looking at the demo scenarios that
Salesforce presents the processes are well thought through and efficient.
The four main new features are addressing
the needs of customers, users, and admins alike, streamlining processes. This
streamlining includes the setup that with its wizard interface can be executed
without consultants as long as the demands to the system are not overly
complex. This now sounds worse than it is meant, as I do think that the vast
majority of Field Service Lightning will benefit from this.
As an interesting aside, when being asked
whether the process of creating an appointment via snap-ins Appointment
Management can also be executed via voice commands, e.g. using Alexa or Siri,
the execs couldn’t comment on it. This leads to the speculation that something
is in the works here. While voice is not yet mainstream the combination of this
well structured process with the, for humans, most convenient form of
communication would make a lot of sense – and Salesforce has the reputation of
being a frontrunner.
These times the way of distinguishing
oneself from competition is no more via functions and features but by enabling
a smooth and frictionless experience for customers and users alike. I think
that for the targeted processes Salesforce succeeded with this release, also
continuing to show that advanced analytics features (aka AI) can positively
contribute without being hyped or even pushed into the foreground. AI is an
enabler in the background. With this release core functionalities got a solid
makeover towards the above-mentioned frictionless experience. This should make
Salesforce’s Field Service Lightning and therefore Service Cloud even more
attractive for customers. Kudos for this.
I am looking forward to hearing more from
Field Service Lightning. Perhaps something that includes the integration
cloud (Mulesoft acquisition)? Prebuilt integrations into other vendor’s
customer service solutions could make things real exciting in the highly
competitive field service market.
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