Customer expectations are rising, and the Manufacturing industry is racing to keep pace. Salesforce’s latest addition to Service Cloud, Field Service Lightning, promises to help enable seamless service experiences with functions designed to streamline the part of customer service that requires an agent or engineer to fix a physical product. This is an exciting development for companies whose customers rely on them to maintain and service the product they sell. Manufacturing companies make up a large part of those that offer field service. Here are the top three areas the new functionality of Service Cloud will impact manufacturers.

Customer Expectations

Customers now expect quick responses and visibility into the progress of orders in business to business (B2B) transactions, much like they do in business to consumer (B2C) sales. They want a seamless experience when making business purchases similar to the one they experience as a customer of brands like Amazon. Field Service Lightning enables the fulfillment of this expectation beyond the purchase of an item and into the period where an item needs to be installed, repaired, or serviced. Shifting focus onto the customer experience was touted as the primary reason for investing in IT this year. Field Service is an example of the technology and innovation that Manufacturing must embrace in order to facilitate the development of streamlined experiences for their customers. 

Customer Experience and Empowered Service Agents

Empowered with the right technology, exceeding customers’ expectations is simple. Utilising a cloud-based field service solution gives service teams fast, easy scheduling, and reduces time between an initial call and a booked appointment. Routing the correct person to each job the first time will ensure customers receive the help they’re expecting with minimal delays. Service is tracked from initial call to completion and information from the service performed is recorded in Service Cloud. This data contributes to service agents gaining a 360 degree view of each customer so they can approach every interaction informed by previous conversations and field services performed. 

Increased Efficiency 

To get the most out of Field Service Lightning’s functionality, businesses need to identify day-to-day tasks of their service team and which ones can be automated with Field Service. Skills-based routing, changes to appointment times, and automatically scheduled pre-visit activities are all functions of Field Service that provide savings in time. The intuitive interface on this new cloud means that agents can spend more time fixing things in the field and less time on data entry. 

To learn more about how the best manufacturers are using Salesforce, join us at the Salesforce World Tour in London. If you can’t join us at the event, you can download our special report on how to create the best customer service with Salesforce.