Salesforce Service Cloud Customer Service Management (Assisted Service) is the foundation of Service Cloud. This product includes Case Management, Knowledge Management, Customer Service Incident Management, and Slack for Service Cloud just to name a few of the core capabilities. For Salesforce, the Customer Service Solution starts with getting the foundation right and adding AI where it matters.  With Agentforce, help your clients grow into efficient and successful service organizations.

Case (Interaction) Management
The core of a good service organization's practice starts with Case Management. Partners should be adept in advising customers on Case Intake, Case Routing, Case Priorities, Case Data, SLAs and more. The following capabilities affect the Case Management strategy.

• Service Console: This is the Unified Console to deliver service on every channel to the Service. Partners should design the console to deliver personalization, organizational efficiencies and service representative success. 
• Routing strategies: Efficiencies and Satisfaction metrics should be the goal for the partner design of interaction routing. The strategy will include Omni-Channel solutions that use Queues, Groups, Routing Configurations, Channel Setup and Omni-Flow setup. 
• AI and Automation: Partners should understand the full spectrum of Automation and AI capabilities that match and empower the clients' processes for current and future goals. From Escalation Automation, Screen Flows, Service Replies and Service Assistant the options run from configuration to data driven generative AI. All of this is part of the case management process that can differ between business units, channel types and customer profiles.
• Collaboration in the console includes organizational knowledge articles within the case/interaction screen and the ability to get instant assistance with a Service Cloud and Slack integration that prompts key Subject Matter Experts to aid the representative and help resolve the customer's issue more quickly.
• Learn more at Case Management on Help

Knowledge Management
Salesforce Customer Service Management includes the Knowledge Centered Service (KCS)v6 verified Knowledge Management capabilities. As part of a strong service organization, knowledge centered service, is what has set Salesforce Service Cloud apart form others with it's integration of trusted and verified knowledge content into the service representatives workflow.

• Knowledge Base: The Knowledge Base is part of the platform, articles are just like any other record that goes through approval processes and sharing strategy. The ability to create Rich Media articles and serve them internally, externally or with authenticated customers allows for serving the right information to the right audience.
• AI for Productivity and Search: Use various AI capabilities from Article Recommendations, to generative knowledge creation to generative search returns all based on the content of the Knowledge Base and the KCS processes. 
• Continuous Improvement: Feedback, Reporting Metrics and Actionable insights may all be implemented as part of the KCS article lifecycle process. These tools reside in Salesforce Knowledge so plan the lifecycle process with a change management strategy with your clients.
• Learn more at Knowledge on Help

Customer Service Incident Management (CSIM)
As part of Customer Service Management help clients set up the CSIM to handle any incidents that occur in their customer service organization. At times their customers may contact support with the same exact issues. This tool allows support to raise an incident, assign cases to that incident, and handle them all as the incident progresses- saving time for the support reps and providing transparency to customers.

• Incident Detection allows for out of the box integrations to detect potential problems and proactively take action to avoid widespread impact. Help your clients integrate external events to raise incidents before your customers do to manage issues and build trust.
• Incident Resolution integrates platform workflows, automation and swarming with Slack to quickly assess and possibly resolve the issue. Help clients build Work Plans to approach the incident management in a consistent, trusted and auditable manner.
• Broadcast Communications allow for internal and external communications to be served in real-time and differ in message to the right audiences. Help your clients manage, automate and control broadcast communications to build clarity during the incident, and trust long after.
• Learn more about CSIM on Help

Collaborative Service
The concept of Collaborative Service combines Slack with Service Cloud. The systems are integrated, and the collaborative experience happens in the flow of work. Service efficiencies, workforce transformation, team building and customer satisfaction all benefit from a service organization collaborating to do what's best for the customer.

• Swarming for Service is driven from Service Cloud cases and incidents into Slack. This allows CRM data to be pulled into conversations where cross functional teams can help resolve items faster and with clarity. Help your clients uplift their service strategy by building collaborative processes and change management support.  
• Workflows for Slack help the swarming process become more efficient by capturing and analyzing the swarm content, creating documentation and assisting with manual task completion. This helps not only in service process transformation, but workforce transformation objectives.
• Swarming Reports and Dashboards allow partners to help clients set up monitoring and analytics to track swarming impact and surface organizational metrics.
• Learn more about Service Cloud for Slack on Help

Self-Service
Salesforce Customer Service Management offers out of the box self-service capabilities. Partners can help their clients plan self-service strategies that can grow as the client matures. The self-service templates that follow all offer Knowledge Base access and Case Intake capabilities. Additional licensing extends the customer experience capabilities. Each self-service template may have different metrics associated and require different levels of site management and staffing.

• Help Center: Non authenticated portal that surfaces a Public Knowledge Base and a Contact Support option
• Customer Account Portal Template: Authenticated and Non-Authenticated portal that allows customers to have access to their records, find knowledge, raise cases, supply knowledge feedback and messaging interactions.
• Customer-Service Template:  Authentication based portal that allows customers to have access to their records, find knowledge, raise cases and messaging interactions. It also supplies the options for Groups and Community based conversations. 
• LWR templates are available for fully customized site solutions, but they are not a quick out of the box solution. Partner expertise is provided and usually these are driven by highly customized or branded customer site requirements.
• Service Catalog: This provides a catalog based user interface for service organization offerings that are process based, where customers can start workflows in a consistent manner. Workflows can gather data, materials and then be sent for back office processing when completed. 
• Learn more on these Help pages: Help Center, Experience Cloud Templates, Service Catalog 

Service Operations
Provide your clients with trusted ways of reporting and acting on their implemented solutions. Use the capabilities for reporting, feedback and intelligence as appropriate to give clients a handle on making the right decisions with their service organization.

• Service Reporting is out of the box. This allows quick measurement of standard service metrics. As well, take advantage of the Salesforce platform to build custom report types for specific use cases.
• Service Intelligence and Service Insights options both use Data Cloud and analytics applications to help service organizations visualize Contact Center metrics. Understand the right application for each in terms of the clients' maturity and needs.
• Feedback Management is used to gather customer experience and satisfaction data. Most service organizations provide a feedback process for customers. Help your clients refine their service strategy.
• Learn more on the Help system by visiting these areas: Track Service Metrics and Salesforce Feedback Management

Becoming an Service Cloud Expert

• Since Service Cloud has been part of the Salesforce platform for quite awhile, much of what you need can be found in:
  • Trailhead
  • Help System
  • Release Notes
• Partners are encouraged to complete at least these Certifications: Salesforce Platform Administrator and Salesforce Service Cloud Consultant
• Additional relevant certifications are: Salesforce Platform Administrator II and Salesforce Business Analyst