Work-from-Anywhere: AWS and Salesforce announce Service Cloud Voice

Salesforce announced the general availability of Service Cloud Voice and through its partnership with AWS to offer Amazon Connect for pre-integrated, out-of-the-box telephony, companies can digitize their call centers fast and provide flexible phone support from the home or office.

First announced at Dreamforce 2019, Service Cloud Voice brings together phone, digital channels, and data from the CRM data into one unified console. When a phone call is routed to a service agent, it appears directly within the agent’s workspace so the agent doesn’t need to jump between systems. This central console acts as a hub for managing customer data and interaction histories and delivering service across channels. Service Cloud Voice also gives managers the ability to view calls in real-time, so they can step in and provide coaching to service agents when needed, from anywhere.

However, since this launch, the world has changed. COVID-19 has drastically impacted every business, and call centers have become more important than ever before as consumers seek more help in these unfamiliar circumstances. A recent survey uncovered that 30% of consumers are contacting customer service centers more than they did before the pandemic.

“The contact center itself had to change because most organizations need employees to be physically distanced, but at the same time they need their agents to be available anytime, anywhere for customers to answer their questions,” said Bill Patterson, Executive Vice President and General Manager of CRM Applications at Salesforce. “Service Cloud Voice is the next evolution of the cloud contact center because it brings together everything you need as an agent in one place — different channels, customer information in the CRM, knowledge sources, and telephony service.”

This influx of service requests places increased pressure on service agents as they help customers navigate the uncertainty of COVID-19. It has also forced the call centers themselves to undergo rapid change, shifting to a remote work model overnight and turning to new digital tools to handle this heightened demand.

“With Amazon Connect you can scale your contact center up or down to any size, onboarding tens of thousands of agents in response to normal business cycles or unplanned events,” said Pasquale DeMaio, General Manager of Amazon Connect at AWS. “AI and other technologies including the integration of Service Cloud and Amazon Connect make service more personal. It cuts wait times and allows agents to spend more time with customers, focus on empathy, and solve complex problems.”