How Does Salesforce Service Cloud Outshine Other Alternatives?

CRM platforms have made it possible for businesses across all industries to automate their customer journeys and ensure more efficient business operations. Salesforce service cloud is an industry leader in this area.

Salesforce Service Cloud is a customer relationship management platform dealing majorly with customer services and support. It provides the customer service support team with various automation tools that facilitate faster and more efficient resolutions of customer queries. It multiplies the team’s efficiency to make sure they better serve the needs of the customers.

Salesforce Service Cloud employs cloud-driven telephony, allowing the support team to interact more effectively with customers to lead to improved satisfaction. Furthermore, it offers several incorporation tools and assets to help businesses streamline order management. By putting the power of AI into business processes, it paves the way for a better customer experience across multiple channels. Furthermore, it allows businesses to set up self-service help centers where customers can book appointments, check balances, and do other account-related tasks quite easily.

Service Cloud offers support for other solutions as well such as Field Service Solution (FSL). The Field Service Solutions’ remote support for field agents and AI-enhanced over-the-platform technical support make it ideal for the use of field agents. Businesses can take advantage of it to increase the efficiency of their field agents and shorten the time required for their operations.

The capabilities of Salesforce Service Cloud are beyond what we have explained so far. Here in this blog, you will get familiar with the features of Salesforce Service Cloud and how it outshines its alternatives.

Ready to learn more? Let’s get started.

What Does Salesforce Service Cloud Offer?

Let’s take a detailed look at the features of Salesforce Service Cloud which attributes to its immense popularity among businesses:

1. Unify Sales and Service Together

Salesforce Service Cloud unifies sales and service together to help businesses deliver a more cohesive experience to their customers. It provides the sales and service teams with a shared view of the customers, so they can provide a unified response to customer queries. It also enables the sales and service teams to collaborate with each other to solve issues in real-time.

2. Drag and Drop Simplicity

Service Cloud is supported by the point-and-click interface which enables the teams to design the entire processes with drag and drop from one place rather than coding. The user can easily create and update several records, such as sending emails, logging calls, starting workflows, etc.

3. Workflow Automation

Service Cloud helps businesses to eliminate the hurdle of manual and repetitive tasks with its highly advanced automated capabilities. Be it automating email responses, updating fields, or tasks assignment, everything can be automated to free up resources to focus more on complex tasks to drive business growth.

4. Easy Integration With Third-Party Services

Service Cloud helps businesses extend the functionality of the platform by offering easy integration with third-party services. With the help of APIs integration with third-party services can be accomplished easily.

5. Field Service Connectivity

As part of the Service Cloud, field agents are able to stay connected to their colleagues in the office as well as customers. Providing mobile agents with cloud-based access to lists, calendars, data, etc., allows them to remain connected while on the go. With FSC, agents can access the Service Cloud and serve their best service even when on the move, checking inventory and tracking deliveries.

6. Social Customer Services

Nowadays the usage of social media platforms is on the rise. Salesforce Service Cloud helps businesses to reap the benefits of the growing popularity of social media. It empowers businesses to communicate with their customers on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and so on. Assuring a fast response to customer queries and gaining actionable insights about customers helps support staff make better decisions.

7. Assets and Order Management

Service Cloud provides businesses with a centralized platform where they can access all the customer data related to assets and orders. This makes it easy to track orders, inventory, and customer preferences with ease. The platform can also integrate with third-party services to create a more cohesive experience of asset and order management.

To learn in detail about the Features of Salesforce Service Cloud check here.

Salesforce Service Cloud Pricing

Salesforce Services Cloud offers four different pricing options to help businesses of all sizes with diverse needs to become efficient with their business operations:

1. Essentials

The essential plan is designed specifically for small businesses. The pricing starts at $25/month/user (when billed annually) and offers access to core features like case management, customer service portal, and knowledge base. The plan also offers access to automated case assignments and predefined responses. Furthermore, it also enables the business to customize the fields and page layout to deliver personalized experiences to customers.

2. Professionals

The professional pricing plan of Salesforce Service Cloud is priced at $75 per user, per month. The plan offers access to all the features of the essential plan, in addition to work order management, asset management, and product tracking.

3. Enterprise

The enterprise plan of Service Cloud starts at $150/user/month. The plan offers access to all the features of the professional plan, in addition to advanced reporting features, web service APIs, and self-services.

4. Unlimited

The Unlimited plan for Salesforce Service Cloud is designed specifically for large enterprises with a price of $300 per user, per month. The plan offers access to all features of the Service Cloud with no limit on their usage.

How Does Salesforce Service Cloud Outshine Its Other Alternatives?

Salesforce Service Cloud is a powerful cloud-based solution for businesses to become more efficient with their customer interactions. However, it is not the only solution that businesses can use to improve their customer service. With several solutions available, businesses are confused over which is best. Here we have outlined the alternative to Salesforce Service Cloud and what makes Service Cloud superior to them:

1. Salesforce Services Cloud vs Zoho Desk

Zoho Desk is a customer services platform that is geared towards the customer’s long-term, more sustainable, and happier experience with their customers. It helps businesses to stay in the loop with their customers to learn about their needs and consistently deliver value to them. Zoho Desk is used by more than 100,000 businesses worldwide including Fortune 500 brands like Zomato, Gogrej, Mahindra Rise, McAfee, and so on.

Here we have created a detailed overview of the Zoho Desk, so you can easily compare them to find the right choice for your business:

Zoho Desk seems to be an effective choice for businesses due to its low prices. Zoho Desk pricing starts at $15.91/user/month, while Service Cloud pricing starts at $25/user/month. However, when it comes to features, Service Cloud emerges as the far better choice than Zoho Desk. It is a more robust and secure platform making it the preferred choice for the business that puts security above pricing. Furthermore, Service Cloud was launched in 2009, whereas Zoho Desk was launched in 2016. This makes Service Cloud a more mature choice over Zoho Desk.

Furthermore, Service Cloud offers an integrated platform for customer service, sales, and marketing. It also offers in-built analytics to track customer interaction, assign tasks to agents, and gain comprehensive insights into customer behavior. While on the other side, Zoho Desk is more limited in its capabilities and doesn’t offer an integrated platform for customer services, sales, and marketing.

2. Salesforce Service Cloud vs Zendesk

Zendesk is a customer service software that helps businesses to meet their business needs. It is used by some of the world’s most renowned businesses like Uber, Showpo, REAGroup, CottonON, and so on. Zendesk offers its support across multiple industries and 30+ languages.

Here we have given you a detailed overview of Zendesk to help you make an informed decision between Zendesk vs Service Cloud:

Among Zendesk vs Salesforce Service Cloud, Service Cloud emerges as the cost-effective option. Service Cloud offers a wide range of features such as AI-driven customer services, customer services analytics, omnichannel support, self-service portals, and more. Zendesk also offers many helpful services for businesses, but its pricing plan is more expensive than Service Cloud. Furthermore, Service Cloud has a flexible pricing structure that can be tailored according to the needs of businesses. On the other hand, Zendesk’s pricing plans are more rigid.

3. Freshdesk vs Salesforce Service Cloud

Freshdesk is a cloud-based customer service software platform that enables businesses to create and manage support services across multiple channels like phone, email, chat, social media, and more.

Let’s have a brief overview of the Freshdesk pricing and core features to learn how it fares against Service Cloud;

Freshdesk vs Salesforce Service Cloud, Salesforce has a broader feature set than Freshdesk. It offers features such as advanced analytics & reporting, automation, omnichannel customer support, and more. Service Cloud also has AI capabilities to enhance the support team’s power to offer personalized support and swift resolution of customer issues. Furthermore, Service Cloud can also be integrated with other Salesforce products which makes it a better choice than Freshdesk for businesses.

4. Sugar Serve vs Salesforce Service Cloud

Sugar Serve is a SaaS (software as a service) software tool, that promises to deliver a high-definition customer experience for the business. The platform employs SugarExchange API, and public API to ensure easy integration with third-party services.

Let’s have a conversation about the pricing and core features of Sugar Serve to help you decide between Sugar Serve vs Salesforce Service Cloud:

Salesforce Service Cloud deployed businesses of all scales with the tool needed to offer a personalized customer experience. Sugar Serve is a basic customer relationship management software that lacks several features available in the service cloud such as an intelligent customer service bot. The lack of these features makes Sugar Serve less ideal choice for businesses looking for a comprehensive solution to streamline their business processes.

5. Oracle Service Cloud vs Salesforce Service Cloud

Oracle Services Cloud is another alternative to Salesforce Service Cloud. It is built to help businesses enhance their customer experience across all channels. It is part of Oracle’s best-in-class connected CX cloud suite and powers global brands like Bosch, Radius Bank, Crestron, and so on.

Let’s learn about the pricing and core feature of the Oracle Service Cloud to learn how strong it stands against Service Cloud:

Salesforce Service Cloud employs a more intuitive, modern, and user-friendly user interface when compared with Oracle Services. Furthermore, Service Cloud has a transparent pricing structure and offers greater flexibility, & scalability in terms of customization options. All these factors draw the clear benefits of choosing the Service Cloud over the Oracle Service.

6. Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service vs Salesforce Service Cloud

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer service is a SaaS product part of Microsoft’s interconnected Dynamics 365 chain. It boasts of extending a large and strong user community to its customers, along with an efficient product roadmap and future vision. It allows quick functioning and innovation even for users with a limited technical background. Having a section as Citizen Developer makes its adaptability easy for users in companies as they don’t have to learn a different language; all they need is to be thorough with the clicks and pivots required for the functioning and planning of the Dynamics 365 Customer Service platform.

Let’s learn how Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service compares with Service Cloud:

Among Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service vs Salesforce Service Cloud, Salesforce offers the more cost-effective option. With an essential plan starting at $25/user/month, it offers customer services agents access to improved customer insights and AI-driven capabilities to reimagine the customer experience. With its powerful capabilities and intuitive user interface, Service Cloud is an ideal choice for businesses over Microsoft Dynamics 365.

7. SAP CRM vs Salesforce Service Cloud

SAP is an enterprise-grade CRM software that helps businesses to deliver frictionless customer experience by connecting commerce, marketing, sales, and service data together. Some of the world’s leading businesses named Changi, Briscoes, Yamaha, Galagher, and so on are relying on SAP CRM software to deliver great customer experience.

Let’s develop a broader understanding of SAP CRM to determine if it is the right choice over Service Cloud;

SAP CRM offers a wide range of features to help businesses build exceptional customer service for them. However, it is far behind Service Cloud when it comes to a comprehensive suite of tools. With automation capabilities and deep actionable customer insights, it puts support agents close to customers. Furthermore, Service Cloud offers a more intuitive user experience making it an ideal choice for business over SAP CRM.

Final Take

Salesforce Service Cloud is one of the most powerful solutions for businesses looking to build customer experience. It has remarkable capabilities to outshine all its alternatives, as we discussed previously. With different pricing models, the platform emerges as the right choice starting from small businesses to large enterprises.

Are you captivated by the capabilities of Service Cloud to allow your support team to more precisely address customer needs? Cyntexa with a team of more than 300+ Salesforce Professionals stands with a business like yours to give them a competitive edge to sustain and grow.