Have you ever wondered what happens in your Contact Center when lightning strikes? No, this blog post is not about NICE CXone Disaster Recovery (even though that would certainly also be an interesting topic). What we do want to share with you is a preview of what will happen in the Salesforce universe when Lightning strikes and why, contrary to the real world, you have good reason to actually WANT it to strike – the sooner, the better! Out of the breadth of functionality that you have access to after the upgrade to Lightning, there are three areas that strike us (pun intended) as particularly helpful in improving the Customer Experience. For starters, and very different from natural lightning, the Lightning in Salesforce Sales Cloud and Service Cloud is predictable. Since the release of the Salesforce Lightning CTI interface with the Salesforce Winter ‘17 Release, Salesforce customers can decide for themselves if and when to move from the Classic interface to the Lightning interface. As far as the NICE CXone Agent for Salesforce is concerned, the NICE CXone Agent for Salesforce v6.0 supports both the Lightning and Classic interface. Meaning that regardless of when Lightning strikes, the Agent will simply load based on the interface detected. If you run your Salesforce environment on Classic, then that is what the NICE CXone Agent for Salesforce will use. Once you upgrade to Lightning, well then, Lightning is what will be used. Easy. The second one is the ability to leverage the Lightning Activity Timeline. The Activity Timeline is displayed for each and every customer and is a collection of key details that helps your agent understand any and all activity that occurred with an account in chronological order. The entire account history is at the agents’ fingertips! The Activity Timeline is available for opportunities, leads, accounts, and contacts, and provides details on each task, meeting, call, email or other activity that has taken place with a customer. Invaluable information that not only helps keep interaction times shorter, but more importantly, allows your agent to personalize customer interactions and improve the customer experience substantially. Exactly how important is that? Based on recent Salesforce research, 86% of millennials (and over 80% of consumers in all age brackets) say that providing personalized customer care does influence their loyalty to that company. The last, big new item in the Lightning experience that your agents and customers are sure to benefit from is called “Contextual Hovers”. Contextual Hovers are windows that, as the name suggests, open and hover when you mouse-over a customer (or prospect, lead, account) name. They are a quick way to see collected information from various screens in Salesforce – but without having to actually go in and open those pages. What a timesaver! Your agents see a wealth of customer information, but without having to spend the time clicking through various screens. They can concentrate on what they do best, which is helping your customer. And, since 2/3 of consumers say they’re likely to switch brands if they’re treated like a number instead of an individual company, making it easy for your agents to individualize and personalize interactions is not really an option, it’s an imperative.
The new Lightning interface certainly makes it easier and faster for your agents to optimize each and every customer interaction. So, if I may borrow a question from Shakespeare; “When shall we three meet again? In thunder, lightning or in rain?” The answer would be: Thou shalt meet in Lightning to win the CX battle any day, rain or shine! Interested? Please take a look at the CRM Integrations section on our website or check Appexchange as the new NICE CXone Agent for Salesforce v6.0 will be uploaded shortly.
