Salesforce Flies To The Top With CRM Magazine Awards

Originally posted to bluewolf.com

Right from my airplane seat, I validated why I love working for Bluewolf and why we are a Salesforce Platinum partner. I was thumbing through the March issue of CRM Magazine, which featured its Service Awards for 2013, to see Salesforce Service Cloud lauded as the leader in both the CRM and contact center spaces. 

This came as no surprise. After spending more than 30 years in the contact center industry, I am continually blown away by salesforce.com’s innovation and how effective case management is within the Service Cloud platform. Salesforce.com was the winner in Customer Case Management category for the second year in a row and with an increased customer satisfaction score (from 3.9/5 to 4.1/5). 

A case is much more than just managing an incident. The real difficulty in case management lies in the ability to associate a communication instance to a customer, no matter the channel. In this, the level of client history and information captured is critical when tracking communications. With the customized agent console (a browser window that is designed with the agent in mind) and strong computer telephony integration (CTI) capabilities, Service Cloud truly allows for a company and its agents to become what we call “customer-obsessed.” 

In the same Service Leader category, salesforce.com also claimed the top spot for Web Support with a 4.3/5 score for company direction, and for having “one of the most aggressive and visionary road maps.” Over the past year, Bluewolf has experienced this first-hand as we help our clients implement some of the strongest knowledge management and agent collaboration stories in the salesforce.com ecosystem. 

The continued integration of Chatter into the way companies search and collaborate greatly impacts a contact center’s success. Chatter Communities for Service will allow the contact center to engage customers in a more personalized and knowledgeable way. It will enable the customer to tap into a private social community of industry peers and service experts—think social crowdsourcing and forums wrapped up in a community of like-minded customers and high-level support agents. 

Salesforce.com was also listed as a leader in the category of Contact Center Search. CRM Magazine pointed to the additional functionality that has been added to the platform. The tool now allows agents to search content and solutions across the enterprise. Bluewolf provides the ‘how’ for Service Cloud by aligning business processes with the technology to enable agents to support customers across all channels—web, mobile, email, chat kiosk, etc. At Bluewolf, we have the second highest number of certified Service Cloud Consultants in the world—and closing in on #1. 

The real story in the CRM article revolved around what customers are doing with Salesforce to drive success. In the category, Service Elite, which recognizes top service companies, two of the top three companies listed are using Salesforce Service Cloud. 

Plane rides are never a lot of fun, but this one gave me some great insight into why so many Fortune 500 companies are turning to salesforce.com—and to Bluewolf!