Salesforce.com Harnesses the Wisdom of Crowds in the Service Cloud

Bob Thompson

Perspective on "Service Cloud" by Natalie Petouhoff

I asked Natalie Petouhoff, the Forrester analyst who covers the CSS market, for comments on the Salesforce.com announcement. Posted with permission from two emails received on Jan 20:

Yes, ASP – SaaS – On-demand vendors have been around for the last 5-10 years… some of which started to offer on-demand customer service (CS) back in ~1998- case in point is eGain and RightNow.

I think that what is new here, it not really that SFDC is offering CS via a SaaS model/ in the cloud… but that they are providing a SaaS platform for customer service that allows for the integration of other SaaS apps-- like Facebook and Google.

Without the common platform you’d have a customer service app and 2 other SaaS apps. All individually can provide value. But without a common platform so that they work together, you are just getting the individual values.

But the futuristic thinking I think is that the SDFC platform provides the ability to take 3 apps and instead of 1 + 1 + 1 = 3 now you have 1+ 1 + 1 = 18…

ie because one is able to use these apps on the same platform AND integrate the unique benefits each app offers, there is an exponential value you can’t get otherwise.

Additional savings can come from email staff support reduction if the online community becomes a preferred interaction channel. Email is such a one-way channel, that most customers would prefer to interact in almost any other way.

Customers can interact with experts in a web community forum or in a discussion between friends in Facebook or other social networks- places where customers already go frequently. If the customer service solution is a SaaS solution it is easier to plug into communities like Facebook and harness the collective wisdom of the “tribe.” If agents can also work in the “cloud” they too can have access to the community tribal knowledge and wisdom. Plantronics is pioneering this new cloud system to provide customers with solutions like these.

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Here’s a little more detail on what I see…

Looks to me like a unique way to organize various SaaS solutions to serve the customer better... Here's how...

Let’s say a customer has a headset and they are having trouble with it. They might call the call center or look on the website for an answer. In the past, you’d have to read the manual, you’d call the call center or you'd asked your 10 year old nephew J. You'd be dependent on getting the right agent or hoping the website would have the right info for their particular headset. Using a unique combination of SaaS solutions in combination- salesforce.com + Facebook.com + google – the customer is provided with a community response that is more accurate, better researched and in many cases can’t be found any other way… i.e., its difficult for a headset company to test every single cell phone or land line phone for compatibility or other issues.

But many times customers have solved the very problem another customer needs the answer to. Having customers answer each other questions saves in product dev, testing and customer service. Online community participants have often encountered the same issues many customers are experiencing, have resolved them and generously desire to share their knowledge with other customers. This invaluable, practical product solution information is rarely obtainable in any other fashion. It would take a product development lab—dozens of trial scenarios to garner all the issues and provide them as knowledge management content in their databases for use by their agents. This is impractical based solely, but not limited, on the continuous stream of new products and services.

Thanks to Natalie for shedding some light on what this announcement means.

Bob Thompson

Bob Thompson

Finding the wisdom in the crowd

Good point, Chuck.

There's gold in them there hills! If only you know where to look, and how to spot "fools gold."

I think a key challenge of "crowdsourcing" information is quality control. As I understand it, Salesforce.com uses a voting mechanism to try to highlight potentially more relevant info. The theory being if someone write a tip/suggestion/fix, and others find it useful and vote it up or rate it highly, then maybe it's a candidate for information to be included in the formal KB.

Of course, there are wackos out there with nothing better to do than try to game any system. Imagine a competitor putting a false tip about how to fix a product, then organizing a voting campaign to make it look popular.

There's a solution: real people with real brains and judgment.

All that said, I see community knowledge as a way to leverage already overworked agents. Yes, I agree companies should try to establish their own communities, but why not also leverage the conversations outside the enterprise. But the key is how service managers, and the systems they use, vet the info to ensure what customers consume is correct.

Bob Thompson, CustomerThink Corp.
Blog: Unconventional Wisdom