To continue improving support KPIs after implementing Knowledge-Centered Support (KCS), utilizing the Search Activity Gaps dashboard component is recommended. This tool helps identify topics for which customers are searching but not finding satisfactory answers, guiding CK's efforts in creating new or updating existing articles to address these gaps and further enhance customer satisfaction and support efficiency.

The Omni-Channel Supervisor tab in the Lightning Service Console provides real-time visibility into the status of service agents, including who is currently available to accept new cases. This feature allows contact center managers to monitor and manage agent availability and workload effectively, ensuring efficient case distribution.

For Universal Containers to report on trends in Knowledge Searching, User Activity, and Data Category Usage, installing the Knowledge Base Reports and Dashboard package is recommended. This package provides pre-built reports and dashboards specifically designed for analyzing Knowledge usage and performance, enabling UC's analytics team to gain insights into Knowledge program effectiveness.

When additional requirements are discovered early in a project that has a fixed budget and timeline, the consultant's first step should be to document the gap in requirements and discuss the potential impacts on schedule and budget with the project team. This approach ensures that all stakeholders are aware of the changes and can collaboratively decide on the best course of action.​

Key Considerations:

Scope Management:Clearly defining and managing project scope is crucial. Any changes to the scope should be carefully evaluated for their impact on time and cost.​

Stakeholder Communication:Engaging with stakeholders to discuss the implications of additional requirements helps in setting realistic expectations and making informed decisions.​

Change Control Process:Before implementing any changes, it's essential to follow a formal change control process, which includes documenting the change, assessing its impact, and obtaining necessary approvals.​

By taking these steps, the consultant ensures that the project remains aligned with its objectives and constraints, and any deviations are managed in a controlled and transparent manner.​

For handling a high volume of simple cases such as password resets and order inquiries across multiple channels, implementing Einstein Bots is recommended. Bots can automate responses to these common inquiries, providing self-service options for customers and reducing the case load on human agents.

A Full Copy Sandbox is a complete replica of a production environment, containing both metadata and all data records. It is the most appropriate environment for conducting extended User Acceptance Testing (UAT), especially when real-world data and scenarios need to be validated over an extended period like 60 days.

This sandbox type supports thorough testing of configurations, integrations, and customizations under conditions that mirror live operations. Business users benefit from working with a familiar data set, reducing surprises during go-live. It is superior to Developer or Partial Copy Sandboxes for full-system validation.

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation:

To reduce the volume of email notifications sent to support agents when case ownership changes, administrators can modify the Support Settings in Salesforce.

From the official Salesforce Help documentation:

"Select Cases. Select Support Settings. Deselect the Notify Case Owners when Case Ownership Changes checkbox to disable email notifications."

—Salesforce Help

By unchecking this setting, Salesforce will no longer automatically send email notifications to agents upon changes in case ownership, thereby reducing email clutter and allowing agents to focus on more critical communications.

Identifying and prioritizing the requirements for a minimum viable product (MVP) allows for a focused and phased approach to the Service Cloud implementation. This strategy ensures that the most critical functionalities are developed and deployed first, providing immediate value while allowing for iterative enhancements based on feedback and additional requirements.

The best practice for deploying permission sets from a sandbox to production is to use a change set. Change sets allow administrators to push configurations, including permission sets, directly from one Salesforce environment to another. This ensures a smooth and error-free transfer of configurations, maintaining the integrity of permissions and access controls in the production environment.

To ensure compliance with a service-level agreement (SLA) that mandates agent ownership and response within 2 hours of case creation, Universal Containers should implementEntitlements and Milestones.​

Entitlementsrepresent the specific support terms agreed upon with customers. They define what kind of support a customer is entitled to and under what conditions.​

Milestonesare time-dependent steps within an entitlement process that represent service levels to be provided. For instance, a milestone can be set to ensure that an agent responds to a case within 2 hours.​

By configuring entitlements and associated milestones, UC can:​

Monitor SLA Compliance:Automatically track whether cases meet the defined response times.​

Automate Actions:Trigger alerts or escalate cases when milestones are at risk of being violated.​

Report on Performance:Generate reports to analyze SLA adherence and identify areas for improvement.​

This setup ensures that UC meets its SLA commitments by providing timely responses to customer cases.​

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation:

Actions & Recommendationsin Salesforce allows for the creation of guided processes for agents, ensuring consistency and adherence to best practices. By setting up steps with flows in an Actions & Recommendations deployment, supervisors can provide structured guidance to agents on case intake, field completion, case wrap-up, and escalation procedures. The Action History feature enables supervisors to monitor adherence to these processes.​

From Salesforce Help:

"Use the Actions & Recommendations component to walk users through multiple-step procedures, ensuring consistency and adherence to best practices."

—Use the List in the Actions & Recommendations Component​

This approach provides a scalable and trackable method for training and guiding new service agents.​

To provide top-tier support features such as asynchronous conversations, cross-device support, and Estimated Wait Time transparency, Messaging for Web is recommended. This feature enhances the chat support experience on external websites, offering modern communication capabilities that meet customer expectations for flexible and informed support interactions.

Salesforce Digital Engagement enables real-time customer interactions across various digital channels, including web chat, SMS, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and more. This feature allows support agents to communicate with customers seamlessly, whether they're using computers or mobile devices.​

Key Features:

Omnichannel Support:Integrates multiple communication channels into a unified platform, ensuring consistent customer experiences.​

Real-Time Communication:Facilitates immediate interactions between customers and support agents, enhancing responsiveness.​

AI-Powered Chatbots:Utilizes Einstein Bots to handle routine inquiries, freeing up agents for more complex issues.​

Unified Agent Console:Provides agents with a consolidated view of customer interactions across all channels, improving efficiency.​

By implementing Digital Engagement, Universal Containers can meet its goal of providing real-time support to customers on their preferred devices and platforms.​

Assigning the Service Console application to the User profile ensures that users within specific profiles have access to the appropriate console based on their role and responsibilities. This configuration allows for a customized experience, ensuring that technical support and general customer service teams have access to the tools and information relevant to their unique workflows.

Salesforce Connect allows seamless integration with external systems, enabling real-time access to data stored outside of Salesforce without the need for data duplication. By utilizing External Objects, datafrom an enterprise data warehouse (EDW) can be represented within Salesforce, allowing users to access and generate reports on work order data directly.​

This approach offers several advantages:

Real-Time Data Access:Users can view the most current data without waiting for scheduled imports.

Reduced Storage Costs:Since data isn't stored within Salesforce, it minimizes storage usage and associated costs.

Simplified Maintenance:Eliminates the need for complex data synchronization processes.​

Compared to importing data via Data Loader or implementing batch integration processes, Salesforce Connect provides a more streamlined and efficient solution for accessing external data sources.​

To decrease customer wait times, creating reports to analyze call volume and identify peak times is recommended. Understanding peak periods allows for strategic staffing and resourceallocation, ensuring that enough agents are available to handle the increased volume, thus reducing customer wait times.

To encourage agents to contribute more frequently to the Knowledge base, implementing a system to measure and reward agents based on the number of their articles approved for publication is recommended. This incentivizes quality contributions and ensures that new content meets the organization's standards before being added to the Knowledge base.

Asking whether support is provided on a periodic basis and renewed annually helps determine the need for Service Contracts in addition to Entitlements. Service Contracts are suitable for situations where support is tied to specific terms and conditions, such as annual support agreements, whereas Entitlements define the types of support a customer is entitled to.

When migrating to Lightning Knowledge, file attachments from Classic Knowledge articles do not automatically transfer. To migrate these file attachments, consultants can manually add files to the corresponding Lightning Knowledge articles using the Files Related List. This approachensures that all relevant attachments are associated with the correct articles, maintaining the integrity and usefulness of the Knowledge base post-migration.

When implementing chatbots to improve customer support operations, prioritizing scalability is crucial. Scalability ensures that the chatbot system can handle a high volume of inquiries efficiently, without compromising response times or customer experience. This focus helps in managing peak periods and growing customer bases, making chatbots a sustainable solution for enhancing support operations.

To meet the requirements of different access levels for account managers and support engineers, configuring Case Teams with appropriate roles and applying field-level security to the Personal Identifiable Information (PII) data field is advisable. This approach allows for granular control over access to case information and PII data, ensuring that each role has the necessary permissions while maintaining data privacy and security.

To address customer complaints about receiving calls despite preferences for email or text communication, setting the 'Do Not Call' field value to True on Contact records is the most efficient solution. This ensures that Lightning Dialer respects communication preferences, preventing calls to customers who have opted out, thereby enhancing customer satisfaction and adherence to communication preferences.

Customizing the pre-chat form allows for the collection of sufficient information from customers before a chat session begins. This ensures that service agents have the context and details needed to respond effectively, improving the efficiency and quality of chat interactions.

Salesforce enables the attachment of Knowledge articles suggested by Einstein to customer emails as part of standard Case Management capabilities. This feature leverages Einstein's AI to suggest relevant articles based on case context, allowing agents to provide helpful information and resources directly to customers, enhancing support quality and efficiency.

To improve the efficiency of the repetitive task of closing cases and sending surveys, using Macros in Service Cloud is recommended. Macros automate repetitive tasks with a single click, significantly reducing the time required per case and increasing overall operational efficiency, especially with a high volume of cases.

To comply with global data protection and privacy regulations, the consultant should recommend systematically searching for and removing all customer personal data from production and sandbox environments. This includes data in records and unindexed free text fields, followed byrefreshing sandboxes to eliminate any residual data, ensuring compliance and safeguarding customer privacy.

To meet the requirement of directing cases to live agents only during business hours and considering holidays, configuring the Einstein Bot with an action to check for Default Business Hours and active Holiday records is recommended. This ensures that customers are directed to submit a case form when live agent support is not available, maintaining service expectations.

For providing resellers with a secure portal to share customer accounts, submit and track cases, and view reports, implementing a Partner Experience site is recommended. This solution offers a collaborative platform tailored for partners, enhancing communication, case management, and access to vital information, strengthening the partnership ecosystem.

Einstein Bots should be recommended to address common customer feedback and concerns while extending support capabilities. Einstein Bots are part of Salesforce's Service Cloud and can be programmed to handle routine customer inquiries, freeing up agents to focus on more complex issues. These bots can be integrated into various messaging platforms, providing a scalable and efficient way to improve customer service and satisfaction.

To address concerns about compliance with HIPAA and other standards when using chatbots, sharing detailed information on bot security, data availability, and confidentiality from Salesforce Trust and Einstein Platform Compliance resources is recommended. This reassures stakeholders of the measures in place to protect sensitive healthcare data and maintain compliance.

To enable customers to send messages via their preferred mobile app to agents in the Service Console, the "Messaging" feature in Salesforce is recommended. This feature integrates various messaging platforms with the Service Cloud, allowing agents to communicate with customers through their preferred channels, enhancing customer experience and engagement.

To report the average number of days that Cases stay open, creating a formula field on the Case object to calculate the age of each case is effective. This formula can calculate the difference between the case creation date and the current date (for open cases) or the closed date (for closed cases). A report can then aggregate this data to calculate the average age of cases, providing insights into case resolution times.

To route cases from social channels efficiently within a limited timeframe, configuring custom case assignment rules is recommended. These rules can automate the distribution of cases based on specific criteria, ensuring that cases are promptly assigned to the appropriate agents or queues for timely resolution.

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation:

To efficiently monitor social media platforms and convert relevant interactions into cases, leveraging a third-party application from the Salesforce AppExchange is recommended. These applications are designed to integrate seamlessly with Salesforce and provide robust social media monitoring capabilities.

From Salesforce's best practices:

"With the right social media monitoring tools, you can create an automatic ticket that your customer service team can see and respond to immediately, and match it with that customer’s inquiries by phone, email, and more."

—Salesforce Marketing Cloud

Utilizing a third-party app ensures that UC can quickly implement a solution within the two-week timeframe, providing the necessary tools to monitor social media channels effectively and manage customer interactions through Salesforce.

In Salesforce, agents can view related customer information efficiently by exposing cross-object fields directly on the Case Lightning record page. This is done using Lightning App Builder and Dynamic Forms, which allow fields from related objects (like Contact or Account) to be placed directly on the Case page layout.

This method eliminates the need for duplicative data transfer (as would be done with formulas or flows) and ensures agents always see up-to-date customer data directly on the Case. It’s the most scalable and maintainable approach for surfacing relevant information during case handling.

To enable customers to log cases with structured data and route them based on urgency and product line, using Standard Web-to-Case with assignment rules is recommended. This feature allows for the creation of web forms that customers can fill out, which then become cases in Salesforce. Assignment rules can then be used to automatically route these cases to the appropriate teams or agents based on predefined criteria, ensuring efficient and relevant case handling.

Creating a custom report type allows for more flexibility in reporting by combining different objects and their relationships, such as Service Contracts and Entitlements in this case. Universal Containers can use a custom report type to specifically analyze customers with Service Contracts and their associated entitlements, providing insights into support offerings and potential adjustments.

For handling up to 5,000 new cases per day with the capability for customers to attach files under 10 MB, Web-to-Case is the recommended feature. This allows customers to submit cases directly through a web form, including file attachments, efficiently scaling case creation capabilities while reducing the workload on support agents.

To assist service agents in finding relevant Knowledge articles for new cases, adding the Knowledge component to the Case record page in the Lightning Service Console is recommended. This component dynamically suggests articles based on case details, aiding agents in providing accurate and efficient responses.

To ensure that contracted service level requirements are met, Salesforce provides a structured approach through Entitlement Management. This framework allows organizations to define, enforce, and monitor service levels for customer support.​

Key Components:

Entitlements:These represent the specific support terms agreed upon with customers, such as response times or support availability.​

Entitlement Processes:These are timelines that outline the steps (milestones) your support team must complete to resolve cases or work orders.​

Milestones:These are time-dependent steps within an entitlement process that represent service levels to be provided. Examples include First Response Time and Resolution Time.​

Milestone Actions:These are automated actions triggered at specific points in a milestone, such as sending email alerts when a milestone is approaching violation or has been violated.​

By configuring these components, Universal Containers can effectively monitor and ensure compliance with their service level agreements, providing timely and efficient support to their customers.​

To provide customers with access to their agreed-upon response times via the portal, configuring Service Contracts in Experience Cloud is advisable. Service Contracts can detail the specific service levels agreed upon, and making this information accessible through the portal ensures transparency and sets clear expectations for service delivery.

To efficiently create multiple activities related to the new partner onboarding process, executing a macro is a cost-effective method. Macros automate repetitive tasks, allowing agents to quickly generate the required activities for each step of the onboarding process, saving time and reducing manual effort.

For Universal Containers to achieve standardized reporting across its worldwide contact centers, assembling a global team of experienced analysts to develop a standard report template is recommended. This approach ensures that the template reflects a comprehensive understanding of global KPIs, facilitating consistent performance measurement and comparison across all regions.

MuleSoft, as an integration platform, offers a robust solution for connecting Salesforce Service Cloud with other systems like order fulfillment, inventory, invoicing, and financial data systems. MuleSoft's Anypoint Platform enables seamless API-led connectivity, ensuring that data flow between Salesforce and external systems is secure, efficient, and scalable. This approachsupports complex integration scenarios and facilitates real-time data exchange and process automation across disparate systems.

Before creating an implementation plan for Web-to-Case, reviewing the guidelines and limits for this feature is essential. Understanding these constraints ensures that the implementation alignswith Salesforce's capabilities and limitations, facilitating a smooth and effective deployment of the Web-to-Case form.

In the build phase of a Service Cloud implementation, prioritizing the configuration, development, and testing of the application in a sandbox environment is crucial. This ensures that the system is aligned with the client's business processes and requirements before deployment, facilitating a smooth transition and successful implementation.

Upon enabling 'Use standard Salesforce sharing' in Knowledge Settings, it's crucial to understand that Data Category Visibility will no longer control access to articles. Instead, standard Salesforce sharing rules and permissions will govern article access, making it important to carefully configure these settings to maintain the desired level of access control and visibility based on the organization's requirements.

Reviewing the Skills Backlog allows the service manager to identify any mismatches or delays in assigning cases to agents with the appropriate language skills. Addressing issues in the skills assignment process can help reduce resolution times for non-English speaking customers by ensuring cases are directed to the right agents.

For Cloud Kicks to effectively collaborate within the organization and with partners on resolving cases, using Slack for Service for Case Swarming is recommended. This solution facilitates real-time communication and collaboration, bringing together the necessary stakeholders and documenting the conversation history within the context of each case, enhancing problem-solving and case resolution processes.

When implementing Salesforce Chat functionality, it's important to integrate it with Omni-Channel for routing. This ensures that chat requests are distributed based on agent availability and workload, aligning with overall service channel management and ensuring efficient handling of customer inquiries.

For creating a secure, branded mobile app for Experience Cloud customers, utilizing Salesforce Mobile Publisher is recommended. This tool allows for the creation of a unified mobile appcompatible with both Apple and Android devices, providing a seamless experience for customers to engage with the brand, track cases, and interact with the community.

For new Knowledge articles to be visible in selected channels after a review process, the necessary step is to click "Publish" post-approval. Once an article has been reviewed and approved by the designated subject matter expert, publishing the article makes it available to users across the specified channels. This ensures that only verified and approved content is accessible, maintaining quality and relevance.

To understand the disparity in customer satisfaction reports, measuring cases with and without Knowledge articles attached, and correlating them with high Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) scores can provide insights. This KPI could reveal whether the use of Knowledge articles directly impacts customer satisfaction, helping to explain the inconsistency between KPIs and customer testimonials.

For agents who wish to preview PDFs sent by customers via WhatsApp in the Service Console, using File Preview functionality within the chat interface is recommended. This feature allows agents to view PDF attachments directly within the chat window, improving efficiency by eliminating the need to download files for review.

The best practice to ensure clean data in Salesforce when importing customer data from Excel files is to deduplicate the data before the import process. This involves identifying and merging duplicate records, ensuring that only unique and accurate data is imported into Salesforce. This proactive step prevents data quality issues and maintains the integrity of the Salesforce database.

For importing how-to guides written in HTML into Salesforce Knowledge, creating an HTML file for each rich text area field in the Knowledge article format is recommended. This method ensures that the HTML content is properly mapped and displayed within Salesforce Knowledge articles, preserving the formatting and structure of the original guides.