As more and more people use SMS and messaging apps like Facebook Messenger to interact with friends, it’s only logical that they want to interact with business that way too — and today Salesforce launched LiveMessage, a tool that helps customer service reps manage messaging traffic just like any customer interactions in Service Cloud. All of the message traffic, regardless of the, tool appears in a tabbed view in Service Cloud, just as it does with phone or web chats. The new functionality involves a couple of different approaches to messaging: talking to a human and communicating using bots. Salesforce is offering Service Cloud bots, or customers can plug in a third-party bot to communicate via automated interactions in messenger clients. The key here, though, is to provide avenues for two-way communication between the company and the customer via a message interface. Service Cloud is offering a way to give that two-way interactions between consumers and companies that we are used to having with our friends. When we get a text, we expect to be able to respond — and this new functionality allows us to do that — whether we are interacting with an automated response bot or a human. “We don’t view this as bots [versus human] agents. Flynn-Ripley indicated one of the advantages of going with messaging is that companies see a sharp drop-off in phone traffic when customers open a messaging channel in Service Cloud. “Live messaging becomes 15-20 percent of [customer service] interactions in a matter of weeks,” she says.
As more and more people use SMS and messaging apps like Facebook Messenger to interact with friends, it’s only logical that they want to interact with business that way too — and today Salesforce launched LiveMessage, a tool that helps customer service reps manage messaging traffic just like any customer interactions in Service Cloud.
For starters, it supports SMS/MMS and Facebook Messenger, but over the next year the company expects to add support for other message apps, as well.
Service Cloud customers can set up a SMS messaging interaction in less than a day through a company’s 800 number. This new functionality is built with technology that came from the HeyWire acquisition in September. All of the message traffic, regardless of the, tool appears in a tabbed view in Service Cloud, just as it does with phone or web chats.
The new functionality involves a couple of different approaches to messaging: talking to a human and communicating using bots. Companies could use a combination of the two, starting with bots for simple interactions, then transferring to humans for more complex questions.
Salesforce is offering Service Cloud bots, or customers can plug in a third-party bot to communicate via automated interactions in messenger clients….
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