Like many customers, I have had the chance to experience first-hand the dramatic evolution of customer service over the years. Experiences that originally took days, began to take hours and now today mere minutes.

Today, we enter a new era of conversational service, where customers can communicate with businesses the same way they do with their friends. Every day, we send messages to each other because it is fast, easy and convenient. We send quick notes, pictures, short videos and pick up conversations where we left off without batting an eye. Now with LiveMessage, companies can deliver that same experience to their customers on the mobile messaging apps of their choice.

For 8 years, Salesforce has been focused on delivering better, faster, smarter and more personalized customer service solutions. From unified agent desktops, to social customer service, to mobile, in-app, real-time two-way video and more, Salesforce has partnered with its customers to deliver innovation that drives value to customers with Service Cloud.

That’s why I’m so excited about our introduction of LiveMessage. LiveMessage is a significant step-change for the service industry. It makes messaging a viable and scalable channel for service contact centers of all sizes and all industries. Customer service is now truly conversational, enabling customers and agents alike to privately communicate with one another just as they do with their friends and family, quickly and easily -- via text message or their favorite messaging app.

Facebook Messenger & SMS: Messaging is officially the #1 activity people do on their mobile phones. People message 5X more than they talk on the phone and I can personally say that rings true for me too (pun intended). With LiveMessage, companies can now add both Facebook Messenger and SMS capabilities to their existing customer service phone numbers, enabling their customer service agents to connect with their customers all from directly within the Service Cloud Console.    

Service Cloud Bots: One question I receive time and again from service leaders is, how can they keep their customer service agents happy, engaged and productive. Interestingly enough, I believe that bots can be a key way to keep agents happy. Our new Service Cloud Bots can gather basic customer info (i.e. address, contact information, last purchase, etc.) and even respond to simple FAQs -- sparing customer service agents from mundane tasks and allowing them to focus on solving more complex customer inquiries, which leads to more meaningful customer relationships.   

Bring Your Own Bot (BYOBot): Bots are so hot right now. Nearly every company I meet with these days is either using bots currently or plans to in the future. With the BYOBot experience, companies can continue to use their favorite, pre-programmed bots directly with LiveMessage, making the integration of LiveMessage into your existing workflows unbelievably easy.

Best of all, LiveMessage is built on the Salesforce platform, so activation and configuration can be done in as little as one day.  Today, LiveMessage supports SMS/MMS and Facebook Messenger domestically and internationally, and as we add other popular messaging apps, companies will be able to turn on messaging support with a flip of a switch.

To learn more, check out our new LiveMessage page where you can watch a demo and learn how to unlock the messaging channel in your contact center today!