Salesforce.com Incorporates Twitter, Facebook in Service Cloud 3

NEW YORK—Salesforce.com unveiled its Service Cloud 3 platform March 3, coupling the announcement to a high-profile event at New York City’s Javits Center headlined by CEO Marc Benioff.

The third iteration of Salesforce’s cloud-based customer service platform lets businesses analyze and respond to customer feedback filtering from social networks such as Twitter and Facebook. The company claims those businesses will be able to manage immense amounts of data through those channels.

Should a customer Tweet or post a Facebook message about a company’s product, and that company uses Service Cloud 3, employees will be able to click on a dashboard tab labeled “Social Conversations” and see that customer’s missive in real-time. Employees can also monitor broader swaths of data, via dashboard metrics such as “Twitter Volume by Product” or “Cases by Channel.”

In addition, employees can also escalate a customer’s case for their colleagues’ attention, and post a solution to a particular issue on a Facebook wall or Twitter. Salesforce has also begun leveraging mobile devices’ video-conferencing features, notably Apple’s FaceTime, to allow customer representatives to resolve an issue in a more face-to-face way. 

The introduction of Service Cloud 3 comes as part of a rapid cycle of product releases from Salesforce.com. In September, the company unveiled Chatter 2, the next version of its Chatter collaboration platform, which allows employees to post comments and share files in a Facebook-style environment. In December, it unveiled Database.com, a standalone cloud database for IT pros creating applications.

For more, read the eWeek article: Salesforce.com Introduces Service Cloud 3.