Salesforce Service Cloud integrates with Twitter - Why and What’s New?

Salesforce.com, a notable CRM service provider are integrating Service Cloud customer-service platform with Twitter. Launched in January, the Service Cloud combines concepts like online customer communities, social networking, knowledge base information, and making data from cloud services like Facebook and Twitter available to e-mail, phone and chat-based customer service representatives.

What Can You Do?

As Business Standard explains with a relevant example,

Salesforce.com showed how someone working for a telecom provider could spot and track a discussion about a headset that a user was having trouble with. The telecom worker could dig through their company’s internal knowledge base and then send the Twitter user a link to a help document.

Salesforce.com announced that you can now search, monitor, and join conversations specifically on Twitter:

• Search: find mentions on Twitter.
• Monitor: track subsequent mentions and replies.
• Join: become an active participant in the conversation.

Why is it Important

If you have read our previous article about Twitter- if it is a threat for Google? then you know that Twitter has one advantage that Google doesn’t. Twitter has real time information sharing by people’s communication. Google needs its crawlers to visit a place and index it and then put it at display. In this fast moving world, isn’t it better to know about the thing right when it comes out. Twitter is up to the minute (unlike Google). This matters in customer service. You cannot say, “Sorry, Google’s crawler hasn’t yet found this, we will get back to you.” Or say “ma’am don’t you think you were too quick to question?” when speaking to an irate customer. That is where Customer relationship managers at Twitter can help you. It is by my opinion, the ideal platform for any CRM solutions provider.

The New Salesforce.com - 5 Ways to Communicate

• Online communities – Give your customers a place to have their conversations. Along with self-service, it’s a place to share ideas, get help or training, and interact with other customers and your company.
• Social networks – Tap into those places your customers already frequent. The Service Cloud is open, so you can easily plug into communities like Facebook or Twitter to harness their collective wisdom.
• Phone, email, & chat – Bring your agents into the conversation. Give them access to the same experts and answers that until today only lived in the cloud. Let them share knowledge through every channel.
• Partners – Your business and service partners can also join the Service Cloud. Share customer information, answers, and access to the best minds in any company, anywhere.
• Search – Google is the first place many of us turn to for answers today. Because the Service Cloud lives on the Internet, your customers can quickly access your knowledge and resources with a simple Web search.

This is a very interesting step taken by salesforce.com. Its success won’t only mean just another milestone for twitter. But it will surely put up a big question about the market of instant news and the importance of tracking real time web interactivity. Do we see a day when Google won’t be the first home I will go to search for a news? Miles to go though.