What is the most powerful feature in Salesforce Service Cloud? It’s hard to point to just one with the robust suite of components that Service Cloud offers, but if we have to pick, the Lightning Service Console is the clear winner. But why is this?

The Lightning Service Console is like a modern command and control center for your contact center agents. It brings together all the information and tools in a central location, empowering your users to be 28% more productive, deliver 31% faster contact resolution, and increase customer satisfaction by 32%.

The console provides agents a contextual and complete view of the customer so that they can provide customers with the right help upon the first contact. It enables agents to know the customer and deliver a smarter, consistent, connected, and personal experience across all service channels. It is also optimized for the contact center to help achieve improvement across every key metric such as CSAT, agent productivity, first and faster case resolution, among others.

The console brings together many benefits in a single and modern interface. Let’s explore just some of the many features of the powerful Lightning Service Console.

 

Basic features

Reduced clicking and scrolling: The layouts that minimize clicks and scrolling. For example, case activity and history, related cases, account and contact details, products and services, assets, etc. are all easily accessible from the interface without having to open new windows or tabs.

Omni-channel: Agents have a unified interface to work cases from all channels including phone, chat, SMS, email, web, social, etc. Agents can seamlessly transition between channels depending on the level of support and appropriate interaction. And now, bots can escalate to an agent who can take over the conversation directly in the console.

Knowledge: The Lightning Service Console provides agents with automatic recommendations based on the case description or type. This way, agents can get accurate, high-quality answers to customers that resolve the issue the first time. Knowledge is also helpful in reducing agent time to proficiency.

SLAs, Contracts, and Entitlements: Agents can quickly determine if customers are entitled to support. They can further track compliance against service milestones to ensure they are delivering on commitments to customers.

Macros: Macros can be used to automate everyday repetitive tasks to optimize agent productivity. For example, a macro can be configured to respond to a specific question, like insurance policy details, by inserting text to an email, sending the email, and setting the case status to resolved – converting 4+ clicks into a single action.

Community 360: This is a feature for those offering Self Service through a Community Cloud. The Service console provides insight into pages and articles the customer has visited on the community so that the Agent can pick up and help the customer from that point, and not have to repeat information the customer already viewed.

Utility Bar: The Utility bar gives agents quick access to tools and apps they use the most. Apps are anchored at the bottom of the console and bring up the app in a docked panel, so Agents don’t have to look anywhere else.

 

Connect your business across teams  with Lightning Service Console

One of the most significant benefits of the Salesforce platform is its innate ability to connect every aspect of your business. This includes the Lightning Service Console, too.

For example, the relationship between Sales and Service can be so much more effective to the business and customers when the teams are connected and have the right information to do right by the customer. Information such as customer sentiment and case history is invaluable to Sales when they are asking for renewals or asking the customer to buy more from the company. Service teams want to provide top-notch service to customers who are about to make a purchasing decision.

Similarly, connecting Customer Service with Product Development teams, IT services, Accounting, etc. will ensure that Agents have the information they need to resolve customer issues effectively and expeditiously.

The power of the Lightning Service Console can be further extended with workspace apps, for example, an RMA or Credit Card replacement app, Warranty Claims, etc. This allows for business specific functions to be seamlessly integrated with the agent workspace. Your agents should be able to easily access information from and effortlessly communicate with other departments to resolve cases fast.

As customer service operations have become an integral part of customer success, developing a 1:1 relationship across departments is a key factor enabling agents with a 360-degree customer view to deliver personalized service.

 

Cater the Console to your specific industry needs

Additionally, the Console can be configured to meet specific business needs and industry use cases. For example:

Financial Services: spend, accounts and balances, transaction history, and loans.

Manufacturing: products, install base, service contracts, and warranty status

Insurance: client information, claims, policy information, and beneficiaries

Healthcare: medical records, medical history, insurance information, prescription information

Retail: customer lifetime value, rewards program, recent purchases, etc.

 

This is only the tip of the iceberg for what the console can offer. With all the information and tools the agent needs to complete their work and provide smart personalized service directly at their fingertips, there is no wonder the Lightning Service Console ranks at the top of our favorite Service Cloud features. Want to find out how Simplus can help you get the most out of your Lightning Service Console instance? Reach out to us today!