salesforce service leader award

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This article is reprinted from the March 2013 issue of CRM magazine, published by Information Today, Inc. Used with permission. All rights reserved. Individuals may download,store, and print a single copy. All commercial uses including making printed copies for distribution in bulk at trade shows or in marketing campaigns and all commercial reprintsrequire additional permission from the publisher. www. infotoday.com

Although SugarCRM did not score as high as some of the leaderboard contenders, it had a solid tally of 3.9 for cost, which cannot be ignored. As more companiesneed and want affordable and comprehensive ways to service their customers, SugarCRM has a fighting chance in the future. SugarCRM narrowly edged outPegasystems as our One to Watch this year, and earned a score of 3.7 for company direction because of its “good, solid road map,” as Leggett puts it. —K.L.

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REPUTATION FORCUSTOMER SATISFACTION

REPUTATION FOR DEPTH OF FUNCTIONALITY

REPUTATION FOR COMPANY DIRECTION TOP 3 VERTICALS

Microsoft DynamicsOracle

ParatureSalesforce.com

FINANCIAL SERVICES, PROFESSIONAL SERVICES, GOVERNMENT

FINANCIAL SERVICES, RETAIL, COMMUNICATIONS

TECHNOLOGY AND SOFTWARE, EDUCATION, GAMING AND MEDIA

FINANCIAL SERVICES, HIGH-TECH, RETAIL

THE MARKETCustomer case management has continued to evolve as more compa-nies want—and need—comprehensive ways to manage their customersupport life cycles. “Certainly we’re seeing the arrival of mobile accessto case management as a necessary-to-have as opposed to a nice-to-have,”remarks Rebecca Wettemann, vice president of research at NucleusResearch.

In addition, vendors that seamlessly integrate social support capa-bilities, along with mobile, will offer the most productivity gains. If acompany has “poor” case management practices, the evidence is thatmuch more amplified and “more visible to the broader social commu-nity,” Wettemann adds. Companies are expected to do it all—frommanaging traditional support channels, such as the telephone, to mon-itoring customer communities—all while finding a way to bridge sup-port channels while keeping customer communications in context.

THE LEADERSMicrosoft Dynamics CRM came in as one of the most cost-effective so-lutions, earning a 3.9 in the deployment cost criteria. Its score for com-pany direction, 3.7, was among the highest, with analysts praising its“investment in usability.” According to Wettemann,“Having an intuitiveuser environment…integrated with email and other communicationchannels is really important, [and Microsoft has taken] significant stepsto increase the depth and breadth” of its case management functionality.

Eyes were on Oracle following its acquisition of cloud customer serv-ice provider RightNow Technologies last year, and this year, the acqui-sitions continued. Oracle’s snap-up of Collective Intellect will enablecompanies to monitor, analyze, and respond to consumer conversationson platforms like Facebook and Twitter. Oracle also released OracleKnowledge 8.5 to bring enterprise data insights to online customer com-munities, and agent-assisted and Web self-service interactions. Answer-Flow for Contact Centers in the Knowledge 8.5 product gives agentsautomated guidance on issue resolution, and is integrated with Siebel

and Oracle CRM OnDemand. Oracle Siebel has “exhaustive and maturecase management capabilities with vertical support for case managementprocesses by industry,” says Kate Leggett, principal analyst at ForresterResearch.

Parature was another strong performer. Though its customer satis-faction score dipped slightly, from 4.1 last year to 3.8, John Ragsdale,vice president of technology research at the Technology Services Indus-try Association, calls Parature an “increasingly sophisticated suite.” Thisyear, it released Parature Social Monitor, a social media monitoring andresponse product available within Parature’s broader Customer ServiceSuite. Parature says its multichannel platform allows agents to managephone, email, social, and Web customer correspondences all in oneplace. Parature added mobile customer support capabilities with itsParature for Mobile product, making it “a very good acquisition targetfor one of the bigger players, both because of the breadth of its customerbase and the development they’ve done around social and mobile,”Wet-temann says.

THE WINNERHats off to Salesforce.com, our category champion for the second yearstraight. As Leggett puts it, Salesforce.com has “a [visionary] road mapfor all customer touchpoints.” The company’s customer satisfactionscore increased from 3.9 to 4.1 this year, and it continued to dazzle an-alysts with its solution scope. Salesforce.com continued its streak of ac-quisitions this year, with a $70 million acquisition of GoInstant, acobrowsing solution that lets multiple users browse the Web togetherin customer support or e-commerce cases. Company direction re-mained steady at 4.4, the highest ranking in the category.Salesforce.com announced its launch of Chatter Communities for Ser-vice, bringing together Web self-service and peer-to-peer communityfunctionality amid a flurry of features and updates announced at thisyear’s Dreamforce conference. At year’s end, Salesforce.com was on tar-get to reach $3 billion in revenue. —Kelly Liyakasa

Customer Case Management

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LivePerson fell short of the leaderboard, but it’s not without potential. According to Leslie Ament, senior vice president and senior analyst at Hypatia ResearchGroup, LivePerson’s multichannel engagement software, which includes LP Chat, LP Email, LP Voice, and LP Knowledgebase, LP Insights, and LP Marketer, isnoteworthy because it allows companies to support customers using comprehensive customer data gathered from various channels. “Larger enterprises seeking acomprehensive solution should consider short-listing this vendor,” Ament says. —J.A.

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THE MARKETIn the age of the empowered consumer, contact centers face increas-ing pressure to assist customers from a multitude of channels. “Cus-tomers want answers and solutions wherever they are…and onwhatever device they use, such as desktops, laptops, and mobile,”comments Mitch Kramer, senior vice president of the Patricia Sey-bold Group. “Also, customers never want to tell their story more thanonce, so Web support must capture it and use it as customers crossdevices and channels.” Vendors have responded by offering products,which, to varying degrees, allow companies to support their cus-tomers on multiple channels through one platform. As Web supportcontinues to evolve, Kramer adds, we can expect to see mobile sup-port and voice-enabled virtual agents playing a more prominent rolein this space.

THE LEADERSAnother recent Oracle acquisition, InQuira, landed on the leaderboardafter being last year’s one to watch. Rebranded as Oracle KnowledgeManagement, the company received a respectable 3.5 in customer sat-isfaction, a 3.3 in depth of functionality, and a 3.0 in company direc-tion. Although InQuira is strong in certain areas, its offerings need tobe expanded or integrated with other solutions to provide full Websupport, analysts say. InQuira has a “best-in-breed knowledge manage-ment” system, Leggett notes, but “it lacks customer-facing capability.”Kramer agrees, noting that “InQuira has an excellent search engine andknowledge management system, but they are standalone products.”

Moxie Software maintained its hold on the leaderboard with a 3.7in company direction and a 3.8 for both customer satisfaction anddepth of functionality. The company, according to Leggett, has a “solidroad map that blends customer and employee engagement solutions.”One such solution is Spaces by Moxie, launched last spring, which letsorganizations combine their customer communications with employee

collaborations on a single platform. “Our suite makes it easier for or-ganizations to find and deliver the right answer to customers throughtheir channel of choice,” according to a company statement.

Oracle RightNow held on to its strong 4.0 depth of functionality scoreand received a slight increase in its company direction score over lastyear, moving from a 3.0 to 3.5. Compared to its competitors, however,RightNow’s offerings are limited, says Ovum senior analyst AphroditeBrinsmead. “RightNow has a good range of products, but its tools forknowledge management or Web chat are not as fully featured as thoseprovided by specialist players InQuira and LivePerson,” Brinsmead re-marks. While Oracle continues to integrate RightNow into its other of-ferings and further strengthen it, customer satisfaction has taken a hitas reflected in its score, which slipped from a 4.0 to 3.8. According toForrester principal analyst Kate Leggett, RightNow has a “robust set ofWeb support capabilities,” but “customer communication has sufferedsince the acquisition.”

THE WINNERClaiming the top spot for the second year in a row, Salesforce.com alsograbbed the highest score in company direction, with a 4.3. The com-pany, according to Leggett, “beefed up its offering with recent acquisi-tions such as GoInstant for cobrowsing” and has “one of the mostaggressive and visionary road maps.” In addition, Salesforce scored wellonce again in customer satisfaction and depth of functionality, receiv-ing a 3.7 and 3.6, respectively.“Salesforce.com has a comprehensive so-lution,” Kramer says. “The Web support works very tightly with itscontact center support…giving you a thorough interface to dosearches, capture cases, and more.” Among its product enhancementsthis past year, Salesforce.com extended its Service Cloud with Chatter Communities for Service, enabling customers to tap into a private social community of industry peers and company ex-perts. —Judith Aquino

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REPUTATION FORCUSTOMER SATISFACTION

REPUTATION FOR DEPTH OF FUNCTIONALITY

REPUTATION FOR COMPANY DIRECTION TOP 3 VERTICALS

Moxie SoftwareInQuira (Oracle)

Oracle RightNowSalesforce.com

FINANCIAL SERVICES, HIGH-TECH, MANUFACTURING AND RETAIL

RETAIL, TELECOMMUNICATIONS, FINANCIAL SERVICES

RETAIL, HIGH-TECH, FINANCIAL SERVICES

FINANCIAL SERVICES, HIGH-TECH, MANUFACTURING AND RETAIL

Web Support

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SECOND ONLY TO NINTENDO in the worldwide video game pub-lishing and interactive entertainment sectors, Activision Blizzard isratcheting up the competition.

The $4.7 billion company, which has millions of gamers as customers,has built its gaming empire thanks to several popular products, such asGuitar Hero, Call of Duty, and, most recently, Diablo III and World of War-craft: Mists of Pandaria. The video game developer creates entertainmentfor online, console, handheld, and mobile devices. Activision’s manygamers stay connected to their games and each other through social net-works and mobile applications, inspiring the company to update its serv-ice model.

Just one year ago, Activision Blizzard still managed its call center inwhat Melanie Marcell, the company’s senior manager of Web strategyand support solutions, calls “a very traditional model.” With very littleWeb site support, gamers were, essentially, forced to rely on telephonesupport. And, Marcell adds, “what that meant for the company was avery big bill at the end of the year.” But beyond the general cost per call,the company also knew that forcing such digitally savvy consumers towait in telephone queues could easily disenfranchise them.

Activision began to explore solutions that would give it the flexibil-ity it needed to service its gamers in the channel of their choice. LastMarch, the company selected Salesforce.com Service Cloud and wasable to roll out the product globally and across three of its contact cen-ters within 90 days. But Activision didn’t stop there. In the past, thecompany had been plagued with lack of connectivity between its mul-tiple sites. For instance, if a customer accessed Activision through a

marketing site and then clicked on “Support,” he would have to gothrough the trouble of logging back in.

As a result, the company overhauled its Web site, enhanced its self-service experience online, and integrated the primary Activision gamerdatabase with its Web site to have easy access to gamer profiles. “Wewanted to know who [our customers] were the moment they clickedon Support,” Marcell maintains. “We wanted to know the challengesthey were facing and lead them down a path where they could findthe answers they need, check on their cases, or chat with an agent.”

Since deploying Service Cloud, Marcell says Activision’s Web sitetraffic numbers have doubled. Of all of its support channels, the Website now accounts for 80 percent of customer service traffic, whereasthe telephone used to make up that share. After deploying ServiceCloud, Activision handled more than 509,000 customer cases onlinein 2012, and saw its Web volume reach 2.6 million unique visitors with13 million page views.

Activision integrated social media customer service platform Radian6into its support mix,and is expanding the integration to tie social customersupport issues back to Service Cloud to keep customer service cases in con-text. Marcell says that Service Cloud has been paramount to improvingagent performance, and gamers are getting support in the language theyspeak. “Now that there are options, customers are going to the self-serv-ice channel,”she says.“A lot of our gamers either prefer social or the Web.”

Internally, Activision support agents began using Salesforce.com’senterprise collaboration tool Chatter as a way to team up on supportissues. In the past, agents would rely only on static, knowledge-basedarticles in a database, but now, when customer support issues areidentified, they are shared collaboratively and then “shared withdevelopment studios, which is fed into the product developmentcycle,” Marcell remarks.

With Activision’s customer support solutions more fine-tuned forits customer base, the company is eyeing ways to deepen its commu-nity footprint. Online platform Call of Duty Elite was launched withboth free and paid subscription features. The community platformallows gamers to “join competitive clans or social groups, track andshare thousands of stats with friends, create custom leaderboards, andupload and share videos of their greatest Call of Duty game playmoments with friends,” said Robert Schmid, Activision’s chief infor-mation officer, in a statement. —Kelly Liyakasa

Game Developer Answers the Social CallACTIVISION GAINS CUSTOMER INSIGHT AND FLEXIBILITY WITH SALESFORCE.COM

BY IMPLEMENTING SALESFORCE.COM SERVICE CLOUD,RADIAN6, AND CHATTER, ACTIVISION HAS: • Handled 509,000-plus customer cases;• Doubled its Web site traffic;• Grown Web support to 80 percent of its support channel distribution;• Seen Web volume reach 2.6 million unique visitors with 13 million page views; and• Increased collaboration among customer service agents, managers, and product

development teams.

“We wanted to know thechallenges [our customerswere] facing and lead themdown a path where they couldfind the answers they need,check on their cases, or chatwith an agent.” —MELANIE MARCELL

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YAMAHA OF AMERICA has always had an ear for music, but for mostof its existence, when it came to customer data, it lacked an eye for detail.

For Yamaha, a provider of musical instruments and audio and videoequipment, everything was locked in disparate and outdated applica-tions, systems, and databases.

Then in July 2011 it rolled out the Salesforce.com Service Cloud andSales Cloud applications to consolidate customer data across its sales,marketing, credit, operations, and artist relations divisions, as well asservice and support. Now communications are integrated across alldepartments, enabling employees to address customer concerns in atimely manner. The company can also better manage customer profiledata, Web behavior, surveys, marketing campaigns, and contracting.

“Wow! Look at all this information that we can now do stuff with,”says Jeff Hawley, director of the customer experience group at Yamahaof America. “There’s a whole new treasure trove of previously latentdata.”

Yamaha worked with Salesforce.com partner WisdomNet to createa security model and customized applications for a wide range of userrequirements. It also worked with Deloitte Consulting to bring onlinea customized integration between Salesforce, Facebook, and Twitter,essentially adding a social component to its contact center and customer service processes. Now, if someone tweets about a problemwith an instrument, the software can find it, convert it into a case, androute it to the appropriate person or department for a response. Theapplications can match the social media posts with information in thecustomer database and pull that into the case record so that the agent

doesn’t have to ask for the information again when she picks up thecase file.

“Service Cloud is the big piece that fell into place so that our socialmedia cases flow in the same way as phone or email does,” Hawley says.“Our time per case is down. It’s very low now.”

For Yamaha, the average response time for customer posts on socialmedia sites like Twitter is about one-fifth of the average email responsetime. The company frequently grabs, responds to, and closes social caseswithin an hour of the original posting.

Social media interactions, Hawley adds,“are now a pretty big chunkof our channel split…and will soon surpass email.”

Social cases have increased from 10 a week to more than 10 a day,and the number continues to grow.

The same system has also helped Yamaha with its marketing efforts.The company has benefited from improved tracking and managementof customer information and activities associated with sales calls, tradeshows, and cross-channel marketing initiatives. And customer servicescores have increased because marketers can “look at marketing datato see how to better serve our customers,” Hawley points out.

The company has seen customer satisfaction with its Web site aloneincrease by 7 percent. Hawley says that gain is tied directly to new cus-tomer connectivity through social media.

Previously, Yamaha was getting 20 positive comments through socialmedia per month, according to Hawley. Now they’re getting hundreds.

Yamaha recognized that customers expect companies to know themand remember their histories. Consolidated customer profiles stored inSalesforce help keep track of customers and their social and nonsocialinteractions.“They all feed into Salesforce, whether they go through thephone, are sent through email, or post to one of our social media han-dles,” Hawley says.

Yamaha is also working to bring a frequently asked questionsknowledge base and user forum online. The expectation is that thiscapability will lead to a lot more one-and-done self-service cases,where customers post questions and find answers on their own with-out company intervention.

Rob Rose, a principal at Deloitte Consulting, commends Yamaha fortransforming its customer support processes and taking advantage ofSalesforce to deliver customer support via social media channels.

“This new system and approach has really changed our entire viewof social service,” Hawley says, “and it’s just the start.” —Leonard Klie

Salesforce ServiceCloud Hits the Right NoteYAMAHA IS MASTERING CUSTOMER SERVICEWITH SOCIAL MEDIA INTEGRATION

“There’s a whole newtreasure trove of previouslylatent data.” —JEFF HAWLEY

SINCE ADOPTING THE SALESFORCE.COM SERVICECLOUD SOLUTION, YAMAHA OF AMERICA HASBEEN ABLE TO:• Increase the number of cases handled via social media from

10 a week to 10 a day;• Increase customer satisfaction with its Web site by 7 percent; and• Increase positive social customer service Web feedback from

20 comments a month to hundreds a month.

salesforce service leader award

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