If you’ve landed here today, you’re likely aware of the two most prominent and popular Salesforce products – Sales Cloud and Service Cloud. But what is the difference between the two? Which one is the best fit for your business? Do you perhaps need both Sales AND Service Clouds?
There are of course many benefits to both Sales Cloud and Service Cloud as individual modules and even more benefits to implementing both Sales AND Service Clouds in your business if you have robust Sales and Service departments!
Sales Cloud and Service Cloud are two of many in the suite of products offered by Salesforce.
Sales Cloud specializes in the management of Leads and Opportunities, forecasting, and sales process automation, making it ideal for sales-focused businesses.
Service Cloud specializes in the management of Cases and Knowledge, customer support, and field service, making it ideal for service-focused businesses.
The Sales Cloud + Service Cloud Package specializes in all of the above, while also allowing your Sales and Service departments to access and work from a common customer database. If your business has both active Sales and Service departments, this dual solution is capable of doing amazing things for your business, agents, and processes!
So let’s talk about what makes Sales Cloud especially awesome, and some of the most valuable and impactful features that it comes with.
Contact Management:
Sales Cloud allows you to have a complete 360-degree view of your customers. You can track communication and activity history, relationships with your other contacts, and insights about them and the companies they work for. You can see all the deals the customer is involved with, and the internal discussion around the Account. All valuable insights into the best way to engage with the customer and provide them with the best possible customer experience.
Opportunity Management:
Sales Cloud allows you to manage every detail of your sales pipeline in one place. Who is your competition? What stage (stages can be customized to your business process, of course) is your deal in? What are your next steps and when? You can set up Sales Cloud to notify you when action is needed and fire off emails with customized templates in seconds. Creating quotes is a breeze with automatic population of customer data and templated PDF generation.
Sales Forecasting:
Sales Cloud allows you and your team to maintain real-time visibility into your sales pipeline, enabling precise forecasting capabilities and revenue prediction – all in one place. Creating forecasts that reflect your actual business model’s KPIs allows you to see trends over time, and adapt if necessary.
Process Automation:
Sales Cloud allows you to automate any of your business processes, setting up your agents, reps, and managers for success in all scenarios. Auto-assign tasks, trigger email alerts and guide your users through complex tasks using drag-and-drop customization. You can even automate your approval processes to maximize the efficiency of your internal systems and keep deals moving forward.
Mobile CRM
Sales Cloud allows you to manage and build your business from anywhere and everywhere, even while offline. You can collaborate with your team, access and share files, view dashboards and reports, and manage your entire day from one place.
Service Cloud comes with everything that Sales Cloud does, plus an additional buffet of amazing, game-changing features.
Here are some of the most impactful features for your service-centric business:
Service Console
Also referred to as the Agent Workspace, Service Cloud allows your reps to work cases from start to finish with a 360-degree view of the customer, their account history, and experience – even if they’re working remotely or in the field. Omni-Channel is integrated into the console as well, allowing your reps to manage phone, messages, and chat all in one place. You can even integrate Service Cloud Voice into your Service Console, allowing complete call center management through Salesforce.
Case Management
Service Cloud allows your reps to resolve Cases as efficiently and successfully as possible by first automating case routing to the most qualified rep or team for the situation. Similar to the Lead paths customized to your business processes in Sales Cloud, you can guide your service reps down an established path to case resolution by providing help text and next steps along the way. By setting up your business’s entitlements and SLAs, you can trust that each customer is receiving the appropriate level of service.
Knowledge Management
Service Cloud allows your reps and your customers to find the information and answers they need to resolve cases as fast as possible with a centralized knowledge base. Knowledge can live right in your Service Console, and automatically surfaces the best fitting articles based on the conversation that you’re having with the customer at the time. Empowering customers with access to your knowledge base significantly decreases the number of support cases that make it to your service reps.
Service Process Automation
Service Cloud allows you to automate your already-established service processes with drag-and-drop functionality – for your customers and your internal team. Build workflows, auto-create case records, standardize and automate your onboarding processes. Dynamically guide your service reps through every step they need to take and automate any unnecessarily manual or repetitive activities.
Service Analytics
Service Cloud allows you to see the full and complete picture of your support department operations at any time, from anywhere. You can embed the most important metrics into your Service Console, allowing your reps and managers to see what they need to see and know what they need to know to make the best decisions and provide the best customer service in the moment.
The Sales Cloud + Service Cloud Package allows you to do all of the above while also allowing your Sales and Service departments to access and work from a common customer database – the true 360-degree view!
If you have booming Sales and Service departments, this combined solution will take your company’s efficiency, productivity, and success to the next level.
So, what do you think? Will it be Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, or both?
No matter where you are in your journey, we’re happy to help you get there. Contact us here and let’s chat about your potential!
Emily Scott
Project Manager
Emily Magone is a graduate of Seattle University (Masters of Executive Nonprofit Leadership) and Western Washington University (Human Services) with over a decade of domestic and international program and project management experience in the nonprofit and small business sectors. Emily is a small business owner herself and is a Certified Salesforce Administrator as well as an Associate Human Resources Professional, and military spouse of an active duty Air Force service member.