The announcements made at Dreamforce 2015 are sure to impact the way contact centers do business. Among the multiple days of keynote speakers, parties, classes and showcases, five announcements stand out as being most relevant to contact centers. The following five products announced at Dreamforce, if leveraged correctly, will help contact centers increase efficiency and improve customer relationships.
1. Salesforce IQ
Last year Salesforce acquired RelateIQ, and this year at Dreamforce they announced their new product Salesforce IQ. SalesforceIQ is a powerful CRM tool that integrates information from calendars, emails, calls, and marketing software into a CRM system. SalesforceIQ makes CRM data easy to manage, and makes understanding a contact center’s relationship with its customers simple.
2. IoT Cloud
The IoT (Internet of Things) Cloud allows contact centers to easily gather data from every connected device that their customers use. The IoT Cloud is on the new Thunder Platform, and the goal of the cloud is to help Salesforce users, including most contact centers, capture and analyze data to better understand who their customers are and where they are coming from.
3. Updates to Analytics Cloud
Analytics Cloud, the Salesforce business intelligence tool, is getting some significant updates. Some of the additions include wave actions, which allows contact centers to create their own custom actions within Salesforce, embedded dashboards; which allows contact center employees to embed dashboards from the Analytics Cloud to other parts of Salesforce, and lightning reports; which provides a new Analytics Cloud interface for dashboards and report creation.
4. Strengthened Partnership with Microsoft
Salesforce and Microsoft are continuing to invest in their joint partnership. Skype for Business, OneNote, Office Delve, and Office Graph will be integrated into Salesforce, and Salesforce will release an app for Windows 10. Perhaps the most relevant benefit for contact centers is the ability to make Skype voice and video calls from within Salesforce, adding another channel customers can use to contact the center.
5. Cortana Voice Search
Another product of the Salesforce and Microsoft partnership is the integration of the Cortana Analytics Suite into Salesforce. Contact center employees can now use their voice to run queries on their Sales Cloud. Power BI Dashboards will also be integrated into Salesforce, so sales forecasts will be available on dashboards and charts on Sales Cloud. Contact Centers will be able to save time by easily accessing these dashboards and charts and better understand how their contact center is functioning.
